Reviews & Submissions

Reviews

In each issue of Percussive Notes, a column entitled Selected Reviews of New Percussion Literature and Recordings is published.

Publishers who are PAS Corporate Sponsors and individual PAS members who self-publish are invited to submit materials to Percussive Notes to be considered for review. Selection of reviewers is the sole responsibility of the Review Editor of Percussive Notes. Comments about the works do not necessarily reﬂect the opinions of the Percussive Arts Society. Prior to submitting material for review, please read the submission guidelines below. Follow the appropriate procedures to ensure your material will be considered for review.

View Sample of Published Reviews

Guidelines & Procedures

Send a permanent link to your work to reviews@pas.org.

For recordings, send either a link to a free download or stream. If submitting a link to a private service, please be sure that the link will work for at least 3 months from submission.

For books and scores, a link to a PDF or downloadable ebook is required. If submitting an ensemble score, please include parts in your submission.

In addition to basic release details, be sure to include the following information where possible:

Publisher/Record Label contact info and address
Release Date
Price in US Dollars
Access credentials for locked content

Send 1 (one) copy of your submission to:

Percussive Arts Society
ATTN: Reviews
127 E Michigan St
Suite 600
Indianapolis, IN 46204

In addition to basic info about the release, be sure to include:

Publisher/Record Label contact info and address
Release Date
Price in US Dollars

Please note that PAS no longer requires two copies of physical media for reviews. ONE copy is all that is needed. Please email reviews@pas.org with any questions.

When material arrives at the PAS offices, information about the material is entered into a database. Every two months, this information is given to the Associate Editor for review assignments. After the Associate Editor makes the assignments, the materials are shipped from the PAS office to the reviewers. During the review period, no contact should occur between the publishers/composers of the material under review and the reviewer. This helps protect the integrity of the review. Should the publisher/composer need to provide PAS with updated information regarding the material (e.g., errata, change of price, change of address), that information should be sent to reviews@pas.org.

Materials are sent to reviewers every two months, and there is a lead time of four months between the time reviewers receive materials and the time those reviews are published. (For example, reviewers receive materials in early October for reviews published the following February.) Note that materials can sit for nearly two months before being sent to a reviewer, depending on when they are received. Also, should PAS receive an unusually high volume of materials within a two-month period, some reviews might have to be held an additional two months before they are published.

Rreviewers are selected and retained on the basis of their percussion expertise, journalistic writing skills, and timeliness to deadlines. The selection of reviewers is the sole responsibility of the Associate Editor, although recommendations are received from the Editor, the Executive Director, and members of the Executive Committee. Potential reviewers should first contact the Associate Editor.

Comments about the material submitted are those of the reviewer and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Percussive Arts Society, Associate Editor, or Executive Board Members.

I–II Elementary

III–IV Intermediate

V–VI Advanced

VI+ Difficult

Contact Information

Hillary Jorgensen
Publications Production Manager
hhenry@pas.org

Rick Mattingly
Senior Editor
rmattingly@pas.org

Dr. Paul Buyer
Editorial Director
pbuyer@pas.org

Dr. Julie Hill
Editorial Director
juliehillperc@gmail.com

Dr. Jason Baker
Associate Editor
jbaker@colled.msstate.edu

More Information:
Phone: (317) 974-4488
Fax: (317) 974-4499
General Submission Inquiries: publications@pas.org

Percussive Notes

Percussive Notes welcomes articles of interest to percussionists and drummers involved in all genres of music. We are interested in articles that inform and educate percussionists and drummers in the areas of drumset, health and wellness, marching percussion, world percussion, keyboard percussion, and orchestral/symphonic percussion. We also welcome percussion-related articles on education and technology. Individual articles can deal with technique, scholarly research and/or historical information.

Percussive Notes is an international, peer-reviewed journal published by the Percussive Arts Society. It features scholarly articles representing performance practices, research, pedagogy, and historical information in all areas of percussion, as well as reviews of performance literature, method books, recordings, and videos relevant to the study and performance of percussion.

We often print interviews with prominent percussion performers, composers and educators, provided that the interviews include information that helps educate and inform our readership about various facets of percussion.

Submit an Article for Percussive Notes

*Refer to guidelines for submissions in the submission form.

Percussive Notes Online Research Edition

Percussive Notes Online Research Edition is a peer-reviewed, online publication that aims to promote advanced research and expand academic perspectives on topics in percussion relating to areas including, but not limited to, historical musicology, critical theory, aesthetics, musical analysis, performance practice, interdisciplinary studies, ethnomusicology, and interviews.

Submit an Essay

Due to the time that it requires to put together a publication, it is requested that authors carefully ensure that their essays adhere to the preferred formatting and style guidelines of Percussive Notes Online Research Edition. An essay that is suitable for publication but that does not follow the guidelines set forth below may be returned to the author for corrections before final acceptance is made.

1. Style

Please refer to The Chicago Manual of Style as your guide for spelling, grammar, abbreviations, punctuation, references, and all other formatting concerns. All citations should be included as Endnotes—not in-text parenthetical references. A bibliography of sources used should be included at the end of the essay.

2. Essay Preparation

Your essay must be submitted as a Microsoft Word file. Please adhere to the following formatting guidelines:
• Portrait orientation with 1″ margins on all sides.
• 12-point Times New Roman font for the body of the text. If you must use a different font because you need to use symbols/characters not available within Times New Roman, please specify which font you used when submitting your essay.
• 10-point text for block quotations and footnotes.
• All text should be single-spaced with 1″ indentations for paragraphs.
• Bold text should be used for section headings, if applicable. All titles of books or musical works should be italicized.

3. Chapter Abstracts

Essays must include an abstract of 200-300 words. The abstract should summarize the essay by addressing six main areas; though not every abstract will be able to address every one of the following components, the author should strive to cover as many of the six as possible:
• Purpose
• Scope
• Method
• Results
• Recommendations
• Conclusions

4. Permissions

Authors are fully responsible for securing rights to all borrowed material used in the essay; this may include musical examples, artwork, photographs, tables, poetry, extended quotations, and media examples. The author is responsible for providing written documentation of permission from the rights holder(s) with the final draft of the essay.

Acknowledgment of the copyright holder must accompany the use of all borrowed materials. Please be sure to request preferred wording from the copyright holder if it is not supplied with the permission. Be aware that securing reprint permissions can be a lengthy process; requests for reprint privileges should be initiated early so that there is no delay in publishing your essay. A list of credits for all borrowed material should be included with the final draft.

If you have any questions about copyright law, see http://www.copyright.gov or http://www.copyright.com.

5. Examples

Figures
• All figures (e.g. musical examples, photographs, artwork, etc.) should be numbered sequentially. Photographs and artwork should be labeled below the example; however, musical examples should be labeled above the example. Labels should be flush left in 10-point type according to the following template: Figure #: Full name of composer/artist – Work Title, range of selection (if applicable; i.e. page #, movement, measure(s), etc.).
• All figures should be embedded in the essay at the approximate location of the reference. If the essay is accepted for publication, figures must be submitted separately with the final draft as high-resolution TIFF or JPEG files of 300-600 dpi quality. Figures of poor quality may be rejected at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.

Tables
• All tables should be numbered sequentially, separately from figures. Tables should be labeled above the example, flush left in 10-point type according to the following template: Table #: Description of data.

Media
• Audio (MP3 or WAV) and video (MPEG or FLV) files should be included with the proposal separately and listed in the Word document with callouts: [INSERT (FILE NAME) HERE]
• Audio and video examples should be labeled above the callout, flush left in 10-point type according to the following template: Media Example #: Full name of composer – Work Title, range of selection (optional), performed by [name of ensemble or performer].

Captions and Credits
• Captions, if needed, should be listed below the example in 10-point type.
• Copyright credits, if needed, should immediately follow captions or else be listed below the example in 10-point type.

6. Questions

Any further questions or concerns regarding formatting can be addressed to Gareth Smith, Editor at drumming@bu.edu.

Online Thesis/Dissertation Repository

The PAS Online Thesis/Dissertation Repository is an online resource containing scholarship related to topics in percussion. Authors who have completed advanced degrees are encouraged to upload their academic documents so that they may be easily accessible to others and in order to help establish a large body of comprehensive percussion research available in a single location.

Submit a Thesis/Dissertation

Acceptable documents for submission are any theses or dissertations required for the completion of Master’s or Doctoral degrees in Performance, Musicology, Ethnomusicology, Composition, Music Theory, Music Education, Music Therapy, Music Cognition, or other fields peripherally related to interests in percussion music or performance. The overall subject matter of documents needs not entirely address issues in percussion, yet a substantial portion of research should be directly applicable to the area(s) of the repository in which the document is listed.

Documents must be completed and approved by the degree-granting institution prior to being submitted for inclusion. Term papers, conference presentations, or other types of research should not be contributed to the repository but instead submitted to Percussive Notes or Percussive Notes Online Research Edition for publication. Documents that are deemed by the PAS Scholarly Research Committee to be inappropriate for the purposes of the repository may be rejected.To submit to the repository, please provide the following to Sean Millman at scmillman00@gmail.com:

     • PDF of the document
     • A text file containing the document’s abstract, institution, and date of completion
     • A recommendation for up to TWO categories in which the document may be appropriately listed