The challenge is that drums’ pitches cannot easily be changed. You could follow Berlioz’s Requiem (Grande messe des morts) and have ten timpani played by eight people and have melodic content, but one player probably couldn’t move fast enough between the drums to play a melody at any sort of reasonable tempo.

The challenge is that drums’ pitches cannot easily be changed. You could follow Berlioz’s Requiem (Grande messe des morts) and have eight pairs of timpani played by ten people and have melodic content, but one player probably couldn’t move fast enough between the drums to play a melody at any sort of reasonable tempo.