Explorations of a Drum (Old name: March for the Future 2003/ rev. 2009) for solo snare drum is the composer’s first experience with purely non-pitched material.  As such, there are some more non-traditional yet still idiomatic elements to the music that sets the piece apart from many solo works for snare drum.  Set in three movements, March simulates and accentuates the common fast-slow-fast pacing of a three-part work by also using a dense-sparse-dense arrangement. The first movement begins with rolls of various lengths before it opens up into a sort of dialogue between ‘head’ and ‘rim’ sounds.  The second movement could be thought of as a multi percussion solo on one instrument.  The performer is asked to play the head, rim, and shell of the drum with both hands and sticks.  The last movement, while using purely traditional sound production techniques, is the most rhythmically involved.  The movement maintains a single tempo and uses purely simple meters, both of which are obscured quite well by constantly shifting subdivisions and by rarely placing emphasis on downbeats.