The Best Timpani Solo Ever

This is one of those "it's funnier when you're there" things.

The orchestra - in which I am a percussionist - will have its concert tomorrow. Exciting! Yesterday, we had our last rehearsal. Given that all the larger percussion instruments have already been moved to to the performance venue, us percussionists made do for the rehearsal. Y'know, a chair instead of a drum, that sort of thing.

In particular, our set of timpani are substituted with one large, empty, upturned plastic garbage can, tilted slightly like a Congo drum. It was awesome. All notes - no matter what the score says - are now a dull, flat A (but not quite A-flat) for the duration of the rehearsal.

Anyway, for one of our pieces, the timpani has a solo, a powerful, deliberate statement of the thematic material, repeated three times.

You can imagine how that went with the garbage can:
fff: Bonk, bonk bonk bonk, bonk rolllll (decrescendo to ppp).
*Pregnant pause in which everyone took a second to start laughing*

The percussion section sang the other two repeats over the garbage can solo.