A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a

beater Beater may refer to: Clothes * Beater (weaving), a tool used to force woven yarn into place *A shortening of "wifebeater" (shirt), a colloquialism for particular style of sleeveless shirt Music *Any of various types of percussion mallets ** A r ...

including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments.''

The Oxford Companion to Music ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' is a music reference book in the Book series, series of Oxford Companions produced by the Oxford University Press. It was originally conceived and written by Percy Scholes and published in 1938. Since then, it ...

'', 10th edition, p.775, In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of

organology Organology (from Ancient Greek () 'instrument' and (), 'the study of') is the science of musical instruments and their classifications. It embraces study of instruments' history, instruments used in different cultures, technical aspects of how i ...

. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of

ideophone Ideophone is a word class evoking ideas in sound imitation or onomatopoeia to express action, manner of property. Ideophone is the least common syntactic category cross-linguistically occurring mostly in African, Australian and Amerindian langua ...

membranophone A membranophone is any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by way of a vibrating stretched membrane. It is one of the four main divisions of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification. ...

, aerophone and cordophone. The

percussion section The percussion section is one of the main divisions of the orchestra and the concert band. It includes most percussion instruments and all unpitched instruments. The percussion section is itself divided into three subsections: * Pitched percus ...

of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the

timpani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally ...

, snare drum, bass drum,

tambourine The tambourine is a musical instrument in the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zills". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though ...

, belonging to the membranophones, and cymbals and

triangle A triangle is a polygon with three edges and three vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, any three points, when non- colline ...

, which are idiophones. However, the section can ''also'' contain aerophones, such as

whistle A whistle is an instrument which produces sound from a stream of gas, most commonly air. It may be mouth-operated, or powered by air pressure, steam, or other means. Whistles vary in size from a small slide whistle or nose flute type to a lar ...

s and

siren Siren or sirens may refer to: Common meanings * Siren (alarm), a loud acoustic alarm used to alert people to emergencies * Siren (mythology), an enchanting but dangerous monster in Greek mythology Places * Siren (town), Wisconsin * Siren, Wisc ...

s, or a blown conch shell. Percussive techniques can even be applied to the human body itself, as in

body percussion Body percussion may be performed on its own or as an accompaniment to music and/or dance. Examples of countries' folk traditions that incorporate body percussion include Indonesian saman, Ethiopian armpit music, palmas in flamenco, and the hambone ...

. On the other hand,

keyboard instruments A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pia ...

, such as the celesta, are not normally part of the percussion section, but

keyboard percussion A keyboard percussion instrument, also known as a bar or mallet percussion instrument, is a pitched percussion instrument arranged in a similar pattern to a piano keyboard and played with hands or percussion mallets. While most keyboard percussio ...

instruments such as the glockenspiel and

xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in ...

(which do not have piano keyboards) are included. Percussion instruments are most commonly divided into two classes:

pitched percussion A pitched percussion instrument (also known as a melodic or tuned percussion instrument) is a percussion instrument used to produce musical notes of one or more pitches, as opposed to an unpitched percussion instrument which is used to produce ...

instruments, which produce notes with an identifiable pitch, and

unpitched percussion An unpitched percussion instrument is a percussion instrument played in such a way as to produce sounds of indeterminate pitch, or an instrument normally played in this fashion. Unpitched percussion is typically used to maintain a rhythm or to ...

instruments, which produce notes or sounds in an indefinite pitch.

Function

Percussion instruments may play not only

rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular re ...

, but also melody and harmony. Percussion is commonly referred to as "the backbone" or "the heartbeat" of a musical ensemble, often working in close collaboration with bass instruments, when present. In jazz and other popular music ensembles, the pianist, bassist, drummer and sometimes the guitarist are referred to as the rhythm section. Most classical pieces written for full orchestra since the time of

Haydn Franz Joseph Haydn ( , ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions to musical form have led ...

and Mozart are orchestrated to place emphasis on the strings,

woodwinds Woodwind instruments are a family of musical instruments within the greater category of wind instruments. Common examples include flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and saxophone. There are two main types of woodwind instruments: flutes and reed ...

, and

brass Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn), in proportions which can be varied to achieve different mechanical, electrical, and chemical properties. It is a substitutional alloy: atoms of the two constituents may replace each other wit ...

. However, often at least one pair of

is included, though they rarely play continuously. Rather, they serve to provide additional accents when needed. In the 18th and 19th centuries, other percussion instruments (like the

or cymbals) have been used, again generally sparingly. The use of percussion instruments became more frequent in the 20th century classical music. In almost every style of music, percussion plays a pivotal role. In military marching bands and pipes and drums, it is the beat of the bass drum that keeps the soldiers in step and at a regular speed, and it is the snare that provides that crisp, decisive air to the tune of a regiment. In classic jazz, one almost immediately thinks of the distinctive rhythm of the Hi-hat (instrument), hi-hats or the ride cymbal when the word-swing is spoken. In more recent popular-music culture, it is almost impossible to name three or four rock, hip-hop, rap, funk or even soul charts or songs that do not have some sort of percussive beat keeping the tune in time. Because of the diversity of percussive instruments, it is not uncommon to find large musical ensembles composed entirely of percussion. Rhythm, melody, and harmony are all represented in these ensembles. Usually started to be played at a younger age for more talented individuals, commonly started at age 10 - 12

Percussion notation

Music for pitched percussion instruments can be musical notation, notated on a musical staff, staff with the same clef, treble and bass clef, bass clefs used by many non-percussive instruments. Music for percussive instruments without a definite pitch can be notated with a specialist rhythm or Percussion clef, percussion-clef. The guitar also has a special "tab" staff. More often a bass clef is substituted for rhythm clef.based on the previous reservation

Classification

Percussion instruments are classified by various criteria sometimes depending on their construction, ethnic origin, function within musical theory and orchestration, or their relative prevalence in common knowledge. The word percussion derives from the Latin verb ''percussio'' to beat, strike in the musical sense, and the noun ''percussus'', a beating. As a noun in contemporary English, Wiktionary describes it as the collision of two bodies to produce a sound. The term is not unique to music, but has application in medicine and weaponry, as in percussion cap. However, all known uses of ''percussion'' appear to share a similar lineage beginning with the original Latin percussus. In a musical context then, the ''percussion instruments'' may have been originally coined to describe a family of musical instruments including drums, rattles, metal plates, or blocks that musicians beat or struck to produce sound. The Hornbostel–Sachs system has no high-level section for ''percussion''. Most percussion instruments as the term is normally understood are classified as idiophones and

s. However the term ''percussion'' is instead used at lower-levels of the Hornbostel–Sachs hierarchy, including to identify instruments struck with either a non sonorous object hand, stick, striker or against a non-sonorous object Body percussion, human body, the ground. This is opposed to ''concussion'', which refers to instruments with two or more complementary sonorous parts that strike against each other and other meanings. For example: 111.1 ''Concussion idiophones or clappers'', played in pairs and beaten against each other, such as zills and clapsticks. 111.2 ''Percussion idiophones'', includes many percussion instruments played with the hand or by a percussion mallet, such as the hang (instrument), hang, gongs and the

, but not drums and only some cymbals. 21 ''Struck drums'', includes most types of drum, such as the timpani, snare drum, and tom-tom. 412.12 ''Percussion reeds'', a class of wind instrument unrelated to ''percussion'' in the more common sense There are many instruments that have some claim to being percussion, but are classified otherwise: * Keyboard instruments such as the celesta and piano. * Stringed instruments played with beaters such as the hammered dulcimer. * Unpitched whistles and similar instruments, such as the pea whistle and Acme siren. Percussion instruments are sometimes classified as musical pitch, pitched or unpitched. While valid, this classification is widely seen as inadequate. Rather, it may be more informative to describe percussion instruments in regards to one or more of the following four paradigms:

By methods of sound production

Many texts, including ''Teaching Percussion'' by Gary Cook of the University of Arizona, begin by studying the physical characteristics of instruments and the methods by which they can produce sound. This is perhaps the most scientifically pleasing assignment of nomenclature whereas the other paradigms are more dependent on historical or social circumstances. Based on observation and experimentation, one can determine how an instrument produces sound and then assign the instrument to one of the following four categories:

Idiophone

"Idiophones produce sounds through the vibration of their entire body."Gary D. Cook, ''Teaching Percussion'', p.2, 3rd edn, 2006, Thomson Schirmer, Examples of idiophones: * Bells * Bock-a-da-bock * Cabasa * Cajón * Castanets * Celesta * Chimes * Claves * Cowbell (instrument), Cowbell * Cymbals#Crash cymbals, Crash cymbals * Crotales * Daxophone * Flexatone * Glockenspiel * Güiro * Handbells * Hi-hat * Lummi stick * Maraca * Marimba * Orchestra bells * Quadrangularis Reversum * Ratchet (instrument), Ratchet * Singing bowls * Slit drum * Steelpan * Suspended cymbal * Temple blocks * Thumb piano (or Kalimba) * Triangle (musical instrument), Triangle * Txalaparta * Vibraphone * Vibraslap * Woodblock (instrument), Wood block * Xylophone

Membranophone

Most objects commonly known as drums are membranophones. Membranophones produce sound when the membrane or head is struck with a hand, mallet, stick, beater, or improvised tool. Examples of membranophones: *Bass drum *Bongo drum, Bongos *Conga *Darbuka *Djembe *Mridangam *Octoban *Parai *Rototom *Snare drum *Tabla *Thavil *Timpani *Tom-tom drum, Tom-tom *Lion's roar (instrument), Lion's roar *Urumi (drum) *Wind machine

Chordophone

Most instruments known as chordophones are defined as string instruments, wherein their sound is derived from the vibration of a string, but some such as these examples ''also'' fall under percussion instruments. *Hammered dulcimer, Cimbalom *Onavillu *Piano *Berimbau *Jhallari *Kolitong *Takumbo

Aerophone

Most instruments known as aerophones are defined as wind instruments whereby sound is produced by a stream of air being blown through the object. However, plosive aerophones, such as the udu, are percussion instruments and may also overlap with the idiophone family. In certain situations, such as in an orchestra or Concert band, wind ensemble, wind instruments, such as the Acme siren or various Whistle, whistles, are played by percussionists, owing to their unconventional and simple nature. *Apito or samba whistle *Siren (noisemaker), Siren *Slide whistle *Udu *Whistle or police whistle

By musical function or orchestration

When classifying instruments by function it is useful to note if a percussion instrument makes a definite pitch or indefinite pitch. For example, some percussion instruments such as the marimba and

produce an obvious fundamental pitch and can therefore play melody and serve harmony, harmonic functions in music. Other instruments such as crash cymbals and snare drums produce sounds with such complex overtones and a wide range of prominent frequencies that no pitch is discernible.

Definite pitch of Music

Percussion instruments in this group are sometimes referred to as pitched or tuned. Examples of percussion instruments with definite pitch: * Chimes/Tubular bells * Crotales * Glass harmonica * Glass harp * Glockenspiel * Handbells * Marimba * Mridangam * Rototom * Steelpan * Tabla * Timpani * Triangle (musical instrument), Tuned Triangle * Vibraphone * Wind chimes * Xylophone * Xylorimba, Xylo-marimba

Indefinite pitch

Instruments in this group are sometimes referred to as non-pitched, unpitched, or untuned. Traditionally these instruments are thought of as making a sound that contains such complex frequencies that no discernible pitch can be heard. In fact many traditionally unpitched instruments, such as triangles and even cymbals, have also been produced as tuned sets. Examples of percussion instruments with indefinite pitch: * Bass drum * Castanets * Cymbals * Rainstick * Slapstick (instrument), Slapstick or whip * Snare drum * Gong, Tamtam * Tom-tom drum, Tom-tom

By prevalence in common knowledge

It is difficult to define what is common knowledge but there are instruments percussionists and composers use in contemporary music that most people wouldn't consider musical instruments. It is worthwhile to ''try'' to distinguish between instruments based on their acceptance or consideration by a general audience. For example, most people would not consider an anvil, a brake drum (on a vehicle with drum brakes, the circular hub the brake shoes press against), or a fifty-five gallon steel pan, oil barrel musical instruments yet composers and percussionists use these objects. Percussion instruments generally fall into the following categories:

Conventional or popular

*Drum kit *Gong, Gong (tamtam) *Tambourine *Triangle (musical instrument), Triangle

Unconventional

*Automobile Drum brake#Use in music, brake drum *Beer kegs *Brooms *Clay pots *Firearms or explosive charges *Five gallon buckets *Garbage cans *Glass bottles *Hammer *Metal pipes *Metal pots *Plastic bottles *Plastic bag *Rocks in a bucket *Shopping carts *Spokes on a bicycle wheel *Tableware ImprovisedDrumLondon

One pre-20th century example of found percussion is the use of cannon usually loaded with blank charges in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Tchaikovsky's ''1812 Overture''. John Cage, Harry Partch, Edgard Varèse, and Peter Schickele, all noted composers, created entire pieces of music using unconventional instruments. Beginning in the early 20th century perhaps with ''Ionisation (Varèse), Ionisation'' by Edgard Varèse which used air-raid sirens among other things, composers began to require that percussionists invent or find objects to produce desired sounds and textures. Another example the use of a hammer and saw in Penderecki's ''De Natura Sonoris No. 2''. By the late 20th century, such instruments were common in modern percussion ensemble music and popular productions, such as the off-Broadway show, Stomp dance troupe, Stomp. Rock band Aerosmith used a number of unconventional instruments in their song Sweet Emotion, including shotguns, brooms, and a sugar bag. The metal band Slipknot (band), Slipknot is well known for playing unusual percussion items, having two percussionists in the band. Along with deep sounding drums, their sound includes hitting baseball bats and other objects on beer kegs to create a distinctive sound.

By cultural significance or tradition

It is not uncommon to discuss percussion instruments in relation to their cultural origin. This led to a division between instruments considered common or modern, and folk instruments with significant history or purpose within a geographic region or culture.

Folk percussion instruments

*Berimbau *Bodhrán *Bombo legüero *Bongo drum *Cajon *Conga *Dhaa *Dhime *Dhol *Dholak *Djembe *Dunun *Gamelan *Ghatam *Kalimba (Thumb Piano) *Kpanlogo (drum), Kpanlogo *Monkey stick, Lagerphone *Latin percussion *Madal *Marimba *Marimbula *Naykheen *Pogo cello *Skrabalai *Spoon (musical instrument), Spoons *Steelpan *Tabla *Taiko *Tambourine *Thavil *Timbales *Tonbak *Urumi (drum), Urumee *Udukai

"Common" drums

This category includes instruments that are widely available and popular throughout the world: * Drum kit, typically consisting of: ** Bass drum ** Crash cymbal ** Ride cymbal ** Floor tom ** Hi-hat (instrument), Hi-Hat cymbals ** Snare drum ** Tom-tom drums * Marching percussion instruments * Orchestral percussion instruments

By capability of melodic production

*Non-melodic percussion: bongos, snare drum, etc. *Melodic percussion: glass marimba, gendér, etc.

By percussive beater

The percussionist uses various objects to strike a percussion instrument to produce sound. * Hands: hand drums,

* Sticks: drum kit * Mallets: mallet percussion,

* Auxiliary:

, cymbals * Feet: Step dance, Tap dance

Names for percussionists

The general term for a musician who plays percussion instruments is "percussionist" but the terms listed below often describe specialties: *Balafonist: a balafon player *Bombisto: a bombo legüero player *Bongocero: someone who plays Bongo drum, bongos and usually cencerro (a Cowbell (instrument), cow bell) *Congalero, conguero: someone who plays congas *Cymbalist: someone who plays cymbals *Djembefola: djembe player. *Drummer: someone who plays the Drum kit, drumset, hand drums or a single drum such as Snare drum. *Dununfola: dunun player. *Glockenspielist: someone who plays the glockenspiel. *Güirero: someone who plays the güira, a Dominican scraper used in merengue music *Marimbist: a marimba player *Panman, pannist: a steelpan player *Timbalero, timbero: someone who plays timbales *Timpanist: a

player *Vibraphone, Vibraphonist: a vibraphone player *Xylophonist: a

player Within rock music, the term "percussionist" is often used to refer to someone who plays percussion instruments but is not primarily a drummer. The term is especially found in bands where one person plays drums and another plays other hit instruments.

References

Notes

# Note however that percussion instruments such as the xylophone, which share the layout of the piano keyboard but themselves have no keyboard, are termed keyboard percussion and are universally regarded as being within the percussion family.

Citations

External links

*
Drummer Brasil
— Website for drummers and percussionists
Video clips of percussion instruments demonstratedDrum Museum, Information about antique hand drums from Africa, New Guinea and the HimalayasAkul Raval - Maximum Innovative Musical Instruments Created By A Percussionist honored by World Records India
{{DEFAULTSORT:Percussion Instrument Percussion instruments, Percussion,