What are percussion instruments?
Percussion instruments are those musical instruments that need to be struck or percussed on some part of their surface to reproduce a sound. For example, the Timbales are percussion instruments with a membrane whose box is made of wood, steel or metal and the upper skin patch on which the sticks or drumsticks strike to make them sound.
The timpani, although they can be played alone, are usually part of a drum kit along with the cymbals, bass drum, etc. They are in charge of keeping the rhythm of the music.
Percussion instruments have been around for thousands of years. From the first handmade with animal skins and bones, to the present made with perfect acoustics and a very well achieved tuning. Any of these instruments can manage to reproduce certain notes of the musical scale.
Classification of percussion instruments
Most percussion instruments are called idiophones, which means that they use their own body to produce sound.
They may be:
- Percussed
- such as the bass drum, the tuntaina or the triangle, whose vibration produces the sound
- Shaken
- like the bells or the maracas
- Dotted
- like the Kalimba
- Rubbed
- like the ratchet
- Swing
- like maracas.
Percussive percussion instruments use their bodies as a sounding board to produce music when sticks, mallets or hands are struck on them. The surdo, the cowbell or the bell are struck percussion instruments because they are based on this principle, although they are very different. By changing the frequency in which they are struck, different melodies can be obtained.
The xylophone is another percussion instrument made up of ordered and tuned plates to produce the different tonalities of the musical scale.
There are countless percussion instruments throughout the five continents. At Percuforum we have all the Brazilian percussion instruments for Batucada.
