A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater 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. 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. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of idiophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone.
The güiro is a percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side. It is played by rubbing a stick or tines along the notches to produce a ratchet sound.
Timbales or pailas are shallow single-headed drums with metal casing. They are shallower than single-headed tom-toms and usually tuned much higher, especially for their size. They were developed as an alternative to classical timpani in Cuba in the early 20th century and later spread across Latin America and the United States.
Sonor is a German musical instrument manufacturing company headquartered in Bad Berleburg. Established in 1875, it is one of the oldest percussion companies in the world. Sonor currently manufactures drum kits and hardware.
Afro-Caribbean music is a broad term for music styles originating in the Caribbean from the African diaspora. These types of music usually have West African/Central African influence because of the presence and history of African people and their descendants living in the Caribbean, as a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. These distinctive musical art forms came about from the cultural mingling of African, Indigenous, and European inhabitants. Characteristically, Afro-Caribbean music incorporates components, instruments and influences from a variety of African cultures, as well as Indigenous and European cultures.
Banda is a genre of regional Mexican music and type of ensemble in which wind and percussion instruments are performed.
Alejandro Neciosup Acuña, known professionally as Alex Acuña, is a Peruvian–American jazz drummer and percussionist.
The Dominican tambora is a two headed drum played in merengue music. In many countries, especially the Dominican Republic, tamboras were made from salvaged rum barrels. Tambora players are called tamboreros.
Changuito is a Cuban percussionist.
Orchestral percussion refers to the various percussion instruments used in an orchestral setting. It may also refer to the act of playing such instruments in an orchestral style. Many music schools and conservatories offer training for musicians interested in developing their skills as orchestral percussionists. Typically, an orchestral percussionist does not specialize in one particular instrument. Although there is no exhaustive list of all instruments that an orchestral percussionist must be able to play, there are particular instruments that are frequently used in the orchestral repertoire. This includes timpani, snare drum, bass drum, xylophone, glockenspiel, triangle, and tambourine.
Struck idiophones is one of the categories of idiophones that are found in the Hornbostel-Sachs system of musical instrument classification.
The güira is a percussion instrument from the Dominican Republic used as a percussion instrument in merengue, bachata, and to a lesser extent, other genres such as cumbia. It is made of a metal sheet and played with a stiff brush, thus being similar to the Haitian graj and the Cuban guayo and güiro. Güira, guayo and güiro all have a function akin to that of the indigenous native maracas or the trap-kit's hi-hat, namely providing a complementary beat.
Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedűvel (2000) is a song cycle in seven movements by the composer György Ligeti based on poetry by Sándor Weöres. The work is scored for mezzo-soprano and an unusual ensemble of percussion and wind instruments. The lyrics are whimsical and often nonsensical, sometimes combining random Hungarian words or parts of words into a nonsense language.
Hand percussion is a percussion instrument that is held in the hand. They can be made from wood, metal or plastic, bottles stops and are usually shaken, scraped, or tapped with fingers or a stick. It includes all instruments that are not drums or pitched percussion instruments such as the marimba or the xylophone.
Tamborera is a genre of Panamanian folk music. It is a mixture of Panamanian Tamborito and Cuban Danzón, created by the musician Ricardo Fabrega during the first half of the twentieth century.
Collage is an album by American jazz percussion ensemble M'Boom led by Max Roach recorded in 1984 for the Italian Soul Note label.
This is a partitioned list of percussion instruments showing their usage as tuned or untuned. See pitched percussion instrument for discussion of the differences between tuned and untuned percussion. The term pitched percussion is now preferred to the traditional term tuned percussion:
Llegó La India Via Eddie Palmieri is a salsa album by Puerto Rican-American singer La India in collaboration with pianist Eddie Palmieri. It was released in the US by Soho Sounds in 1992 and features songs in Spanish and English. The album was also released in the UK by Acid Jazz Records in 1993.
Agora ("Now") is a solo album by the Brazilian percussionist Paulinho da Costa. It was released in 1977 via Pablo Records.