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:
Each list is alphabetical.
This group of instruments includes all keyboard percussion and mallet percussion instruments and nearly all melodic percussion instruments. Those three groups are themselves overlapping, having many instruments in common.
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 ideophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone.
General MIDI is a standardized specification for electronic musical instruments that respond to MIDI messages. GM was developed by the American MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA) and the Japan MIDI Standards Committee (JMSC) and first published in 1991. The official specification is available in English from the MMA, bound together with the MIDI 1.0 specification, and in Japanese from the Association of Musical Electronic Industry (AMEI).
A metallophone is any musical instrument in which the sound-producing body is a piece of metal, such as tuned metal bars, tubes, rods, bowls, or plates. Most frequently the metal body is struck to produce sound, usually with a mallet, but may also be activated by friction, keyboard action, or other means.
A percussion mallet or beater is an object used to strike or beat a percussion instrument in order to produce its sound.
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.
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.
Stuart Saunders Smith is an American composer and percussionist. After having studied composition and music theory at three music institutions, Smith is currently based in Vermont, United States, with his wife Sylvia. He has produced almost 200 compositions, half of which were written for percussion instruments with a focus on the vibraphone.
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.
Collage is an album by American jazz percussion ensemble M'Boom led by Max Roach recorded in 1984 for the Italian Soul Note label.
The Loh Tarang is a melodic percussion instrument. It consists of a set of iron circular plates, of different sizes, held in a frame. Each plate is pitched to a note and they are struck with sticks on each hand. 'Tarang' literally means waves. Plates sound depends on the different size of plate and hand movement. Theory is based like Jal-Tarang.
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 percussion instruments are fully chromatic, keyboard instruments for children, such as ones used in the Orff Schulwerk, may be diatonic or pentatonic.
A pitched 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 sounds of indefinite pitch.
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.
There are several overlapping schemes for the classification of percussion instruments.
L-R-G / The Maze / S II Examples is an album by American jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell recorded in 1978 and released originally as a double LP on Nessa Records. It was reissued in 1989 as a single CD.