Percussion instruments: what they are, the main types, and ones you can play

Any instrument that makes its sound when something hits it, shakes it or scrapes it. A drumstick on a drum, beans rattling in a shaker, a stick drawn along a ridged gourd: all percussion.

That makes it the biggest and most varied family in music. It runs from a single pair of wooden sticks to a full orchestral section with timpani, gongs and bells.

Percussion splits into two kinds, and the difference is whether it can play a tune.

• Unpitched: a burst of sound with no single note you could sing back. Snare drum, cymbals, shakers, claves. These carry the rhythm.
• Pitched: each bar, bell or drum is tuned to a note, so a row of them plays melodies and chords. Xylophone, marimba, glockenspiel, timpani.

Most percussion fits one of six groups:

• Drums: snare drum, bass drum, tom-toms, congas, bongos, timpani, djembe, cajón.
• Cymbals and gongs: crash, ride and hi-hat cymbals, the tam-tam and the gong.
• Shakers and scrapers: maracas, egg shakers, the tambourine, the guiro, the washboard.
• Wood and metal: claves, woodblocks, the cowbell, the triangle, the agogo bell.
• Mallet instruments: xylophone, marimba, glockenspiel and vibraphone, all bars played with mallets.
• Electronic: drum machines and sample pads, which play recorded or synthesized hits.

The celesta is the odd one out. It looks like a small piano, but its hammers strike metal plates, so orchestras file it with the percussion.

Much of the world’s dance music runs on percussion from Cuba, Brazil and West Africa. A salsa or samba band may have more percussionists than any other kind of player.

• Congas: tall barrel drums played with the hands, in sizes from the high quinto to the deep tumba.
• Bongos: a small pair of joined drums, one high and one low, held between the knees.
• Guiro: a ridged gourd scraped with a stick.
• Claves: two hardwood sticks struck together. Their pattern often holds the whole band in time.
• Agogo: two or more joined bells, each a different pitch.

HitJam’s Congas & Bongos page has all of these as real recordings, with open tones, muted tones and slaps.

A drum machine plays drum sounds from a box instead of a kit. The Roland TR-808, from 1980, is the famous one: its booming kick and snappy clap became the sound of hip-hop.

Modern producers mostly play these sounds on pads, one per drum. HitJam’s Drum Machine works that way: sixteen real 808 recordings on a four-by-four grid.

Open the Standard Drum Kit and count a steady 1, 2, 3, 4, over and over. Then add one layer at a time:

1. Press A on every count. That is the closed hi-hat, keeping time.
2. Add Z on counts 1 and 3. That is the kick drum.
3. Add X on counts 2 and 4. That is the snare.
4. Keep it going until it feels boring, then speed it up a little.

That pattern, kick on 1 and 3 and snare on 2 and 4, sits under most rock and pop songs you know.

Every one of these is a real recording, and all of them play from your computer keys or a MIDI pad controller:

• Standard Drum Kit: a rock kit recorded piece by piece, drawn as a kit you can hit.
• Drum Machine: sixteen TR-808 sounds on MPC-style pads.
• Congas & Bongos: hand drums with shaker, guiro, claves and agogo.
• Xylophone, Marimba and Glockenspiel: pitched percussion, recorded bar by bar.