Instrument family
Instruments sounded by striking, from tuned bars to drums with membranes.
Percussion is the broadest family of all. Its members make sound when a mallet, stick or hand strikes a surface that then vibrates — a stretched membrane in a drum, a wooden or metal bar in a xylophone-type instrument. Some percussion instruments play definite pitches and belong to melody and harmony; others produce sound of indefinite pitch and shape rhythm, colour and emphasis.
The entries in this family show that range: the timpani, which are tuned drums; the drum kit, which combines several percussion instruments under the control of one player; and the tuned bar instruments — xylophone, marimba and vibraphone — whose bars, resonators and mallets determine how they sing.
The drum kit gathers a bass drum, snare drum, tom-toms and cymbals around one seated player, who operates some of them with the feet. It took shape in the United States between the late 1800s and the 1930s, as the work of several percussionists was consolidated into the job of one performer. It anchors jazz, rock, pop and many other styles with pulse, accent and colour.
Timpani are large kettledrums: a calfskin or plastic head stretched over a bowl of copper or fibreglass and tuned to a definite pitch, today usually with a foot pedal. Descended from cavalry drums brought into Europe, they joined orchestras in the seventeenth century and became the percussion section’s principal pitched drums. Their sound depends on the interplay of membrane, air and shell.
A xylophone is a set of tuned wooden or synthetic bars struck with mallets. The name covers a worldwide family, from West African balafons to Javanese gambangs, and also the keyboard-layout orchestral instrument, which sounds bright, dry and penetrating and is written an octave lower than it sounds. It is distinct from the marimba, which is lower, wider and warmer.
The marimba is a keyboard-shaped set of tuned wooden bars struck with mallets, each bar backed by a resonator that amplifies its note. Its name and its basic design trace to African traditions, and it took its best-known forms in Guatemala and southern Mexico, where gourd resonators gave way to wooden and later metal tubes. Today it serves village celebrations, marimba bands and concert halls alike, with a solo repertoire built around four-mallet playing.
The vibraphone is a keyboard of tuned aluminum bars played with mallets, with a resonator tube under each bar and a motor that opens and closes the tubes to produce a wavering vibrato. A foot pedal controls how long the notes ring. Developed in the United States in the early 1920s, it moved quickly into dance bands and jazz and has since found a place in chamber music, percussion ensembles and occasional orchestral scores.