Percussion instrument

"Percussion" redirects here. For other uses, see Percussion (disambiguation).

"Percussive" redirects here. For the group of speech sounds, see Airstream mechanism § Percussive consonants.

Orchestral percussion section with timpani, unpitched auxiliary percussion and pitched tubular bells

Djembé and balafon played by Susu people of Guinea

Concussion idiophones (claves), and struck drums (conga drum)

Modern Japanese taiko percussion ensemble

Very large drum kit played by Terry Bozzio

Mridangam, an Indian percussion instrument, played by T. S. Nandakumar

Evelyn Glennie is a percussion soloist

Timpani, cymbal, and a set of orchestral crotales

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 chordophone.

The percussion section of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, belonging to the membranophones, and cymbals and