A pitched percussion instrument (also known as a melodic or tuned percussion instrument) is a

percussion instrument A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

used to produce

musical notes In music, notes are distinct and isolatable sounds that act as the most basic building blocks for nearly all of music. This discretization facilitates performance, comprehension, and analysis. Notes may be visually communicated by writing them in ...

of one or more pitches, as opposed to an unpitched percussion instrument which is used to produce sounds of indefinite pitch. Pitching of percussion instruments is achieved through a variety of means. *

Membranophones A membranophone is any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by way of a acoustic membrane, vibrating stretched membrane. It is one of the four main divisions of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument ...

(such as

timpani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion instrument, percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a Membranophone, membrane called a drumhead, ...

) are tuned by altering the surface tension of the face that is struck. *

Idiophones An idiophone is any musical instrument that creates sound primarily by the vibration of the instrument itself, without the use of air flow (as with aerophones), strings (chordophones), membranes (membranophones) or electricity ( electrophone ...

(such as

xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African ...

) gain their pitch through the physical characteristics (such as composition, density, and physical dimensions) of each respective bar. The term ''pitched percussion'' is now preferred to the traditional term ''tuned percussion'': * Many ''untuned'' percussion instruments (such as the

bass drum The bass drum is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch. The instrument is typically cylindrical, with the drum's diameter usually greater than its depth, with a struck head at both ends of the cylinder. The head ...

) are ''tuned'' by the player, but this tuning does not relate to a particular pitch. * ''Untuned'' percussion instruments can and frequently do make sounds that could be used as pitched notes in an appropriate context. This second consideration also means that the traditional division into tuned and untuned percussion is to some extent oversimplified: * Some percussion instruments (such as the

and

glockenspiel The glockenspiel ( ; or , : bells and : play) or bells is a percussion instrument consisting of pitched aluminum or steel bars arranged in a Musical keyboard, keyboard layout. This makes the glockenspiel a type of metallophone, similar to the v ...

) are almost always used as pitched percussion. * Some percussion instruments (particularly, many types of

bell A bell /ˈbɛl/ () is a directly struck idiophone percussion instrument. Most bells have the shape of a hollow cup that when struck vibrates in a single strong strike tone, with its sides forming an efficient resonator. The strike may be m ...

and closely related instruments) are sometimes used as pitched percussion and, at other times, as unpitched percussion. * Some percussion instruments (such as the

snare drum The snare drum (or side drum) is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often u ...

) are almost always used as unpitched percussion. Pitched percussion includes the class of: * Keyboard percussion instruments (such as the

and tubular bells) which are arranged in a

keyboard layout A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard. Standard keybo ...

(but not including the

celesta The celesta () or celeste (), also called a bell-piano, is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. It looks similar to an upright piano (four- or five-octave), albeit with smaller keys and a much smaller cabinet, or a large wooden music ...

and other instruments using an actual keyboard mechanism).

References

{{Percussion instruments

See also

References