Tuned Chromatic Cowbells (from Emil Richards Collection)

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 beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

used to produce

musical notes In music, a note is the representation of a musical sound. Notes can represent the pitch and duration of a sound in musical notation. A note can also represent a pitch class. Notes are the building blocks of much written music: discretization ...

of one or more pitches, as opposed to an

unpitched percussion instrument 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. Unpitched percussion is typically used to maintain a rhythm or to ...

which is used to produce sounds of

indefinite pitch Pitch is a perceptual property of sounds that allows their ordering on a frequency-related scale, or more commonly, pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodie ...

. 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 vibrating stretched membrane. It is one of the four main divisions of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification. ...

(such as

timpani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionall ...

) 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 ( electrophones) ...

(such as

crotales Crotales (, ), sometimes called antique cymbals, are percussion instruments consisting of small, tuned bronze or brass disks. Each is about in diameter with a flat top surface and a nipple on the base. They are commonly played by being struck ...

) 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 much greater than the drum's depth, with a struck head at both ends of the cylinder. Th ...

) 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 : set) or bells is a percussion instrument consisting of pitched aluminum or steel bars arranged in a keyboard layout. This makes the glockenspiel a type of metallophone, similar to the vibraphone. The glo ...

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

bell A bell 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 made by an inter ...

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 (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 used ...

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

Keyboard percussion 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 (such as the

and

tubular bell Tubular bells (also known as chimes) are musical instruments in the percussion family. Their sound resembles that of church bells, carillon, or a bell tower; the original tubular bells were made to duplicate the sound of church bells within a ...

s) 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. is the actua ...

(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 box ( ...

and other instruments using an actual keyboard mechanism).

References

{{Percussion instruments

See also

References