Percussion Essay

Percussion has evolved from a small category to a wide variety of simple and technical instruments. Percussion is a category of musical instruments that is played using the hands or with a handheld stick/beater. Percussion started thousands of years ago when people played rhythms on random objects to please their friends and scare their enemy’s. People over the years discovered different ways to hit the objects.

A lot of the orchestral percussion instruments originated in Asia Minor. Sometime during the 15th century when people were moving east they carried there instruments with them, some of those instruments just happened to be percussion instruments. Crusaders carried back drums they had found in the Middle East during the crusade. (Jason)

Most of the instruments we play today, actually originated for the instruments played during the Middle Ages 1475. People at that time played drums for all kinds of things, like festivals, social events, and even at times of despair just to try to inspire other people. Also Hungarian drummers would hang drums on the sides of their horses and they would play them while they road. To add to that, Middle Eastern people would do the same thing but they would be riding camels. (Jason) Drumheads have been made from dried and stretched animal skin for a very long time, but after a while the way they prepared these drumheads improved and the quality of the heads increased. Some drumheads are still made from those same materials. Some time during the 1940’s Du Pont started to test a synthetic polyester film Mylar. Starting sometime in the 19th century the classification for instruments in the percussion category had evolved more quickly. During the last third of the 20th century percussion instr...

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...ums in the percussion section. It does not have a definite pitch like the timpani. (Jason) Bass drums cannot be tuned like you can tune the timpani. Concert bass drums usually have loose heads that vibrate more for a darker tone. Drums aren’t the only types of instruments in the percussion category; they are just a couple of the instruments that fall into the untuned percussion category. These untuned drums are used for rhythmic patterns of the composition. These untuned instruments don’t have a distinct note, but they only make one sound, and that is the sound this stick with. Untuned percussion instruments are not the only instruments that are played in the orchestra. Tuned percussion instruments are instruments that have distinct notes that you can play. Marimbas are tuned percussion instruments; they have four to five octaves of notes from A natural, to G sharp.