by Shawn Goretsky (7th)
Intro:
When you usually think of instruments, what comes to your mind?
Maybe a trumpet, trombone, violin, maybe a guitar? Well when I asked a bunch of people, they said all of those instruments and more. However, the one thing no one said was drums. Well that's what I am here to talk about. What does percussion entail?
Basic percussion knowledge and stereotypes.
Well let's start with the basics. Many people think percussion is just banging loudly. That is not true. When you play the snare drum in music, you have to do it with this sort of elegance. When you play you can’t be too loud. You also have to learn to play fast. Really fast. That is one of the reasons why percussion is hard. My friend Nathan Delosso plays both the trumpet and percussion and he thinks percussion is harder. Another stereotype is that you don’t have to read music to play percussion. That is infinitely wrong. To start, Piano and Xylophone are both percussion instruments and you need to know how to read notes on the staff to play that. Also, the many different instruments in percussion don't use the same notes. In percussion, you have to know which percussion instrument notes go on what line and you have to read it fast.
Different percussion instruments
Percussionists take on the responsibility of playing many different types of instruments that use a lot of different types of music. I'm here to tell you about them. First off the most commonly known percussion instrument which is the snare drum. It's a stereotypical drum, because it just uses drumsticks to play and it's very loud. Next are the deeper instruments such as the base drum and timpani. They both play a lot deeper sounds and use bigger mallets to hit the drum. The notable difference between them is that the timpani can be tuned to play different notes and use 2 mallets to play it. Next up are the symbols which are probably the loudest instrument. The crash symbols create a crashing noise as you band them together. However, the suspended symbol is completely different. You use mallets made out of yarn to hit the outside of the symbol so it makes a ringing noise. The tambourine, triangle, cabassa and the claves are all instruments that you use in your hand. Mostly by hitting them. The last two instruments I am going to cover (there are still more even after this) is the xylophone and piano. The piano and xylophone are actually very very similar. They use the same scales and the flat notes are even towards the top of both of their keys. The differences are also quite clear though. Pianos are much bigger and you use your fingers to play it. Xylophones use mallets to play and contain blocks.
The importance of percussion in band.
With all of those instruments I just discussed, you might be wondering about their importance. Well it's complicated, sort of. All percussion is meant to be background noise in a music piece that enhances its quality. That is specifically what base drums and timpani are used for. However some other instruments have different purposes. Xylophones and Pianos can actually play the melody of the song sometimes and at least play important parts of the songs. The snare drum is used to help the band keep a steady beat throughout the song so other people won’t miscount where their notes are during the song. The other instruments such as the tambourine are mainly just used for style in music. The drum set is a major part in a lot of jazz songs, sometimes getting solo’s as well.
Conclusion:
To wrap it up, percussion is a good instrument. It has a lot of components involved and it isn’t as easy as you might think. Thanks for reading this!!!