Pitched percussion instrument

A pitched percussion instrument is a percussion instrument used to produce musical notes of one or more pitches, as opposed to an unpitched percussion instrument which is used to produce sounds of indefinite pitch.

A glockenspiel and a set of crotales in use

A chime bar in G

A chromatic set of tuned cowbells

Pitching of percussion instruments is achieved through a variety of means.

• Membranophones are tuned by altering the surface tension of the face that is struck.
• Mallet percussion instruments gain their pitch through physical characteristics such as composition, density, or physical dimensions of each respective note.
• Alternatively, other percussion instruments can gain pitch through variation of air volume displaced.

The term pitched percussion is now preferred to the traditional term tuned percussion:

• Many untuned percussion instruments, such as the snare drum, 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.[1]

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 timpani and glockenspiel, are almost always used as pitched percussion.
• Some percussion instruments, and particularly many types of bell 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, are almost always used as unpitched percussion.

Pitched percussion includes the overlapping classes of:

• Mallet percussion, instruments such as the glockenspiel and chime bars, played in a particular way.
• Keyboard percussion, instruments such as the glockenspiel and tubular bells arranged in a particular way (but not including the celesta and other keyboard instruments despite the name).
• Melodic percussion, instruments used to produce several different pitches.