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3.3.2What Are Percussion Instruments? How Do They Produce Sound?
You can get sound out of a musical instrument’s resonator in two ways.
1. The Direct Way: Percussion Instruments
You can simply whack it. Clobber, shake, or otherwise beat the dang thing directly. For instance, when you hit a drumhead, causing it to vibrate, you also set the body of the drum (the resonator) vibrating, because it’s fixed securely to the drumhead.
- With some percussion instruments, such as cymbals and gongs, you strike the resonator directly. The resonator is the instrument.
- With others, such as marimbas, you use mallets to hit tuned wood bars, causing the bars to vibrate. Underneath each wood bar, a resonator in the shape of a tube vibrates in sympathy, producing a dominant fundamental frequency that you recognize as a specific tone or note.
Instruments such as these—the ones you hit directly—do not sustain sound for long (except for tuned percussion instruments such as the xylophone family, kettledrums, and steel drums). So, if you want to create a continuous stream of sound, you have to keep delivering blows (e.g. a snare drum roll).