Percussion FAQ's

Instruments such as the bass drum, guiro, and even the maracas are all unpitched percussion. They are as the name suggests: they don’t have a specific pitch like a C, A, or Eb, or whatever. Their only purpose is to maintain a rhythm or provide accents to any musical piece, be it classical or modern iterations. The sounds that they produce are all unrelated to the harmony of the music itself, that’s why they’re technically on tempo and extra accent duty. 

Percussion is the umbrella term that includes a lot of instruments that you either bang or hit. The drums fit snugly under that umbrella. It is quite normal, however, for people to mistakenly interchange the two when talking about the instruments themselves. You can say that literally anything that can produce sound when you hit it is a percussion instrument, even your own body or typical household items. The drum still fits within that classification, since you do hit it to produce a sound. 

Here’s a rule of thumb: drummers are percussionists, but percussionists aren’t always drummers. Drummers are known colloquially to play either acoustic or electronic drum sets which have the usual components: 1 snare, 2 toms, 1 or 2 basses, and a selection of cymbals configured in a frame. A percussionist on the other hand won’t only play the drums, but also chimes, cymbals, bongos, and the like. It’s very easy to confuse the two with each other, but make no mistake: they are two different types of musicians. 

The modern drum as we know it can trace its history back to the New Stone Age inhabitants of China, where these people discovered new uses for alligator skins aside from clothing and other applications. These first ever drums basically have the same construction as modern drums: a hollow cylinder that’s open at the top, with the top covered by a certain type of membrane (i.e. skin). Striking that membrane produces a resonating, booming sound loud enough to be heard from a distance, which likely helped with life back in those times.