3aMU3. Materials in percussion instruments

Abstract

Most musical instruments are made of just a few main components. Due to their diversity and uniqueness, percussion instruments are made of many different materials and often quite exotic ones. Most people think of drums and xylophones when they think of percussion but the breath of offerings in this family of instruments is extremely extensive. In the mid 1970s, this author extracted the aluminum tubes from a pile of discarded lawn chairs in an Illinois landfill. He used these tubes to create musical instruments. The discussion will include other percussion instruments made of materials as varied as nails, bottle caps, salad bowls, oil cans, drawers, cactus and animal skin/bones. Like Kvistad's early experiments, instrument builders throughout the world often reuse materials such as animal parts left over from the food industry to make drums and shakers of all sizes, discarded oil cans to make steel drums rich in harmonics and hollow cactus and bamboo to make exotic rainsticks and rattles.