The glockenspiel or bells is a percussion instrument consisting of pitched aluminum or steel bars arranged in a keyboard layout. This makes the glockenspiel a type of metallophone, similar to the vibraphone.
A glockenspiel made by Malletech
A glockenspiel made around 1910 in Leipzig, Germany
A Mardi Gras musician playing a horizontal bell lyre
A vertical bell lyre in use by the National Marching Band of the RAF Air Cadets
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments. In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of idiophone, membranophone, aerophone and chordophone.
Orchestral percussion section with timpani, unpitched auxiliary percussion and pitched tubular bells
Djembé and balafon played by Susu people of Guinea
Concussion idiophones (claves), and struck drums (conga drum)
Modern Japanese taiko percussion ensemble
