The tambourine is a musical instrument in the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zills". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head. Tambourines are often used with regular percussion sets. They can be mounted, for example on a stand as part of a drum kit, or they can be held in the hand and played by tapping, hitting, or shaking the instrument.
Tambourine
Ancient Greek red-figure pottery depicting a girl playing the tambourine. Bourgas Archaeology Museum.
Woman holding a mirror and a tambourine facing a winged genie with a ribbon and a branch with leaves. Ancient Greek red-figure oinochoe, ca. 320 BC, from Magna Graecia. (Notice the coloured decorative woven stripes hanging on the tambourine, which can still be seen today on "tamburello", the tambourine of Southern Italy.)
Maenad playing a tympanum. Detail from the Triumph of Dionysus, on a Roman mosaic from Tunisia (3rd century AD)
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
