The term ‘Percussion’ covers a lot of instruments. As such, it’s a pretty common to come across ones listed in your sheet music which you don’t have access to. Whether this is due to limited budget, broken instruments, or obscure rarities don’t really matter. What does matter is figuring out a suitable alternative.

The basic principle to selecting an alternative is to find something with the closest equivalent timbre or function. So, without further ado, here are my Top 10 percussion substitutions!

Following on from last month’s post about timpani, a colleague asked me to do a deep dive into tuned percussion. All too frequently school teachers are asked to run curriculum units on percussion with it being assumed they know the ins and outs of these instruments. Which is a bit unfair given that I’ve spent 18 years specialising in the subject and am still figuring things out!

So today I’d like to provide an introduction to all things tuned percussion – enjoy!