We’re wrapping up our orchestra series with the loudest, most colorful family of all — percussion.
Over the last few episodes, we’ve built an orchestra together one family at a time. We met the strings, then the woodwinds, then the brass. This week we’re adding the fourth and final family, and I saved a fun one for last.
Here’s the thing about percussion — it’s not one special way of making sound, like bowing or breathing or buzzing. It’s any instrument you play by hitting it, shaking it, scraping it, or tapping it. Which means this family is enormous. Drums, cymbals, triangles, tambourines, xylophones, gongs, cowbells, even a slide whistle — if you can imagine striking it, some composer somewhere has written music for it.
To keep it simple, we sort the whole family into two groups: unpitched percussion (the instruments that keep the beat but don’t play a melody, like a snare drum or crashing cymbals) and pitched percussion (the instruments that can actually play a tune, like a xylophone or timpani).
And then there’s a twist I saved for the very end of the episode — an instrument almost every one of you has sitting in your living room right now, and it’s part of the percussion family too. (If you’ve been following along with us at home, I bet you can guess what it is before you even hit play.)
What You’ll Hear in This Episode
- Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (Episode 21) — percussion taking over the finale with crashing cymbals, booming bass drum, and even cannons
- The dramatic ending of Peter and the Wolf (Episode 122) — where the hunters’ gunshots are actually the timpani and bass drum
- “Fossils” from Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals (Episode 157) — a xylophone rattling out an eerily perfect melody
- A little reveal about the instrument so many of your kids are learning at home right now
Free Printable: Percussion Family Spotter
This one finishes out our full set of Family Spotters. Print it out, listen along, and check off each percussion instrument as you hear it — then color in the badge when you’re done. If you’ve collected all four Spotters through this series, you now have a complete set, one for every family in the orchestra.
And you can use this playlist to follow along with your spotter!
Try This at Home
For the woodwinds, we took a deep breath. For the brass, we buzzed our lips like a motorboat. For percussion, all you need is your own two hands — clap once, and you’ve just played a percussion instrument.
What’s Next
We’ve met all four families right now. But there’s one more piece of the orchestra we haven’t talked about yet — it’s not an instrument family, but it’s still essential. Tune in next episode to find out what it is.
New episodes of Busy Kids Love Music drop every two weeks, wherever you listen to podcasts.