Percussion

I have been writing music for a while now. I played at a veterans's day assembly today and I heard the band play this piece, and the percussion was amazing. Every hair on my body felt like it was going to jump out of its follicles. I then thought...

...it must be hard to wright percussion like that. Percussion is my weakest area. So, how do you wright percussion effectively?

I can do the basic Timpani run, cymbal crash, and triangle. But I'm not to familiar with the other drums and thigalabobs that are there. XD

Please help me out if you can. :(

Oh dear...this is a fun question. :(

I'm a percussionist, so this is my area of expertise, but with an open-ended question like that, it's hard to know where to start. Since I don't feel like writing out a "Writing Percussion Parts" tutorial this evening, why don't you wait a bit?

Or, if you prefer, please contact me through some messenger and I'd be glad to discuss it with you. :)

If you go to any self-respecting music store, they should have enough percussion toys that you could experiment with. It's almost impossible to write for an instrument if you have no idea what it sounds like or how it's played.

~Kal

_Or try wikipedia.