SHOW OF HANDS

Human beings have been clapping their hands, stomping their feet and rolling out rhythms since the earliest days of the species. The rhythmic experiments of Homo sapiens – and possibly even Neanderthals before them – gave rise to many of the musical devices that we take for granted today, including the modern drum kit. But kicks, snares, toms and sticks aren’t all they’ve given us to grab onto. Here, we’re banging the drum for hand percussion and the plethora of items that can be hit, scraped, shaken and stirred to add toe-tapping textural flavours to your music. Some of the world’s most recognisable songs boast claves and claps – and we can never quite get enough cowbell.

GETTING HANDY

Handheld percussion instruments are typically acoustic but are tremendously varied in terms of colour. Most emit sound by being shaken or hit, either by the hand or by a beater or stick, which produces a harder, more abrupt transient. Most shakers are hard containers that hold small, loose materials such as seeds, pellets or beans inside. The percussive quality comes from the cascading collisions between these loose objects and the sounds they make as they hit their vessel’s inner shell as it’s shaken. The speed with which you shake alters the velocity of the interior objects and thus the tone. The size and material of the vessel and the size and amount of objects inside dictates the overall timbre.

The cowbell has been the subject of some ridicule, falling foul of Will Ferrell’s maniacal