Brush (music)

A percussion mallet or beater is an object used to strike or beat a percussion instrument in order to produce its sound.

The term beater is slightly more general; A mallet is normally held in the hand while a beater may be foot or mechanically operated, for example in a bass drum pedal; Drum stick is less general still, but still applied to a wide range of beaters. Some mallets, such as a triangle wand, are normally used only with a specific instrument, while others are used on many different instruments.

Some mallets, such as vibraphone mallets, are normally just called mallets, others have more specialised names including:

Drum sticks are beaters normally used in pairs, with each held in one hand, and are similar to or derived from the snare drum sticks that were subsequently adopted for kit drumming.

They are the most general-purpose beaters, and the term covers a wide variety of beaters, but they are mainly used for untuned percussion.

As well as being a general term for a hand-held beater, mallet is also used specifically to refer to a hand-held beater comprising a head connected to a thin shaft, and used in pairs. There are three main sorts:

Mallet shafts are commonly made of rattan, birch, or synthetic materials such as fibreglass.

Different mallets are used primarily to alter the timbre of the mallet instrument being played. Generally, mallets composed of softer materials will stick to the instrument for longer as they bounce off of it, which gives a deeper sound made up of lower frequencies. Harder materials tend to bounce off quicker, and as they stick to the instrument for a shorter amount of time, they tend to be able to excite more of the higher frequencies, giving the sound a higher pitch with more overtones. Mallet choice is typically left up to the performer, though some compositions specify if a certain sound is desired by the composer.

Players frequently employ two mallets in a matched grip or four mallets in a four-mallet grip; however, use of up to six mallets is not uncommon. More than two mallets may be used even when no chords are called for by the composer so that the performer has a wider range of timbres from which to select or to facilitate performance of music that moves rapidly between high and low, and if hit properly can switch between the two pitches.

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Wikipedia