From the course: Learning Music Notation

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Percussion and the neutral clef

Percussion and the neutral clef

From the course: Learning Music Notation

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Percussion and the neutral clef

- [Instructor] Music for pitched percussion instruments, like the marimba or xylophone, use the treble or bass clefs, the same as piano or any other pitched instrument. But many of the percussion instruments that are used in contemporary music styles are unpitched. For example, the instruments in the drum set, kick drums, snare drum, tom-toms, and cymbals, or hand percussion instruments, like the shaker, tambourine, or congas. Unpitched instruments use a special clef, called the neutral clef. So here we see the neutral clef, which is simply two parallel lines that go from the second line from the bottom of the staff to the second line from the top of the staff. Now, how the staff is used is not as established as we see with the other clefs, so there really aren't the strong standards that we see elsewhere. But there are some recent developments that we can talk about in how we use the staff for drum set. Now, let me preface that by saying that the drums, like the kick drum and the…

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