📚 Percussion Instruments

From the drum kit to the orchestral battery: the instruments, the notation, and the ensemble study.

Below are the 30 works carrying the subject percussion instruments in the Open Library catalogue with the most editions in print. Author and first year are as the record states them; a missing year means the record does not carry one, not that the book is undated. Novels set in the subject are left out, because a list of historical fiction is not a list of history. Where one author dominates the reprint counts, no more than two of their titles appear.

Cover	Title	Author	First published	Editions
	Treasury of Scales for Band and Orchestra	Leonard Smith	1985	26
	Foundations for Superior Performance	Richard Williams	1997	26
	Percussion instruments and their history	James Blades	1970	9
	The Drum Set Crash Course	Russ Miller	1996	7
	Encyclopedia of Percussion	John H. Beck	2013	7
	Band instrument repairing manual	Erick D. Brand	1939	6
	Essential Elements Bk. 2	Rhodes	1991	5
	Drumming the Easy Way!	Tom Hapke	2000	5
	Drums for dummies	Jeff Strong	2001	5
	Los instrumentos de la música afrocubana	Ortiz, Fernando	1952	4
	Practical understanding of the percussion section	Louis Wildman	1964	4
	Music educators' guide to percussion	Al Payson	1966	4
	The mallet percussions and how to use them	Wallace Barnett	1968	4
	Mallet repair	Arthur Press	1971	4
	Percussion manual	F. Michael Combs	1977	4
	Percussion repair and maintenance	Mark P. Bonfoey	1986	4
	The Drum Handbook	Jeff Nicholls	2003	4
	Percussion	Holland, James	1978	3
	Handbuch des Schlagzeugs	Karl Peinkofer	1981	3
	How to play drums	James Blades	1985	3
	Bang and Rattle (Get Set...Go!)	Sally Hewitt	1993	3
	Rhythm & beauty	Rocky Maffit	1996	3
	The drummer's almanac	Jon Cohan	1998	3
	The everything drums book	Eric Starr	2003	3
	Hal Leonard Cajon Method	Jennings, Paul, (Percussionist)	2015	3
	The Cambridge companion to percussion	Russell Hartenberger	2016	3
	The Gardner Modern Method for the Instruments of Percussion	Carl E. Gardner	1919	2
	Encyclopaedia of percussion instruments and drumming	Bradley Spinney	1955	2
	Percussion ensemble method	Harry R. Bartlett	1961	2
	Percussion Keyboard Technic	Thomas McMillan	1962	2

List built from Open Library (CC0 metadata) · retrieved 03 Nov 2026 UTC · capped at 30 works per subject.

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