Awesome Percussion

Lennie Simo has a fantastic sense of rhythm. But instead of playing drums, his instruments are a tabletop, a couple of pens, and his cheek. Watch as Lennie taps his way through the 12345678 Challenge, nailing every beat, and adding some amazing flourishes in between. His collab with the Jabbawockeez dance crew is some next-level stuff too.

The musicians of GlasBlasSing use glass bottles as their instruments. One of their members shows off his talents with a brief performance of In the Hall of the Mountain King on a wall covered with Jägermeister bottles. Each green bottle is filled with a different amount of liquid to create a note when struck with a mallet. Want more? They also bottled some Bizet.

El Estepario Siberiano, aka “The Groovefather,” is a skilled percussionist. In this video, he shows off his talents with a cover of the AC/DC track Thunderstruck on a tubulum – that PVC pipe instrument made famous by Blue Man Group. He looped multiple sequences to create the track, but it’s still impressive for an instrument he’s just learning to play.

Inspired by that commercial where the guy plays drums on his Pringles cans, Eric and Tony G from EMCproductions made their own set of drums out of potato crisp (and Gatorade) cans. They replaced the plastic lids with balloons as drum heads and used their metal bottoms as “cymbals.”

Multi-instrumentalist Joe Porter is back with another medley of music performed on various percussion instruments. This time, he played rock tunes from bands like Metallica, AC/DC, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Iron Maiden. It’s also likely to be the only time you’ll hear Sweet Child of Mine played on a steel pan drum.

Musician Joe Porter is back with another round of covers performed on unexpected percussion instruments. Crank up the volume for Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train on slapaphone, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit on marimba, Dick Dale’s Misirilou on hammer dulcimer, and Rush’s YYZ on drums and a hammered synth controller.

Musician Joe Porter is back with another one of his rapid-fire instrumental performances. This time he offers up an all-too-short medley of three cartoon music. The Tom and Jerry theme sounds particularly good on the Slap-o-Phone, which sounds like something the cat and mouse would use in one of their fights.

We’ve heard how partially-filled drinking glasses can be used as musical instruments before, and musician Fin Draper knows how to get the most out of them. Listen up as he creates a groovy beat with a beer bottle, water glass, beer glass, three tumblers, and a rocks glass, accompanied by a bass drum.

Musician Joe Porter plays a variety of percussion instruments. Sit back and enjoy as he performs a sampling of video game music on an instrument made from plastic soda bottles, timpani drums, steel pan, and more. He has an earlier video game medley and a collection of commercial jingles that are worth a listen too.

We’ve seen how cymbals are made, now find out how the drumsticks that are used to play them are born. Vic Firth shares footage from inside their factory, where they transform sticks of freshly-cut wood into their premium 5A American Classic sticks, then precision matches them for weight and pitch to ensure perfect pairs.

While Kaboom Percussion seems perfectly capable of playing songs without such trickery, they decided to skip a traditional performance for this clip, instead recording each note of Toto’s Africa individually, then chopping it all together in video editing software.

From the looks of things, musician, and instrument designer Wintergatan has nearly completed the build of his long-in-progress follow up to his original marble machine. After showing us the amazing marble elevator, he’s ready to play some percussion with the intricate contraption.

Pennsylvania’s Ringing Rocks Park is packed with boulders which create a unique sound when struck with a hammer. The percussionists of Square Peg Round Hole decided to use the park to record an original song using only rocks and hammers as their instruments.

Before they turned in their stellar performance of classic Led Zeppelin, the kids of Louisville Leopard Percussionists played this charming rendition of Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train, played on a variety of instruments you hit with hammers and sticks.