Originally Posted by 720hours World Record
From Dictionary >> Percussion; The striking together of two bodies, especially when noise is produced.
My hands still bang on the black and whites, piano or synth.
My first 3 CD's approached the keyboard as a percussion instrument from the mind of a drummer.
But those keys don't bang on anything. They just open circuits and electronic noise is made. Pianos have keys when depressed move hammers that strike strings. You fingers hitting or banging on the keys doesn't make any noise. This the reason keyboards of the electronic variety worth their salt have what are known as weighted keys to make them feel like true percussion instruments such as pianos. We will have to agree to disagree but electronic keyboards, Rhodes, church organs are not percussion instruments.
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement, shaken, rubbed, scraped, or by any other action which sets the object into vibration. The term usually applies to an object used in a rhythmic context or with musical intent.
The word "percussion" has evolved from Latin terms: "percussio" (which translates as "to beat, strike" in the musical sense, rather than the violent action), and "percussus" (which is a noun meaning "a beating"). As a noun in contemporary English it is described in Wiktionary as "the collision of two bodies to produce a sound". The usage of the term is not unique to music but has application in medicine and weaponry, as in percussion cap, but all known and common uses of the word, "percussion", appear to share a similar lineage beginning with the original Latin: "percussus". In a musical context then, the term "percussion instruments" may have been coined originally to describe a family of instruments including drums, rattles, metal plates, or wooden blocks which musicians would beat or strike (as in a collision) to produce sound.
Your fingers banging on the keyboard is no more percussive than a trumpet players fingers hitting the valves on a trumpet, even if it makes a sound.