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The percussion section as a group.
Labels the percussion staves as a group (Percussion, Perc. later), often numbered by player — Perc. 1, 2, 3 — with each instrument named in words at its first entry and at every change. The timpani usually have their own staff above.
Abbreviations: Perc.
Plan percussion by player, not by instrument: each player can manage only so many instruments and needs time to change sticks or move. List who plays what at the start, give each change some rest, and keep the notation simple — one line per unpitched instrument. Precision about beaters and ring lengths matters more here than anywhere else in the score.
Percussion is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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