Clapper (musical instrument)

In music rattles are percussion instruments that are among the directly struck counter-percussion idiophones. Two or more self-sounding parts are struck against each other. According to their shape counter-percussion bars are distinguished from counter-percussion plates and from vascular rattles. The latter are either hollowed out (castanets) or bent out (cymbals).

Brettchenklappern or Plattenklappern consist of elongated, straight or slightly curved strips of wood, bone or plastic, which are struck together in pairs in one hand. Brettchen, which consist of a handle with a wider middle piece to which small cimbalom plates are tied, are shaken and belong to the row rattles according to the Hornbostel-Sachs system.

Single rattles:

• bak, korean bundle rattler
• Bin-Sasara, Row Rattle
• Bones, American board rattler
• Claves, counter punch sticks
• Crotales, crotales, finger cymbals
• Hyōshigi (拍子木), Japanese counterstrike blocks.
• Kartal, wooden rattles in India, partly with cymbals
• Klackers, also spoon, metal rattle
• Klepper, Klapper, instrument in use for ratcheting
• Spoon, usually a special design derived from the shape of kitchen cutlery
• Naruko (鳴子), Japanese wooden rattle.
• Whip
• Qarqaba, iron rattling in the Maghreb
• treshchotka, wooden plates tied together in a chain, Russia

In the northeastern Indian state of Assam, bamboo rattles made of a bamboo cane slit longitudinally from one side into two halves, called toka, occur. Similar forked rattles were described in Myanmar in the early 20th century. The chimta in northwestern India and Pakistan is a forked rattle made of two metal hoops. The forked cymbals known from medieval illuminations, in which small cymbals located at the ends of two spring bows were struck against each other, are related to this, but represent a special form of pair cymbals.

The term "rattle drum" does not quite correspond to the instrumental classification of the rattles, which refers to rattle drums whose membranes are struck by two small balls suspended from strings.

Warning rattle is a historical plate rattle that was meant to warn of sick people.