Unpitched percussion instrument
![A pair of timbales, two cowbells, a jam block and a cymbal all in use as unpitched percussion](/Images/godic/202502/18/ArturoSandoval_cut4515.jpg")
![Andrea Neumann's prepared piano, Goethe-Institut, Boston, 2010, showing a dinner knife, a dinner fork, a piece of felt and a piece of cardboard interferring with the normal movement of the strings.](/Images/godic/202502/18/Prepared_piano_board_Neumann4515.jpg")
![The tabla, left, is tuned to the tonic, dominant or subdominant of the soloist's key and thus complements the melody. Its drum head is reinforced at the centre to reduce inharmonic overtones.](/Images/godic/202502/18/Prop._Tabla4516.jpg")
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An unpitched percussion instrument is a percussion instrument played in such a way as to produce sounds of indeterminate pitch, or an instrument normally played in this fashion.
Unpitched percussion is typically used to maintain a rhythm or to provide accents, and its sounds are unrelated to the melody and harmony of the music. Within the orchestra unpitched percussion is termed auxiliary percussion, and this subsection of the percussion section includes all unpitched instruments of the orchestra however they are played, for example the pea whistle and siren.