Welcome to the Percussion Play Blog
We hope you'll be a regular visitor as we blog and share stories about the instruments we make and the people who play them. We'll share with you details of exciting new outdoor music projects and designs from around the globe. We'll share with you information about the instruments we sell and a little about the inspiration behind them. We'll also let you know about sales and events taking place.
Most importantly, this Blog is about what we love to do the most - help you create new and exciting ways to bring music to the great outdoors.
Thank you for reading, visiting, commenting and contributing - we’re excited to have you here!
Love Parks Week - An annual celebration of parks and green spaces #LoveParks
All good things come to an end, right? The World Cup. The sunny weather. Love Island. They can't last forever. However, our love of parks is enduring. Parks provide space for locals to interact with each other and meet new people. They’re also great spaces for events and for people to engage in all kinds of recreational activities, to play together, exercise together and even (ahem) make music together!
With the rather worrying recent research carried out by ‘Keep Britain Tidy’ which revealed that increasingly parents have ‘no time’ to take kids to the park, now is more important than ever to recognise the importance these local green spaces have on our lives - especially in childhood. A huge 75% of children say they would like to spend more time in the great outdoors, and four out of five parents (80%) admit that they would like their child to spend more time outside, so the need to protect them for future generations is greater than ever – we need to use them,...
Making new friends at the 2018 Rotary Convention
Percussion Play are delighted to be at the 109th annual international Rotary convention taking place in Toronto this week.
Often described as a “Mini-United Nations”, the convention is the Rotary’s biggest event of the year with more than 24,000 registered participants from 175 countries and geographic regions who have come together to renew friendships, find inspiration, and exchange ideas on how to improve lives and bring positive, lasting change to communities around the world.
The House of Friendship in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre opened on Saturday morning. The bustling hall is where the Rotary world comes together to share ideas, advice, and project successes. This is our first time exhibiting and we have enjoyed sharing our own Rotary success stories with club members from around the world and discussing how our outdoor musical instruments could be incorporated into future community projects and playgrounds.
We can be found in Booth #1617 - if you are attending,...
New White Paper Published - Five Notes For All: The Power of the Pentatonic Scale
We are pleased to announce the publication of our newest white paper Five Notes For All: The Power of the Pentatonic Scale and what better day to share this than International Make Music Day?
Wherever you are in the world on the 21st June, the chances are you are never too far away from some great music as the annual Make Music Day grabs the world by storm. But here's a great leveller: all of the fantastic musicians you'll hear were amateurs once and the beauty of the pentatonic scale is how easy it is to play whatever your level. Consisting of five notes and found in practically every form of music in the world, the Pentatonic scale contains almost no clashing or disonant notes. Put another way, you can play almost any notes of a pentatonic scale in almost any combination, and they’ll sound great together.
It’s wonderful to improvise using a scale which always sounds good. So, what is a...
New showroom & Product Demonstration Room Opens
Percussion Play is excited to reveal that the new showroom and product demonstration room in our Hampshire office is complete and open for visits!
Percussion Play has opened the doors to our new showroom facility following the recent relocation to our Froxfield site. The 400 sq ft space, at the very heart of our production facility in Hampshire, will provide us with a fantastic environment to showcase our products going forward.
The showroom features a demonstration area that will enable visitors to see and play on a number of instruments from our extensive range.
Robin from Percussion Play commented 'Our showroom is designed to illustrate to people what is possible to do with our outdoor musical instruments. The space will also be perfect for sales training sessions, events and customer meetings, additionally it will also serve as a flexible working space for the sales and marketing team.'
'Future...
Just Visiting - 'Mitchellville Prison For Women' to Improve Facilities for Visiting Children
On a recent trip to the USA, Robin Ashfield from Percussion Play, along with Larry Rife representative of ABCreative, took some time to visit the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women (known as Mitchellville Prison for Women). They were to meet with Iowa State University Landscape Architecture Students, Prison wardens and inmates to discuss the creation of a new play area and music garden to focus on improving the experiences of children visiting the prison.
Located in the town of Mitchellville, this medium security institution is Iowa’s largest female prison that can house over 890 female offenders. Many different sentences are served here from minor convictions through to the most serious; some of the women will be incarcerated for the rest of their lives.
The issue has been that many of the women serving sentences here have children, who through no fault of their own, now do not have Mom around at home....
New South Wales Public School Enjoy New Music Garden
The Children of Mount Pritchard Public School in Mount Prtichard, NSW Australia are making some great music together in their new music garden.
Principal Natalie Piccinin says “The musical garden give students another outlet to be creative and they are creating some wonderful music which is nice to hear."
“They are not only collaborating with each other musically, but they are learning to share the space with each other and they enjoy taking care of the equipment.”
Recognising the benefits of music-making in the sunshine, Natalie confirmed “Studies have shown there is a correlation between music, mathematics and learning,”.
The school's music garden - the first in the area - features eight outdoor musical instruments nestled in among the playground.
Installed last December, the pupils have been enjoying playing and creating their own music during their break times mastering the Tembos,...