A bachelor of music in percussion performance gives one well-rounded percussion skills in the mallet instruments (marimba, vibraphone, xylophone), tympani and snare drum. This training can also include drum set, Latin percussion or African percussion (djembe, sabar) as well. Repertoire covered includes four mallet marimba and vibraphone compositions, orchestral snare drum and timpani pieces as well as basic jazz and Latin drum set comping styles and grooves. Weekly private lessons and required recitals are a large part of the degree program as well as music theory and history.
A bachelor of music education is similar to a percussion performance degree in terms of weekly lessons and learning repetoire. There is a large emphasis on pedagogy, student teaching and methods classes. One of the classes specific to percussion will be a percussion methods class with the emphasis on teaching beginning percussion players how to play each percussion instrument.
A master's or doctoral degree of music in percussion prepares the student to teach college or intermediate to advanced percussionists via private lessons. At this level, the repertoire's difficulty increases and the student is allowed to specialize more in terms of what instrumental repertoire or musical style they'd like to cover during their time of study.