Books
Three books, one instrument. The first teaches how to play it, the second reconstructs its history, the third asks what happens to those who play it and to those who listen. They were written in different years and for different publishers, but read together they form a trilogy: the hand, the history, the mind.
The hand
Il Tamburello. Arte, storia, tecnica
How it is made and how it is played. In Italian and English.
The history
Il tamburello in Europa tra 1700 e 1800
Where it comes from and who played it. In Italian.
The mind
The Frame Drum and States of Consciousness
What happens to those who play it. In English and Italian.
The hand · the method
Il Tamburello. Arte, storia, tecnica
Italian and English edition
The reference method for the modern tamburello. The principal percussion instrument of Italian traditional music has four thousand years of unbroken, documented history: the book gathers that history together with construction and technique, and the technique videos are reachable by QR code.
Kurumuny, March 2024 · A4, 140 pages with colour plates · ISBN 9791281083394 · € 19.00
The history · October 2026
Il tamburello in Europa tra 1700 e 1800
The tamburello in Europe, 1700–1800: social, performative and musicological aspects
Squilibri editore. The volume opens the Symphonia series, promoted by the “Saverio Arlia” Conservatory of Nocera Terinese-Catanzaro, with a preface by Danilo Gatto. In Italian.
16×23 cm · 208 pages · colour photographs throughout · the complete scores reachable by QR code · € 20 · ISBN 9791298608634 · out now (October 2026).
The tamburello crosses the European eighteenth century and changes its skin: an instrument of ritual and village feast, it enters the drawing room and the concert hall — passing from the hands of painted maenads to those of young gentlewomen who make it their instrument of choice.
The book reconstructs that story for the first time, through written sources and a large body of images gathered over years of research in archives and libraries. A second, documentary part follows: the compositions for piano, tambourine and triangle by Clementi, Steibelt and Dale, given in full both in the original scores and in modern transcription.
“The tamburello, from village feasts to court instrument: the story of a surprising metamorphosis in eighteenth-century Europe, in a book by Andrea Piccioni.”
— Corriere Nazionale, 22 October 2026 (translated from Italian)
The mind · the essay
The Frame Drum and States of Consciousness
An Autoethnographic Journey through the Science of Rhythm, the Anthropology of Trance, and the Pedagogy of Orality. Rivus Edizioni, 2026. Published in English and, as Il tamburo a cornice e gli stati di coscienza, in Italian.
Essay · EPUB e-book · € 9.99 · Rivus Edizioni, 2026 · ISBN 9791224700296 (eng) / 9791224700289 (ita)
Directly from my store. You can buy from any country in the world: EPUB and PDF together, in English or in Italian as you choose, for € 9.99. It is also the way that supports my work the most.
Or in your usual store:
Italian edition
Other stores
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Also on IBS, laFeltrinelli, Unilibro, Barnes & Noble and StreetLib.
The repertoire
Music for Frame Drums
Musica per tamburi a cornice
An anthology of compositions for frame drums, edited with Francesco Magarò and Lorenzo d’Erasmo. It gathers pieces by Adel Shams el-Din, Glen Velez, Zohar Fresco, Murat Coşkun, Carlo Rizzo, Michael Metzler, Muhammad Al’-Arabi, Paolo Cimmino, Vincenzo Gagliani, Francesco Magarò and Andrea Piccioni.
Da Vinci Edition, 2024 · A4, 118 pages · ISMN 9790216210904 · € 35.90
Out of print
Titles no longer on sale, listed for the sake of a complete bibliography.
- Il ritmo della parola — a path through solkattu, the technique
of vocalising and counting rhythm that belongs to the musical pedagogy of southern India and
to kanjira playing, from which a method is drawn that applies to other instruments, to
singing and to dance. The digital edition came with audio files online. In Italian.
La Caravella Editrice, 2016 · 99 pages · ISBN 9788868271732 (print), 9788868271831 (e-book) · out of print and sold out - Il tamburello italiano — the first method devoted to the modern
tamburello.
Percussioni magazine, 2006 · Italian and English edition · out of print and sold out - Il tamburello italiano — instructional DVD.
2009 · out of print and sold out