Timbales are shallow single-headed drum

Drum

The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...

s with metal casing, invented in Cuba

Music of Cuba

The Caribbean island of Cuba has developed a wide range of creolized musical styles, based on its cultural origins in Europe and Africa. Since the 19th century its music has been hugely popular and influential throughout the world...

. They are shallower in shape than single-headed tom-toms

Tom-tom drum

A tom-tom drum is a cylindrical drum with no snare.Although "tom-tom" is the British term for a child's toy drum, the name came originally from the Anglo-Indian and Sinhala; the tom-tom itself comes from Asian or Native American cultures...

, and usually much higher tuned. The player (known as a timbalero) uses a variety of stick strokes, rim shots, and rolls on the skins to produce a wide range of percussive expression during solos and at transitional sections of music, and usually plays the shells of the drum or auxiliary percussion such as a cowbell or cymbal to keep time at other parts of the song.

The shells are referred to as el cáscara (the Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 word for shell) which is also the name of a rhythmic pattern common in salsa music

Salsa music

Salsa music is a genre of music, generally defined as a modern style of playing Cuban Son, Son Montuno, and Guaracha with touches from other genres of music...

 that is played on the shells of the timbales to keep time.