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The delightful “Instruments,” from Ema Ryan Yamazaki, takes us inside a Tokyo school where second graders form a percussive orchestra, learning about blending their nervous internal rhythms into the stuff of communal performance.

“We just found the percussive element of that scene, and we wanted the audience to understand that Lorne is at the breaking point,” Reid says.

The instrument is mostly used in nonmelodic ways, either playing that jazzy walking bass motif, insistently hitting the same high note for a percussive effect or plunking discordant chords to convey darkness from the past.

By contrast, Clog Step is a dance style with percussive footwork and fine timing.

After “Dog Eat Dog,” a dreamy yet percussive soft-rock song about “snakebite evangelists and racketeers and bigwig financiers,” Mitchell said she wished she could vote in the upcoming presidential election.