Musical instrument
A
musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces
sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the beginnings of human culture. The academic study of musical instruments is called
organology.
The date and origin of the first device of disputed status as a musical instrument dates back as far as 67,000 years old; artifacts commonly accepted to be early flutes date back as far as about 37,000 years old. However, most historians believe determining a specific time of musical instrument invention to be impossible due to the subjectivity of the definition.
Musical instruments developed independently in many populated regions of the world. However, contact among civilizations resulted in the rapid spread and adaptation of most instruments in places far from their origin. By the
Middle Ages, instruments from Mesopotamia could be found in the
Malay Archipelago and Europeans were playing instruments from North Africa. Development in the Americas occurred at a slower pace, but cultures of North, Central, and South America shared musical instruments.
Definition
A musical instrument can be broadly defined as any device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. Once humans moved from making sounds with their bodies—for example, by clapping—to using objects to create music from sounds, musical instruments were born.
[1]
Archaeology
In pursuit of understanding who developed the first musical instruments and when, researchers have discovered various archaeological evidence of musical instruments in many parts of the world. Some finds are as much as 67,000 years old, but their status as musical instruments is often in dispute. Consensus solidifies about artifacts dated back to around 37,000 years old and later. Only artifacts made from durable materials or using durable methods tend to survive. As such, the specimens found cannot be irrefutably placed as the earliest musical instruments.
[2]
Drawing of disputed flute by Bob Fink
In July 1995, Slovenian archaeologist Ivan Turk discovered a bone carving in the northwest region of
Slovenia. The carving, named the
Divje Babe flute, features four holes that Canadian musicologist Bob Fink determined could have been used to play four notes of a
diatonic scale. Researchers estimate the flute's age to be between 43,400 and 67,000 years, making it the oldest known musical instrument and the only musical instrument associated with the
Neanderthal culture.
[3] However, some archaeologists question the flute's status as a musical instrument.
[4] German archaeologists have found
mammoth bone and
swan bone flutes dating back to 30,000 to 37,000 years old in the
Swabian Alps. The flutes were made in the
Upper Paleolithic age, and are more commonly accepted as being the oldest known musical instruments.
[5]
Archaeological evidence of musical instruments was discovered in excavations at the Royal Cemetery in the
Sumerian city of
Ur (see
Lyres of Ur). These instruments include nine
lyres, two
harps, a silver double
flute,
sistra and
cymbals. A set of reed-sounded silver pipes discovered in Ur was the likely predecessor of modern
bagpipes.
[6] The cylindrical pipes feature three side-holes that allowed players to produce whole tone scales.
[7] These excavations, carried out by
Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, uncovered non-degradable fragments of instruments and the voids left by the degraded segments which, together, have been used to reconstruct them.
[8] The graves to which these instruments were related have been
carbon dated to between 2600 and 2500 BCE, providing evidence that these instruments were being used in Sumeria by this time.
[9]
A
cuneiform tablet from
Nippur in
Mesopotamia dated to 2000 BCE indicates the names of strings on the lyre and represents the earliest known example of
music notation.
[10]
History
Scholars agree that there are no completely reliable methods of determining the exact chronology of musical instruments across cultures. Comparing and organizing instruments based on their complexity is misleading, since advancements in musical instruments have sometimes reduced complexity. For example, construction of early
slit drums involved felling and hollowing out large trees; later slit drums were made by opening bamboo stalks, a much simpler task.
[11] It is likewise misleading to arrange the development of musical instruments by workmanship since all cultures advance at different levels and have access to different materials. For example, anthropologists attempting to compare musical instruments made by two cultures that existed at the same time but who differed in organization, culture, and handicraft cannot determine which instruments are more "primitive".
[12] Ordering instruments by geography is also partially unreliable, as one cannot determine when and how cultures contacted one another and shared knowledge.
German musicologist
Curt Sachs, one of the most prominent musicologists
[13] and musical ethnologists
[14] in modern times, proposed that a geographical chronology until approximately 1400 is preferable, however, due to its limited subjectivity.
[15] Beyond 1400, one can follow the overall development of musical instruments by time period.
[15]
The science of marking the order of musical instrument development relies on archaeological artifacts, artistic depictions, and literary references. Since data in one research path can be inconclusive, all three paths provide a better historical picture.
[2]
Primitive and prehistoric
Two
Aztec slit drums, called
teponaztli. The characteristic "
H" slits can be seen on the top of the drum in the foreground
Until the 19th century AD, European written music histories began with mythological accounts of how musical instruments were invented. Such accounts included
Jubal, descendant of
Cain and "father of all such as handle the harp and the organ",
Pan, inventor of the
pan pipes, and
Mercury, who is said to have made a dried
tortoise shell into the first
lyre. Modern histories have replaced such mythology with anthropological speculation, occasionally informed by archeological evidence. Scholars agree that there was no definitive "invention" of the musical instrument since the definition of the term "musical instrument" is completely subjective to both the scholar and the would-be inventor. For example, a
Homo habilis slapping his body could be the makings of a musical instrument regardless of the being's intent.
[16]
Among the first devices external to the human body considered to be instruments are
rattles, stampers, and various
drums.
[17] These earliest instruments evolved due to the human motor impulse to add sound to emotional movements such as dancing.
[18] Eventually, some cultures assigned ritual functions to their musical instruments. Those cultures developed more complex percussion instruments and other instruments such as ribbon reeds, flutes, and trumpets. Some of these labels carry far different connotations from those used in modern day; early flutes and trumpets are so-labeled for their basic operation and function rather than any resemblance to modern instruments.
[19] Among early cultures for whom drums developed ritual, even sacred importance are the
Chukchi people of the
Russian Far East, the indigenous people of
Melanesia, and many cultures of
Africa. In fact, drums were pervasive throughout every African culture.
[20] One East African tribe, the
Wahinda, believed it was so holy that seeing a drum would be fatal to any person other than the sultan.
[21]
Humans eventually developed the concept of using musical instruments for producing a
melody. Until this time in the evolutions of musical instruments, melody was common only in singing. Similar to the process of
reduplication in language, instrument players first developed repetition and then arrangement. An early form of melody was produced by pounding two stamping tubes of slightly different sizes—one tube would produce a "clear" sound and the other would answer with a "darker" sound. Such instrument pairs also included
bullroarers, slit drums, shell trumpets, and skin drums. Cultures who used these instrument pairs associated genders with them; the "father" was the bigger or more energetic instrument, while the "mother" was the smaller or duller instrument. Musical instruments existed in this form for thousands of years before patterns of three or more tones would evolve in the form of the earliest
xylophone.
[22] Xylophones originated in the mainland and archipelago of
Southeast Asia, eventually spreading to Africa, the Americas, and Europe.
[23] Along with xylophones, which ranged from simple sets of three "leg bars" to carefully tuned sets of parallel bars, various cultures developed instruments such as the
ground harp,
ground zither,
musical bow, and
jaw harp.
[24]
Antiquity
Images of musical instruments begin to appear in Mesopotamian artifacts in 2800 BC or earlier. Beginning around 2000 BC,
Sumerian and
Babylonian cultures began delineating two distinct classes of musical instruments due to
division of labor and the evolving class system. Popular instruments, simple and playable by anyone, evolved differently from professional instruments whose development focused on effectiveness and skill.
[25] Despite this development, very few musical instruments have been recovered in
Mesopotamia. Scholars must rely on artifacts and
cuneiform texts written in
Sumerian or
Akkadian to reconstruct the early history of musical instruments in Mesopotamia. Even the process of assigning names to these instruments is challenging since there is no clear distinction among various instruments and the words used to describe them.
[26] Although Sumerian and Babylonian artists mainly depicted ceremonial instruments, historians have been able to distinguish six
idiophones used in early Mesopotamia: concussion clubs, clappers,
sistra, bells, cymbals, and rattles.
[27] Sistra are depicted prominently in a great relief of
Amenhotep III,
[28] and are of particular interest because similar designs have been found in far-reaching places such as
Tbilisi,
Georgia and among the Native American
Yaqui tribe.
[29] The people of Mesopotamia preferred stringed instruments to any other, as evidenced by their proliferation in Mesopotamian figurines, plaques, and seals. Innumerable varieties of harps are depicted, as well as lyres and lutes, the forerunner of modern stringed instruments such as the violin.
[30]
Ancient Egyptian tomb painting depicting lute players,
18th Dynasty (c. 1350 BC)
Musical instruments used by the Egyptian culture before 2700 BC bore striking similarity to those of Mesopotamia, leading historians to conclude that the civilizations must have been in contact with one another. Sachs notes that Egypt did not possess any instruments that the Sumerian culture did not also possess.
[31] However, by 2700 BC the cultural contacts seem to have dissipated; the lyre, a prominent ceremonial instrument in Sumer, did not appear in Egypt for another 800 years.
[31] Clappers and concussion sticks appear on Egyptian vases as early as 3000 BC. The civilization also made use of sistra, vertical flutes, double clarinets, arched and angular harps, and various drums.
[32] Little history is available in the period between 2700 BC and 1500 BC, as Egypt (and indeed, Babylon) entered a long violent period of war and destruction. This period saw the
Kassites destroy the Babylonian empire in Mesopotamia and the
Hyksos destroy the
Middle Kingdom of Egypt. When the Pharaohs of Egypt conquered Southwest Asia in around 1500 BC, the cultural ties to Mesopotamia were renewed and Egypt's musical instruments also reflected heavy influence from Asiatic cultures.
[31] Under their new cultural influences, the people of the
New Kingdom began using oboes, trumpets, lyres, lutes, castanets, and cymbals.
[33]
In contrast with Mesopotamia and Egypt, professional musicians did not exist in
Israel between 2000 and 1000 BC. While the history of musical instruments in Mesopotamia and Egypt relies on artistic representations, the culture in Israel produced few such representations. Scholars must therefore rely on information gleaned from the
Bible and the
Talmud.
[34] The Hebrew texts mention two prominent instruments associated with
Jubal, ugabs and
kinnors. These may be translated as pan pipes and lyres, respectively.
[35] Other instruments of the period included tofs, or frame drums, small bells or jingles called pa'amon,
shofars, and the trumpet-like hasosra.
[36] The introduction of a monarchy in Israel during the 11th century BC produced the first professional musicians and with them a drastic increase in the number and variety of musical instruments.
[37] However, identifying and classifying the instruments remains a challenge due to the lack of artistic interpretations. For example, stringed instruments of uncertain design called nevals and asors existed, but neither archaeology nor etymology can clearly define them.
[38] In her book
A Survey of Musical Instruments, American musicologist Sibyl Marcuse proposes that the nevel must be similar to vertical harp due to its relation to "nabla", the Phoenician term for "harp".
[39]
In
Greece,
Rome, and
Etruria, the use and development of musical instruments stood in stark contrast to those cultures' achievements in architecture and sculpture. The instruments of the time were simple and virtually all of them were imported from other cultures.
[40] Lyres were the principal instrument, as musicians used them to honor the gods.
[41] Greeks played a variety of wind instruments they classified as
aulos (reeds) or
syrinx (flutes); Greek writing from that time reflects a serious study of reed production and playing technique.
[7] Romans played reed instruments named
tibia featuring side-holes that could be opened or closed, allowing for greater flexibility in playing modes.
[42] Other instruments in common use in the region included vertical harps derived from those of the
Orient, lutes of Egyptian design, various pipes and organs, and clappers, which were played primarily by women.
[43]
Evidence of musical instruments in use by early civilizations of
India is almost completely lacking, making it impossible to reliably attribute instruments to the
Munda and
Dravidian language-speaking cultures that first settled the area. Rather, the history of musical instruments in the area begins with the
Indus Valley Civilization that emerged around 3000 BC. Various rattles and whistles found among excavated artifacts are the only physical evidence of musical instruments.
[44] A clay statuette indicates the use of drums, and examination of the
Indus script has also revealed representations of vertical arched harps identical in design to those depicted in Sumerian artifacts. This discovery is among many indications that the Indus Valley and Sumerian cultures maintained cultural contact. Subsequent developments in musical instruments in India occurred with the
Rigveda, or religious hymns. These songs used various drums, shell trumpets, harps, and flutes.
[45] Other prominent instruments in use during the early centuries AD were the
snake charmer's double clarinet,
bagpipes, barrel drums, cross flutes, and short lutes. In all, India had no unique musical instruments until the
Middle Ages.
[46]
A Chinese wooden fish, used in Buddhist recitations
Musical instruments such as zithers appear in
Chinese literature written around 1100 BC and earlier.
[47] Early
Chinese philosophers such as
Confucius (551–479 BC),
Mencius (372–289 BC), and
Laozi shaped the development of musical instruments in China, adopting an attitude toward music similar to that of the Greeks. The Chinese believed that music was an essential part of character and community, and developed a unique system of classifying their musical instruments according to their material makeup.
[48] Idiophones were extremely important in Chinese music, hence the majority of early instruments were idiophones. Poetry of the
Shang Dynasty mentions bells, chimes, drums, and globular flutes carved from bone, the latter of which has been excavated and preserved by archaeologists.
[49] The
Zhou Dynasty introduced percussion instruments such as clappers, troughs,
wooden fish, and
yu. Wind instruments such as flute, pan-pipes, pitch-pipes, and mouth organs also appeared in this time period.
[50] The short lute, a pear-shaped form of a western instrument that spread through many cultures, came into use in China during the
Han Dynasty.
[51]
Although civilizations in
Central America attained a relatively high level of sophistication by the eleventh century AD, they lagged behind other civilizations in the development of musical instruments. For example, they had no stringed instruments; all of their instruments were idiophones, drums, and wind instruments such as flutes and trumpets. Of these, only the flute was capable of producing a melody.
[52] In contrast,
pre-Columbian South American civilizations in areas such as modern-day
Peru,
Colombia,
Ecuador,
Bolivia, and
Chile were less advanced culturally but more advanced musically. South American cultures of the time used pan-pipes as well as varieties of flutes, idiophones, drums, and shell or wood trumpets.
[53]
Middle Ages
During the period of time loosely referred to as the
Middle Ages, China developed a tradition of integrating musical influence obtained by either conquering foreign countries or by being conquered. The first record of this type of influence is in 384 AD, when China established an East Turkestanic orchestra in its imperial court after a conquest in
Turkestan. Influences from India,
Mongolia, and other countries followed. In fact, Chinese tradition attributes most musical instruments of the time to those countries.
[54] Cymbals and gongs gained popularity, along with more advanced trumpets, clarinets, oboes, flutes, drums, and lutes.
[55] Some of the first bowed zithers appeared in China in the 9th or 10th century, influenced by Mongolian culture.
[56]
India experienced similar development to China in the Middle Ages; however, stringed instruments developed differently to accommodate different styles of music. While stringed instruments of China were designed to produce precise tones capable of matching the tones of chimes, stringed instruments of India were considerably more flexible. This flexibility suited the slides and
tremolos of Hindu music. Rhythm was of paramount importance in Indian music of the time, as evidenced by the frequent depiction of drums in reliefs dating to the Middle Ages. The emphasis on rhythm is an aspect native to Indian music.
[57] Historians divide the development of musical instruments in Middle Age India between pre-Islamic and Islamic periods due to the different influence each period provided.
[58] In pre-Islamic times, idiophones such hand bells, cymbals, and peculiar instruments resembling gongs came into wide use in Hindu music. The gong-like instrument was a bronze disk that was struck with a hammer instead of a mallet. Tubular drums, stick zithers named
veena, short fiddles, double and triple flutes, coiled trumpets, and curved India horns emerged in this time period.
[59] Islamic influences brought new types of drums, perfectly circular or octagonal as opposed to the irregular pre-Islamic drums.
[60] Persian influence brought oboes and
sitars, although Persian sitars had three strings and Indian version had from four to seven.
[61]
An Indonesian metallophone
Southeast Asia was responsible for a series of innovations in musical instruments, particularly once their period of Indian influence ended in around 920 AD.
[62] Balinese and Javanese music made prominent use of
xylophones and
metallophones, bronze versions of the former.
[63] The most prominent and important musical instrument of Southeast Asia was the gong. While the gong likely originated in the geographical area between
Tibet and
Burma, it was part of every category of human activity in Southeast Asian areas such as
Java and the
Malay Archipelago.
[64]
The areas of Mesopotamia and the
Arabian Peninsula experiences rapid growth and sharing of musical instruments once they were united by
Islamic culture in the seventh century.
[65] Frame drums and cylindrical drums of various depths were immensely important in all genres of music.
[66] Conical oboes were involved in the music that accompanied wedding and circumcision ceremonies. Persian miniatures provide information on the development of
kettle drums in Mesopotamia that spread as far as Java.
[67] Various lutes, zithers,
dulcimers, and harps spread as far as
Madagascar to the south and modern-day
Sulawesi to the east.
[68]
Despite the influences of Greece and Rome, most musical instruments in Europe during the Middles Ages came from Asia. The lyre is the only musical instrument that may have been invented in Europe until this period.
[69] Stringed instruments were prominent in Middle Age Europe. The central and northern regions used mainly lyres, stringed instruments with
necks, while the southern region used lutes, which featured a two-armed body and a crossbar.
[69] Various harps served Central and Northern Europe as far north as Ireland, where the harp eventually became a national symbol.
[70] Lyres propagated through the same areas, as far east as
Estonia.
[71] European music between 800 and 1100 became more sophisticated, more frequently requiring instruments capable of
polyphony. The
Persian geographer of the 9th century (
Ibn Khordadbeh), mentioned in his lexicographical discussion of music instruments that in the
Byzantine Empire typical instruments included the
urghun (
organ),
shilyani (probably a type of
harp or
lyre),
salandj (probably a
bagpipe) and the
Byzantine lyra (Greek: λύρα ~ lūrā) .
[72] Lyra was a
medieval pear-shaped bowed string instrument with three to five
strings, held upright and is an ancestor of most European bowed instruments, including the
violin.
[73] The
monochord served as a precise measure of the notes of a musical scale, allowing more accurate musical arrangements.
[74] Mechanical
hurdy-gurdies allowed single musicians to play more complicated arrangements than a fiddle would; both were prominent folk instruments in the Middle Ages.
[75][76] Southern Europeans played short and long lutes whose pegs extended to the sides, unlike the rear-facing pegs of Central and Northern European instruments.
[77] Idiophones such as bells and clappers served various practical purposes, such as warning of the approach of a
leper.
[78] The ninth century revealed the first
bagpipes, which spread throughout Europe and had many uses from folk instruments to military instruments.
[79] The construction of pneumatic
organs evolved in Europe starting in fifth century
Spain, spreading to
England in about 700.
[80] The resulting instruments varied in size and use from portable organs worn around the neck to large pipe organs.
[81] Literary accounts of organs being played in English
Benedictine abbeys toward the end of the tenth century are the first references to organs being connected to churches.
[82] Reed players of the Middle Ages were limited to oboes; no evidence of clarinets exists during this period.
[83]
Modern
Renaissance
Musical instrument development was dominated by the Western Occident from 1400 on—indeed, the most profound changes occurred during the
Renaissance period. Instruments took on other purposes than accompanying singing or dance, and performers used them as solo instruments. Keyboards and lutes developed as polyphonic instruments, and composers arranged increasingly complex pieces using more advanced
tablature. Composers also began designing pieces of music for specific instruments.
[16] In the latter half of the sixteenth century,
orchestration came into common practice as a method of writing music for a variety of instruments. Composers now specified orchestration where individual performers once applied their own discretion.
[84] The polyphonic style dominated popular music, and the instrument makers responded accordingly.
[85]
Beginning in about 1400, the rate of development of musical instruments increased in earnest as compositions demanded more dynamic sounds. People also began writing books about creating, playing, and cataloging musical instruments; the first such book was
Sebastian Virdung's 1511 treatise
Musica getuscht und angezogen (English:
Music Germanized and Abstracted).
[84] Virdung's work is noted as being particularly thorough for including descriptions of "irregular" instruments such as hunters' horns and cow bells, though Virdung is critical of the same. Other books followed, including
Arnolt Schlick's Spiegel der Orgelmacher und Organisten (English:
Mirror of Organ Makers and Organ Players) the same year, a treatise on organ building and organ playing.
[86] Of the instructional books and references published in the Renaissance era, one is noted for its detailed description and depiction of all wind and stringed instruments, including their relative sizes. This book, the
Syntagma musicum by Michael Praetorius, is now considered an authoritative reference of sixteenth century musical instruments.
[87]
In the sixteenth century, musical instrument builders gave most instruments, such as the violin, the "classical shapes" they retain today. An emphasis on aesthetic beauty also developed—listeners were as pleased with the physical appearance of an instrument as they were with its sound. Therefore, builders paid special attention to materials and workmanship, and instruments became collectibles in homes and museums.
[88] It was during this period that makers began constructing instruments of the same type in various sizes to meet the demand of
consorts, or ensembles playing works written for these groups of instruments.
[89] Instrument builders developed other features that endure today. For example, while organs with multiple keyboards and pedals already existed, the first organs with
solo stops emerged in the early fifteenth century. These stops were meant to produce a mixture of timbres, a development needed for the complexity of music of the time.
[90] Trumpets evolved into their modern form to improve portability, and players used
mutes to properly blend into
chamber music.
[91]
Baroque
Beginning in the seventeenth century, composers began creating works of a more emotional style. They felt that a
monophonic style better suited the emotional music and wrote musical parts for instruments that would complement the singing human voice.
[85] As a result, many instruments that were incapable of larger ranges and dynamics, and therefore were seen as unemotional, fell out of favor. One such instrument was the oboe.
[92] Bowed instruments such as the violin,
viola,
baryton, and various lutes dominated popular music.
[93] Beginning in around 1750, however, the lute disappeared from musical compositions in favor of the rising popularity of the
guitar.
[94] As the prevalence of
string orchestras rose, wind instruments such as the flute, oboe, and bassoon began to be readmitted to counteract the monotony of hearing only strings.
[95]
In the mid-seventeenth century, what was known as a hunter's horn underwent transformation into an "art instrument" consisting of a lengthened tube, a narrower bore, a wider bell, and much wider range. The details of this transformation are unclear, but the modern
horn or, more colloquially, French horn, had emerged by 1725.
[96] The slide trumpet appeared, a variation which includes a long-throated mouthpiece that slid in and out, allowing the player infinite adjustments in pitch. This variation on the trumpet was unpopular due to the difficulty involved in playing it.
[97] Organs underwent tonal changes in the Baroque period, as manufacturers such as
Abraham Jordan of London made the stops more expressive and added devices such as expressive pedals. Sachs viewed this trend as a "degeneration" of the general organ sound.
[98]
Classical
During the Classical period, lasting from roughly 1750 to 1830, a great deal of musical instruments capable of producing new timbres were developed and introduced into popular music. New instruments such as the clarinet, saxophone, and tuba became fixtures in orchestras. Instruments such as the clarinet also grew into entire "families" of instruments capable of different ranges: small clarinets, normal clarinets, bass clarinets, and so on.
[99]
Classification
There are many different methods of classifying musical instruments. Various methods examine aspects such as the physical properties of the instrument (material, color, shape, etc.), the use for the instrument, the means by which music is produced with the instrument, the
range of the instrument, and the instrument's place in an
orchestra or other ensemble. Most methods are specific to a geographic area or cultural group and were developed to serve the unique classification requirements of the group.
[100] The problem with these specialized classification schemes is that they tend to break down once they are applied outside of their original area. For example, a system based on instrument use would fail if a culture invented a new use for the same instrument. Scholars recognize Hornbostel-Sachs as the only system that applies to any culture and, more important, provides only possible classification for each instrument.
[101][102]
Ancient systems
An ancient system named the
Natya Shastra, written by the sage
Bharata Muni and dating from between 200 BC and 200 AD, divides instruments into four main classification groups: instruments where the sound is produced by vibrating strings; percussion instruments with skin heads; instruments where the sound is produced by vibrating columns of air; and "solid", or non-skin, percussion instruments. In 1880,
Victor-Charles Mahillon adapted this system and assigned Greek labels to the four classifications:
chordophones,
membranophones,
aerophones, and
autophones.
[101]
Hornbostel-Sachs
Erich von Hornbostel and
Curt Sachs adopted Mahillon's scheme and published an extensive new scheme for classification in
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914. Hornbostel and Sachs used most of Mahillon's system, but replaced the term
autophone with
idiophone.
[101]
The original Hornbostel-Sachs system classified instruments into four main groups:
- Idiophones, which would be an instrument that you could hit, strike, shake or scrape – such as the xylophone and rattle. They produce sound by vibrating themselves; they are sorted into concussion, percussion, shaken, scraped, split, and plucked idiophones.[103]
- Membranophones, which would be an instrument that uses a stretched skin, or membrane (key word being "stretched")such as drums or kazoos, produce sound by a vibrating membrane; they are sorted into predrum membranophones, tubular drums, friction idiophones, kettledrums, friction drums, and mirlitons.[104]
- Chordophones, which would be an instrument that uses stretched string or cord – such as the piano or cello, produce sound by vibrating strings; they are sorted into zithers, keyboard chordophones, lyres, harps, lutes, and bowed chordophones.[105]
- Aerophones, which would be an instrument that you produce a sound by blowing air into – such as the pipe organ or oboe, produce sound by vibrating columns of air; they are sorted into free aerophones, flutes, organs, reedpipes, and lip-vibrated aerophones.[106]
Sachs later added a fifth category,
electrophones, such as
theremins, which produce sound by electronic means.
[107] Within each category are many subgroups. The system has been criticised and revised over the years, but remains widely used by
ethnomusicologists and
organologists.
[108]
Schaeffner
Andre Schaeffner, a curator at the
Musée de l'Homme, disagreed with the Hornbostel-Sachs system and developed his own system in 1932. Schaeffner believed that the physical structure of a musical instrument, rather than its playing method, should determine its classification. His system divided instruments into two categories: instruments with solid, vibrating bodies and instruments containing vibrating air.
[109]
Range
Western instruments are also often classified by their musical range in comparison with other instruments in the same family. These terms are named after singing voice classifications:
- Soprano instruments: flute, violin, soprano saxophone, trumpet, clarinet, oboe, piccolo
- Alto instruments: alto saxophone, french horn, english horn, viola
- Tenor instruments: trombone, tenor saxophone, guitar
- Baritone instruments: bassoon, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, cello
- Bass instruments: double bass, bass guitar, bass saxophone, tuba
Some instruments fall into more than one category: for example, the cello may be considered tenor, baritone or bass, depending on how its music fits into the ensemble, and the trombone may be alto, tenor, baritone, or bass and the French horn, bass, baritone, tenor, or alto, depending on which range it is played.
Many instruments have their range as part of their name:
soprano saxophone,
tenor saxophone,
baritone horn,
alto flute,
bass guitar, etc. Additional adjectives describe instruments above the soprano range or
below the bass, for example:
sopranino saxophone,
contrabass clarinet.
When used in the name of an instrument, these terms are relative, describing the instrument's range in comparison to other instruments of its family and not in comparison to the human voice range or instruments of other families. For example, a bass flute's range is from C
3 to F♯
6, while a bass clarinet plays about one octave lower.
Construction
Musical instrument construction is a specialized trade that requires years of training, practice, and sometimes an apprenticeship. Most makers of musical instruments specialize in one genre of instruments; for example, a
luthier makes only stringed instruments. Some make only one type of instrument such as a piano. Some builders are focused on a more artistic approach and develop
experimental musical instruments, often meant for individual playing styles developed by the builder himself.
User interfaces
Regardless of how the sound in an instrument is produced, many musical instruments have a keyboard as the user-interface.
Keyboard instruments are any instruments that are played with a
musical keyboard. Every key generates one or more sounds; most keyboard instruments have extra means (
pedals for a piano,
stops for an organ) to manipulate these sounds. They may produce sound by wind being fanned (
organ) or pumped (
accordion),
[110][111] vibrating strings either hammered (
piano) or plucked (
harpsichord),
[112][113] by electronic means (
synthesizer),
[114] or in some other way. Sometimes, instruments that do not usually have a keyboard, such as the
glockenspiel, are fitted with one.
[115] Though they have no moving parts and are struck by mallets held in the player's hands, they have the same physical arrangement of keys and produce soundwaves in a similar manner.
