musical instrument

Introduction & Top Questions
General characteristics
Technological developments
Classification of instruments
History and evolution
- Percussion instruments
- Stringed instruments
- Keyboard instruments
- Wind instruments
- Ensembles
- Automatic instruments
- Electric and electronic instruments

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images & Videos

Four children play musical instruments in a row, including a flute, trumpet, and tuba, focusing intently as they perform together indoors.

Bone whistle, c. 10,000 bc; in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford, Eng.

A Sakha group (from eastern Siberia) playing the khomus, a type of Jew's harp.

Typically ornate Hardanger fiddle (detail), a Norwegian folk instrument.

Musician playing a changgo, a Korean two-headed drum.

Tambourine with snare and jingles, detail from an early 14th-century English manuscript (add. 42130, fol. 164); in the British Library, London

Listen to the discussion about the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota

Quizzes

Young girl wearing a demin jacket playing the trumpet (child, musical instruments, Asian ethnicity)

Sound Check: Musical Vocabulary Quiz

Gong. Closeup of a khong wong gong circle chime. Thai classical musical instrument, part of piphat ensemble. (percussion, music)

Music Quiz

classical music. A musician reads sheet music and plays a cello (cellist) with violinists in an orchestra. String instruments produce sound waves.

The Sound of Music

Tapping Keys and Plucking Strings

Musical Instruments

Related Questions

How did Islam influence musical instruments in medieval Europe?
How did ancient Chinese people classify musical instruments?
How did the Greek aulos differ from a modern oboe?
How do an instrument’s size and shape affect its sound?
How do flutes produce sound from an airstream and a sharp edge?
How do percussion instruments produce sound?
How do reed instruments such as clarinets and oboes produce sound?
How do stretched strings create sound in a violin or guitar?
How do sympathetic strings change the sound of a sitar or sarangi?
How do trumpet players use their lips to produce sound?
How do valves, slides, and finger holes help brass instruments play chromatic pitches?
How do wind instruments produce sound?
How does a recorder differ from a transverse flute?
How does a true flute differ from a whistle flute?
How does a violin’s body affect its tone quality?
How does the Hornbostel-Sachs system classify musical instruments?
How long have musical instruments existed?
What are aerophones and which instruments belong to this group?
What are chordophones and which instruments belong to this group?
What are idiophones and how do they produce sound?
What are membranophones and which instruments belong to this group?
What do Paleolithic pipes and whistles reveal about early music?
What instruments are commonly used in a Javanese gamelan orchestra?
What instruments are commonly used in a rock band?
What instruments are used in South Indian Carnatic music ensembles?
What instruments are used in a traditional Japanese sankyoku ensemble?
What instruments are used in a woodwind quintet?
What instruments did Michael Praetorius describe in Syntagma musicum?
What instruments make up a traditional string quartet?
What roles do the sitar, tabla, and drone instrument play in Hindustani music?
What was the difference between haut and bas instruments in medieval Europe?
Which musical instruments were used in ancient Egypt?
Which prehistoric musical instruments have archaeologists discovered?
Why are woodwinds and brass instruments not accurately classified by the materials they are made from?
Why can a double bass be played as both a chordophone and an idiophone?
Why can a tambourine be classified as both a membranophone and an idiophone?
Why did medieval European instrument makers build families of instruments in different sizes?
Why do a metal flute and a wooden flute produce similar sounds?
Why do humidity and dryness affect wooden stringed instruments?
Why do keyboard instruments belong to several different sound-production categories?
Why do most stringed instruments need a soundboard or resonating chamber?
Why do musicians often group instruments by playing method instead of by sound-production system?
Why have musical instruments been used in religious ceremonies and rituals?
Why is a saxophone classified as a clarinet in the Hornbostel-Sachs system?
Why were electrophones added to the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system?
How long have musical instruments existed?
What defines brass instruments?
How is pitch determined in brass instruments?
What role do valves play in brass instruments?
How does the violin produce sound?
What is an electric guitar?
Who invented the first true electric guitar?
How does an electric guitar work?
Who are some influential electric guitarists?
What contributions have electronic instruments made to musical composition?

Entertainment & Pop Culture Musical Instruments

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External Websites

IndiaNetzone - Musical Instruments of Ancient India
Liveabout - Classification System of Musical Instruments
BBC - Discovery - How do instruments make music?
SUNY Geneseo - Musical Instruments
Physics LibreTexts - Musical Instruments
Naxos - Musical Instruments

Britannica Websites

Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

musical instrument - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
musical instrument - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

musical instrument

music

Written by

Jack Allan Westrup

Professor of Music, University of Oxford, 1946–71; Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, 1947–71. Author of Purcell and many others.

Jack Allan WestrupAll

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Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

Britannica Editors

History

musical instrument, any device for producing a musical sound. The principal types of such instruments, classified by the method of producing sound, are percussion, stringed, keyboard, wind, and electronic. Musical instruments are almost universal components of human culture: archaeology has revealed pipes and whistles in the Paleolithic Period and clay drums and shell trumpets in the Neolithic Period. It has been firmly established that the ancient city cultures of Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, India, East Asia,...

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