musical instrument: Quick Facts

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Photos and 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.

Ram's horn shofar

lamellaphone with bamboo tongues

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

Sheng; in the Horniman Museum, London.

Kenyah boys playing the jatung utang (a type of xylophone) in Kalimantan Timur (East Kalimantan), Indon.

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

Watch a man playing a Brazilian musical bow called Berimbau

See a man playing a 'calabash drum'

The intricate process of constructing a grand piano

View a demonstration to understand the physics behind the working of an electric guitar

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Topics

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Dig Deeper: More Articles That Discuss This Topic

Key People

Antonio Stradivari

Antonio Stradivari

Italian violin maker

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Theobald Boehm

German musician and composer

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Victor-Charles Mahillon

Belgian music scholar

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Curt Sachs

German musicologist

John Philip Sousa.

John Philip Sousa

American composer

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Erich Moritz von Hornbostel

Austrian musicologist

Dolmetsch, pen-and-ink drawing by Edmond X. Kapp, 1920; in a private collection

Arnold Dolmetsch

British musician

Praetorius, Michael

Michael Praetorius

German musician

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

Trumpet musical instrument.

Musical Instruments

Harmonica with sheet music.

Test Your Instrument Knowledge

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

Toy xylophone musical instrument.

Instruments

A woman wearing a hanbok plays the traditional Korean musical instrument kayagum (gayageum).

Another Musical Instruments Quiz

Blue electric guitar isolated on white.

Tapping Keys and Plucking Strings

Ukrainian wooden flute. (Ethinic, music, musical, traditional, wood, wind)

Instruments: From Carillons to Electric Guitars