Musical Instruments

(The Hornbostel-Sachs System)

HornbostelSachs (or SachsHornbostel)

is a system of musical instrument classification devised
by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs,
and first published in the Zeitschrift fr Ethnologie in 1914.
An English translation was published
in the Galpin Society Journal in 1961.
It is the most widely used system for classifying
musical instruments by ethnomusicologists
and organologists (people who study musical instruments).

~Membranophone~
A membranophone is any musical instrument which produces
sound primarily by way of a vibrating stretched membrane. It is
one of the four main divisions of instruments in the original
Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification.
Most membranophones are drums.
Hornbostel-Sachs divides drums into three main types: struck
drums, where the skin is hit with a stick, the hand, or
something else; string drums, where a knotted string attached
to the skin is pulled, passing its vibrations onto the skin; and
friction drums, where some sort of rubbing motion causes the
skin to vibrate (a common type has a stick passing through a
hole in the skin which is pulled back and forth).

In addition to drums, there is another kind of membranophone,

called the singing membranophone, of which the best known
type is the kazoo. These instruments modify a sound produced
by something else, commonly the human voice,
by having a skin vibrate in sympathy with it.

According to shape, drums are classified as barrel, conical,

cylindrical, footed, frame, goblet, long, vessel, and waisted. The
names membranophone and idiophone (instruments whose
solid, resonant body vibrates to produce sound) replace the
looser term percussion instruments when an acoustically based
classification is required.

Drum
A percussion instrument consisting of a hollow cylinder or
hemisphere with a membrane stretched tightly over one
or both ends, played by beating with the hands or sticks.

Mirliton
A pseudomusical instrument or device in which sound
waves produced by the players voice or by an instrument
vibrate a membrane, thereby imparting a buzzing quality
to the vocal or instrumental sound. A common mirliton is
the kazoo, in which the membrane is set in the wall of a
short tube into which the player vocalizes. Tissue paper
and a comb constitute a homemade mirliton.
Mirlitons are also set in the walls of some flutes
(e.g., the Chinese ti) and xylophone resonators to colour
the tone.

Kazoo
The kazoo is a musical instrument that adds a "buzzing"
timbral quality to a player's voice when the player
vocalizes into it. The kazoo is a type of mirliton, which is a
membranophone..
A kazoo player hums, rather than blows, into the
instrument. The oscillating air pressure of the hum makes
the kazoo's membrane vibrate. The resulting sound varies
in pitch and loudness with the player's humming. Players
can produce different sounds by singing specific syllables
such as doo, who, rrrrr or brrrr into the kazoo.

Friction Drum
A friction drum is a percussion instrument consisting
of a single membrane stretched over a sound box,
whose sound is produced by the player causing the
membrane to vibrate by friction. The sound box may
be a pot or jug or some open-ended hollow object. To

produce the friction, the

membrane
may
be
directly rubbed with the
fingers or through the
use of a cloth, or a stick
or cord which is attached
to the centre of the
membrane
and
then
rubbed or moved with a
hand, sponge or cloth,
generally
wet.
The
membrane
may
be
depressed
with
the
thumb while playing to
vary the pitch. When a cord is used the instrument
may be referred to as a "string drum" or "lions roar".
In some friction drums, the friction is obtained by
spinning the drum around a pivot.

~Idiophone~

An idiophone is any musical instrument which creates

sound primarily by way of the instrument's vibrating,
without the use of strings or membranes. It is the first of
the four main divisions in the original Hornbostel-Sachs
scheme of musical instrument classification. In the early
classification of Victor-Charles Mahillon, this group of
instruments was called autophones.
Most percussion instruments which are not drums are
idiophones. Hornbostel-Sachs divides idiophones into four
main sub-categories. The first division is the struck
idiophones (sometimes called concussion idiophones). This
includes most of the non-drum percussion instruments
familiar in the West. They include all idiophones which are
made to vibrate by being hit, either directly with a stick or
hand (like the wood block, singing bowl, steel tongue drum,
triangle or marimba), or indirectly, by way of a scraping or
shaking motion (like maracas or flexatone). Various types
of bells fall into both categories.

Kouxian
A kouxian is a general Chinese term for any variety of jaw
harp. The jaw harp is a plucked idiophone in which the
lamella is mounted in a small frame, and the player's open
mouth serves as a resonance chamber.
Chinese jaw harps may comprise multiple idiophones that
are lashed together at one end and spread in a fan
formation. They may be made from bamboo or a metal
alloy, such as brass. Modern kouxian with three or more
idiophones might be tuned to the first few tones of the
minor pentatonic scale.

Bell Plates
A bell plate is a percussion instrument consisting of a flat
and fairly thick sheet of metal, producing a sound similar to
a bell.
Bell plates come in many shapes and are made from many
different metals. Some are used as unpitched percussion
and others
tuned for use as pitched percussion
Most bell plates are suspended by cords passed through
two holes in the plate. An exception is the Burma Bell, a

distinctively shaped bell plate that is often mounted using

a single hole, allowing it to spin when struck producing
doppler effects.

Claves
Claves (Anglicized pronunciation: clah-vays, IPA:
[klves]) are a percussion instrument (idiophone),

consisting of a pair of short (about 2030 cm (7.911.8 in),

thick dowels. Traditionally they were made of wood,
typically rosewood, ebony or grenadilla. Nowadays they are
also made of fibreglass or plastics due to the greater
durability of these materials. When struck they produce a
bright clicking noise. Claves are sometimes hollow and
carved in the middle to amplify the sound.
Claves are very important in Cuban music, such as the son
and guaguanc. They are often used to play a repeating
rhythmic figure throughout a piece, known as clave, a key
pattern (or guide-pattern, timeline patter, phrasing
referent, bell pattern) that is also found in African music
and Brazilian music.[1] Among the better known rock
recordings featuring claves are the Beatles' recording "And
I Love Her," and "Magic Bus" by the Who.
Steve Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood is written for five
pairs of claves.[2]