Families of Musical Instruments

Musical instruments are grouped into families based on how they make sounds. In an
orchestra, musicians sit together in these family groupings. But not every instrument fits
neatly into a group. For example, the piano has strings that vibrate, and hammers that strike.
Is it a string instrument or a percussion instrument? Some say it is both!

Brass
Brass instruments are made of brass or some other metal and make
sound when air is blown inside. The musician's lips must buzz, as though
making a "raspberry" noise against the mouthpiece. Air then vibrates
inside the instrument, which produces a sound.

Brass instruments include trumpet, trombone, tuba, French horn, cornet,

and bugle.

Percussion
Most percussion instruments make sounds when they are hit, such as a
drum or a tambourine. Others are shaken, such as maracas, and still others
may be rubbed, scratched, or whatever else will make the instrument vibrate
and thus produce a sound.

Percussion instruments include drums, cymbals, triangle, chimes, tam-

tam, glockenspiel,timpani, bells, and xylophone.

Strings
Yes, the sounds of string instruments come from their strings. The strings may
be plucked, as in a guitar or harp; bowed, as with a cello or a violin; or struck,
as with a dulcimer. This creates a vibration that causes a unique sound.

Stringed instruments include the violin, viola, cello, bass, harp, and dulcimer.

Woodwinds
Woodwind instruments produce sound when air (wind) is blown inside.
Air might be blown across an edge, as with a flute; between a reed and a
surface, as with a clarinet; or between two reeds, as with a bassoon. The
sound happens when the air vibrates inside.

Woodwind instruments include flute, piccolo, clarinet, recorder, bassoon,

and oboe.
TRUMPET is a blown musical
instrument commonly used
in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet
group contains the instruments with the
highest register in the brass family. Trumpet-
like instruments have historically been used as
signaling devices in battle or hunting, with
examples dating back to at least 1500 BC; they
began to be used as musical instruments only in
the late 14th or early 15th century. Trumpets
are used in art music styles, for instance
in orchestras, concert bands,
and jazz ensembles, as well as in popular. They
are played by blowing air through almost-closed
lips (called the player's embouchure), producing
a "buzzing" sound that starts a standing
wave vibration in the air column inside the
instrument. Since the late 15th century they
have primarily been constructed of brass tubing,
usually bent twice into a rounded
rectangular shape.

TROMBONE is a musical instrument in

the brass family. Like all brass instruments,
sound is produced when the player's
vibrating lips (embouchure) cause the air
column inside the instrument to vibrate.
Nearly all trombones have a telescoping slide
mechanism that varies the length of the
instrument to change the pitch. Many
modern trombone models also utilize a rotary
valve as a means to lower pitch of the
instrument. Variants such as the valve
trombone and superbone have three valves
like those on the trumpet.
TUBA (UK: /tjub/ or US: /tub/; Italian
pronunciation: [tuba]) is the largest and
lowest-pitched musical instrument in
the brass family. Like all brass instruments,
sound is produced by moving air past the lips,
causing them to vibrate or "buzz" into a large
cupped mouthpiece. It first appeared in the
mid 19th-century, making it one of the newer
instruments in the modern orchestra
and concert band. The tuba largely replaced
the ophicleide Tuba is Latin for 'trumpet'.

FRENCH HORN (since the 1930s known

simply as the "horn" in some professional
music circles) is a brass instrument made of
tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell.
The double horn in F/B (technically a
variety of German horn) is the horn most
often used by players in professional
orchestras and bands. A musician who plays
any kind of horn is generally referred to as
a horn player(or less frequently, a hornist).

CORNET (/krnt/, US: /krnt/) is

a brass instrument similar to
the trumpet but distinguished from it by its
conical bore, more compact shape, and
mellower tone quality. The most common
cornet is a transposing instrument in B,
though there is also a soprano cornet in E.
Both are unrelated to the renaissance and
early baroque cornett.
DRUM is a member of the percussion group
of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-
Sachs classification system, it is
amembranophone. Drums consist of at least
one membrane, called a drumhead or drum
skin, that is stretched over a shell and
struck, either directly with the player's
hands, or with a drum stick, to
produce sound. There is usually a resonance
head on the underside of the drum, typically
tuned to a slightly lower pitch than the top
drumhead. Other techniques have been used
to cause drums to make sound, such as
the thumb roll. Drums are the world's oldest
and most ubiquitous musical instruments, and
the basic design has remained virtually
unchanged for thousands of years.

CYMBAL is a common percussion instrument.

Often used in pairs, cymbals consist of thin,
normally round plates of various alloys. The
majority of cymbals are of indefinite pitch,
although small disc-shaped cymbals based on
ancient designs sound a definite note
(see: crotales). Cymbals are used in many
ensembles ranging from the orchestra,
percussion ensembles, jazz bands, heavy
metal bands, and marching groups. Drum
kits usually incorporate at least
a crash, ride or crash/ride, and a pair of hi-
hat cymbals. A player of cymbals is known as
a cymbalist.
TRIANGLE is an idiophone type of musical
instrument in the percussion family. It is a
bar of metal, usually steel but sometimes
other metals like beryllium copper, bent into
a triangle shape. The instrument is usually
held by a loop of some form of thread or wire
at the top curve. It was first made around
the 16th century in England.

A carillon-like instrument with less than

23 bells is called a CHIME.
American chimes usually have one to one and
a half diatonic octaves. Many chimes are
automated.
The first bell chime was created in
1487.[citation needed] Before 1900, chime bells
typically lacked dynamic variation and the
inner tuning (the mathematical balance of a
bell's complex sound) required to permit the
use of harmony. Since then, chime bells
produced inBelgium, the Netherlands,
England, and America have inner tuning and
can produce fully harmonized music. Some
towers inEngland hung for full circle change
ringing chime by an Ellacombe apparatus.[2]

XYLOPHONE (from
the Greek words xylon,
"wood" + phn, "sound,
voice",[2] meaning "wooden sound") is
amusical instrument in the percussion family
that consists of wooden bars struck
by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to
a pitch of a musical scale,
whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the
case of many African and Asian
instruments, diatonic in many western
children's instruments, or chromatic for
orchestral use.
VIOLIN is a wooden string instrument in
the violin family. It is the smallest and
highest-pitched instrument in the family in
regular use. Smaller violin-type instruments
are known, including the violino piccolo and
the kit violin, but these are virtually unused
in the 2010s. The violin typically has
four strings tuned in perfect fifths, and is
most commonly played by drawing
a bow across its strings, though it can also
be played by plucking the strings with the
fingers (pizzicato). Violins are important
instruments in a wide variety of musical
genres

CELLO (/tlo/ CHEL-oh;

plural cellos or celli)
or violoncello (/valntlo/ VY--ln-
CHEL-oh;[1] Italian
pronunciation: [vjolontllo]) is
a bowed or plucked string instrument with
four strings tuned in perfect fifths. The
strings from low to high are generally tuned
to C2, G2, D3 and A3, an octave lower than
the viola. It is a member of the violin
family of musical instruments, which also
includes theviolin and viola and the double
bass. The cello is used as a solo musical
instrument, as well as in chamber
music ensembles (e.g.,string quartet), string
orchestras, as a member of the string
section of symphony orchestras, and some
types of rock bands. It is the second-largest
and second lowest (in pitch) bowed string
instrument in the modern symphony
orchestra, the double bass being the largest
and having the lowest (deepest) pitch.
HARP is a stringed musical instrument that
has a number of individual strings running at
an angle to its soundboard; the strings are
plucked with the fingers. Harps have been
known since antiquity in Asia, Africa and
Europe, dating back at least as early as
3500 BC. The instrument had great
popularity in Europe during the Middle Ages
and Renaissance, where it evolved into a wide
range of variants with new technologies, and
was disseminated to Europe's colonies,
finding particular popularity in Latin
America.

BASS GUITAR (also called electric bass, or

simply bass) is a stringed instrument played
primarily with the fingers or thumb, by
plucking, slapping, popping, strumming,
tapping, thumping, or picking with
a plectrum, often known as a pick.

GUITAR is a musical instrument classified

as a fretted string instrument with
anywhere from four to 18 strings, usually
having six.[citation needed] The sound is
projected either acoustically, using a hollow
wooden or plastic and wood box (for
an acoustic guitar), or through electrical
amplifier and a speaker (for an electric
guitar). It is typically played by strumming or
plucking the strings with the fingers, thumb
or fingernails of the right hand or with
a pick while fretting (or pressing against
the frets) the strings with the fingers of
the left hand.
FLUTE is a family of musical instruments in
the woodwind group. Unlike woodwind
instruments with reeds, a flute is
anaerophone or reedless wind
instrument that produces its sound from the
flow of air across an opening. According to
the instrument classification of Hornbostel
Sachs, flutes are categorized as edge-blown
aerophones. Amusician who plays the flute
can be referred to as a flute player, flautist,
flutist or, less commonly, fluter or flutenist.

PICCOLO /pklo/ (Italian

pronunciation: [pikkolo]; Italian for "small",
but named ottavino in Italy) is a half-
size flute, and a member of
the woodwind family of musical instruments.
The modern piccolo has most of the same
fingerings as its larger sibling, thestandard
transverse flute,[3] but the sound it
produces is an octave higher than written.
This gave rise to the name ottavino (Italian
for "little octave"), the name by which the
instrument is referred to in the scores of
Italian composers.[4]

OBOES /obo/ OH-boh are a family

of double reed woodwind instruments. The
most common oboe plays in the treble or
soprano range. Oboes are usually made of
wood, but there are also oboes made of
synthetic materials. A soprano oboe
measures roughly 65 cm (25 12 in) long,
with metal keys, a conical bore and a flared
bell. Sound is produced by blowing into
the reed and vibrating a column of air. The
distinctive tone is versatile and has been
described as "bright". When oboe is used
alone, it is generally taken to mean the treble
instrument rather than other instruments of
the family, such as the cor anglais (English
horn) or oboe d'amore.