Musical instrument type

Audio: musical instrument type (0:12)

musical instrument type plays six bars of music featuring, respectively, a trumpet, flute, saxophone, violin, piano and guitar. The musical instrument type figure shows the score and the table lists each instrument and its classification and range.

A musical instrument is any instrument that is not a computer, a percussion instrument or the human voice.

Most musical instruments fall into the category of wind instrument or string instrument. These are two of the five categories in the Hornbostel-Sachs system, and are technically known as aerophones and chordophones. Each category is further subdivided as follows:

• Wind instrument: vibrates air using wind:
  • The trumpet is a brass instrument, a subdivision of wind instruments.
  • The flute is a representative of the pipe family, one of two divisions of woodwind which itself is a category of wind instrument.
  • The saxophone is a member of the other main family of woodwind instruments, the reed family.
• String instrument: vibrates a string:
  • The violin is the main representative of the violin family of string instruments.
  • The piano is a stringed instrument and main representative of the family of keyboard instruments.
  • The guitar is head plucked string instrument and representative of the lute family of string instruments.

There are over 2,000 musical instruments in the world so you will be glad to know that we are not going to investigate them all. We will illustrate as many of them as possible throughout the guide and you can explore the rest at your leisure with the help of this excellent list of musical instruments.