An editorial library of musical instruments
30 in-depth entries, written for careful reading and backed by museum, university and library sources. Search by name or by a word, then follow an instrument from its history to its sound.
Or go straight to: All instruments A–Z index Glossary
Six families, each defined by how its sound begins and how it is played.
Instruments played from a row of keys that sets the sound mechanism in motion.
1 entry →02Instruments whose sound begins with a vibrating string — bowed, plucked, strummed or struck.
13 entries →03Instruments that shape a column of air with finger holes or keys, sounded by an edge or a reed.
5 entries →04Instruments sounded by the player’s buzzing lips and tuned by the length of their tubing.
4 entries →05Instruments sounded by striking, from tuned bars to drums with membranes.
5 entries →06Instruments in which thin metal tongues vibrate freely through a slot, driven by breath or bellows.
2 entries →Featured entry
The harp is a plucked string instrument whose strings run in a triangular frame at an angle to the soundboard, one string for each pitch. Harps of many shapes have been played for at least four thousand years. The modern concert harp, with 47 strings and seven pedals, became fully chromatic in the early nineteenth century through a mechanism patented by Sébastien Érard. Smaller lever harps and regional harps continue in folk, sacred and popular music around the world.
Read the harp entry Open a different entry
An editorial choice from the collection, not a ranking.
The latest entries to join the library.
The berimbau is a single-stringed musical bow from Brazil: a long wooden arc, a steel wire and a hollow gourd that amplifies the sound. The player strikes the wire with a thin stick while pressing a coin or stone against it and shaking a small basket rattle. Closely tied to African bows brought across the Atlantic, it leads the music of capoeira, setting the pace and mood for the game in the circle.
The koto is a Japanese long zither of about 180 centimetres, with thirteen strings stretched over a hollow paulownia body. Each string has its own movable bridge, so the player tunes by sliding wooden or plastic pieces before a performance, and plucks with picks worn on three fingers. Descended from a Chinese zither, it took its present solo form in the Edo period, through the work of blind musicians, and continues in both traditional and modern music.
The sitar is a long-necked lute of North India and the main plucked voice of Hindustani classical music. Its arched, movable frets let a player glide between notes, and a broad sloping bridge makes each string buzz. Beneath the frets lie extra strings that are never touched but shimmer when melody notes match them. Together these features give the instrument a resonance that lingers like a halo, and they suit the improvised unfolding of a raga.
The banjo is a plucked lute whose body is a round frame covered with a stretched head, like a small drum. It was created in the Americas by enslaved people of West African origin, who built on the gourd lutes of their home regions. Nineteenth-century minstrel shows spread it widely and often in racist caricature, and factories soon mass-produced it. Today it belongs to bluegrass, old-time, jazz and Irish music, and to a growing body of research and revival.
The mandolin is a small, pear-shaped lute with eight metal strings grouped in four pairs and tuned like a violin. Born from Italian lutes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it developed a rounded Neapolitan body and, later, flat-backed and carved arch-top American forms. Because a plucked note fades fast, players sustain pitch with rapid tremolo picking. Its repertoire stretches from Baroque concertos and opera serenades to Irish reels, Brazilian choro and bluegrass.
The ʻukulele is a small four-stringed instrument that took shape in Hawaiʻi in the 1880s, when Portuguese immigrants from Madeira and Hawaiian makers and players adapted a small Madeiran guitar-like instrument, the machete. Its short scale and re-entrant tuning give it a bright, compact sound. It is now made in four common sizes and played in Hawaiian music and in popular and solo styles worldwide.
Nearly every instrument in the library begins with one of these vibrations. Follow a path to see which instruments use it.
A stretched string swings back and forth. A resonating body turns that tiny motion into sound you can hear.
See these instruments →Breath sets the air inside a tube in motion; holes, keys or slides change the length of the column.
See these instruments →A stretched skin or synthetic head is struck and moves the air around it; tension sets the pitch.
See these instruments →Bars and plates ring when struck. Their length, thickness and material decide what you hear.
See these instruments →A thin metal tongue swings through a slot as air passes, giving each reed one steady pitch.
See these instruments →Four ways to wander through the collection.
Bowed, plucked, strummed and struck: from the violin to the sitar.
Explore strings →Woodwinds and brass: air columns shaped by reeds, edges and lips.
Explore winds →Drums and tuned bars, from the timpani to the marimba.
Explore percussion →Keyboards and free reeds: the piano, accordion and harmonica.
Explore keys →Embouchure, temperament, soundboard, overtone: 272 terms explained in plain language and linked to the entries that use them.
Every entry closes with references from museums, universities, libraries and orchestras. Read how claims are weighed and how uncertainty is handled.
