About the Project
An independent editorial library for people who want to understand how musical instruments work, where they come from and how they are played.
What this library is
Mary Aguirre — Atlas Musical is a reference library devoted to musical instruments. Each entry is a full article rather than a catalogue card: it follows an instrument from its earliest documented forms, through the workshops and traditions that shaped it, to the way it is built, played and cared for today. 30 instruments from six families are published so far, from the concert piano and the violin family to the sitar, the koto and the berimbau.
The library is arranged so that you can arrive from any direction. You can search by a name or a word, browse by family, walk the alphabetical index, combine filters in the catalogue, or read the glossary to decode the vocabulary that instrument makers and players take for granted.
How entries are written
Every entry follows the same sequence of questions — history, construction, sound production, range and timbre, playing technique, variations, repertoire, care and verified curiosities — but the answers are written for each instrument on its own terms. A drum with a tunable membrane and a bowed lute of the Hindustani tradition do not raise the same questions, and the entries do not pretend that they do.
Where historians agree, the entries say so plainly. Where origins are disputed, legends are older than the evidence, or sources disagree, the text says that too. Every entry closes with the institutions and reference works it draws on. The full approach is described on the Sources and Methodology page, and the standards that govern the library are set out in the Editorial Policy.
What you will not find here
There are no prices, shop links, rankings or statements that one instrument is better than another. There is no advertising, and there are no sponsored entries. Instruments are treated as cultural objects and as acoustic machines, not as products.
Take part
A reader who spots an error, knows a better source or has a rights concern about an image can write through the contact page. Corrections are handled under the Corrections Policy.