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The accordion is a portable free-reed instrument in which the player pumps a pleated bellows to push air across metal reeds, choosing notes with keys or buttons on two sides. A patent granted in Vienna in 1829 is usually cited as its starting point, though similar instruments were being built at about the same time. It spread through migration and trade into dance, song and concert traditions on nearly every continent.
The acoustic guitar is a fretted, plucked or strummed instrument whose strings vibrate over a hollow wooden body that amplifies them without electricity. It exists in two main families: the nylon-string classical guitar, refined in Spain in the nineteenth century, and the steel-string guitar, developed largely in the United States. Both normally carry six strings tuned E–A–D–G–B–E, and together they accompany song, carry solo repertoire and support a wide range of folk and popular styles.
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 bassoon is the bass voice of the woodwind family: a long conical tube folded back on itself, played with a double reed on a curved metal crook. It developed from Renaissance double-reed instruments in the seventeenth century and was reshaped in the nineteenth by two makers’ traditions, the German Heckel system and the French Buffet system, which still differ in bore, keys and fingering.
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 cello is the tenor-bass member of the violin family: a four-string instrument played seated, with its body resting on a floor spike between the player’s knees. Its strings are tuned in fifths an octave below the viola, giving a compass of roughly four octaves that spans much of the human bass and tenor voice and more. Developed in sixteenth-century Italy, it moved from supporting bass lines to concertos, suites and chamber music, and it remains a fixture of orchestras and string quartets.
The clarinet is a woodwind with a cylindrical bore, a flared bell and a single cane reed clamped to a mouthpiece. Its tube behaves acoustically like one closed at the reed end, so it overblows at the twelfth instead of the octave, giving the instrument its dark lower register, its bright upper one and a wide compass. Traditionally credited to Johann Christoph Denner of Nuremberg around 1700, it became established in the orchestra in the later eighteenth century and is now made in a large family of sizes.
The double bass is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern orchestra, standing well over a metre and a half tall and played upright from a stool or standing. It is tuned in fourths rather than fifths and sounds an octave lower than written. Its ancestry is debated, because it blends features of the viol and violin families. It anchors orchestral harmony, and in jazz and bluegrass it is usually plucked to keep the beat.
The drum kit gathers a bass drum, snare drum, tom-toms and cymbals around one seated player, who operates some of them with the feet. It took shape in the United States between the late 1800s and the 1930s, as the work of several percussionists was consolidated into the job of one performer. It anchors jazz, rock, pop and many other styles with pulse, accent and colour.
The electric guitar turns the vibration of steel strings into an electrical signal, which an amplifier and loudspeaker convert back into sound. It emerged in the United States in the 1930s as players sought to be heard over larger ensembles, and it became a central instrument of rock, blues and much of jazz. Its body may be solid, hollow or something between, but its character depends as much on pickups, amplifier and effects as on the wood.
The modern concert flute is a long, narrow metal tube played sideways, sounded by directing a stream of air across a hole near one end. It has no reed, which is why it is classed as an edge-blown flute and not a reed woodwind. Its form comes from Theobald Boehm’s designs of the 1830s and 1840s, which reorganised holes and keys for accuracy of pitch. Related side-blown flutes of bamboo, wood and bone appear in musical traditions across Asia, Europe and beyond.
The horn is a coiled brass instrument with a wide, flaring bell and a funnel-shaped mouthpiece, played with the left hand on the valves and the right hand inside the bell. Descended from hunting horns, it gained a chromatic scale first through hand technique and later through valves. Today’s orchestral horn is usually a double horn that combines two lengths of tubing, and its dark, blending tone makes it a bridge between woodwinds and brass.
The harmonica is a small free-reed instrument played by breathing in and out across a row of holes, each leading to a pair of metal reeds. It grew from a crowd of early nineteenth-century experiments in German-speaking Europe, then spread across the world as a cheap, pocket-sized instrument. Diatonic, chromatic and tremolo models serve blues, folk, country, jazz and concert repertoire.
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.
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 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 marimba is a keyboard-shaped set of tuned wooden bars struck with mallets, each bar backed by a resonator that amplifies its note. Its name and its basic design trace to African traditions, and it took its best-known forms in Guatemala and southern Mexico, where gourd resonators gave way to wooden and later metal tubes. Today it serves village celebrations, marimba bands and concert halls alike, with a solo repertoire built around four-mallet playing.
The oboe is a slender, conical-bored woodwind sounded by a pair of cane blades bound together, a double reed. It emerged in France in the seventeenth century as a refined descendant of the shawm and has been a fixture of orchestras ever since. Its clear, penetrating tone is the pitch reference to which an orchestra tunes, and its mechanism exists in several regional systems.
The piano is a keyboard instrument in which felt-covered hammers strike tensioned metal strings, and in which the player shapes loudness through the speed of the touch. Devised in Italy around 1700, it grew through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries into an iron-framed machine with a standard compass of 88 keys. It serves as solo voice, accompanist, chamber partner and orchestral colour, and it remains a working tool for composing, teaching and rehearsing in many musical traditions.
The saxophone is a family of instruments with a single-reed mouthpiece like a clarinet’s and a conical body of brass, combining features of two instrument groups. Adolphe Sax, a Belgian-born maker working in Paris, patented the design in 1846. Sizes from soprano to baritone share one fingering system, which has allowed the instrument to move between military bands, concert halls and jazz clubs.
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.
Timpani are large kettledrums: a calfskin or plastic head stretched over a bowl of copper or fibreglass and tuned to a definite pitch, today usually with a foot pedal. Descended from cavalry drums brought into Europe, they joined orchestras in the seventeenth century and became the percussion section’s principal pitched drums. Their sound depends on the interplay of membrane, air and shell.
The trombone is a brass instrument that changes pitch with a telescoping U-shaped slide instead of valves, so the player can lengthen the tube smoothly and slide between notes. Its ancestor, the sackbut, appears in European records by about 1500 and was used in church and civic music. The modern trombone entered the orchestra in the early nineteenth century and remains central to bands and jazz.
The trumpet is a brass instrument with a largely cylindrical tube, a flared bell and a cup-shaped mouthpiece against which the player’s lips buzz. Metal signal trumpets date back to antiquity, and the modern valved form took shape in the early nineteenth century. Today it serves as the high voice of the brass section and as a solo instrument in classical music, jazz and popular styles.
The tuba is the lowest-sounding member of the brass family: a wide, conical tube of twelve to eighteen feet folded into an upright shape, sounded with a large cup mouthpiece and pitched with three to six valves. Patented in Berlin in 1835 and developed alongside similar instruments in the following decade, it took over the bass line once held by the serpent and ophicleide, and it now anchors orchestras, bands and brass ensembles.
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.
The vibraphone is a keyboard of tuned aluminum bars played with mallets, with a resonator tube under each bar and a motor that opens and closes the tubes to produce a wavering vibrato. A foot pedal controls how long the notes ring. Developed in the United States in the early 1920s, it moved quickly into dance bands and jazz and has since found a place in chamber music, percussion ensembles and occasional orchestral scores.
The viola is the middle voice of the violin family, tuned a fifth below the violin to C, G, D and A and held under the chin and played with a bow. Its body is larger than a violin's, but not large enough to match its low pitch, which gives it a dark, slightly husky tone. Music for it is usually written in the alto clef. It fills the inner harmony of the orchestra and the string quartet and has a solo repertoire that grew mostly in the twentieth century.
The violin is the smallest and highest-pitched member of the modern violin family, with four strings tuned a fifth apart and set into vibration by a horsehair bow. It took its recognisable form in northern Italy in the sixteenth century and was refined in Cremona over the next two hundred years. It leads the orchestra, anchors the string quartet, stars in the concerto and, under the name fiddle, drives dance and folk music in many regions.
A xylophone is a set of tuned wooden or synthetic bars struck with mallets. The name covers a worldwide family, from West African balafons to Javanese gambangs, and also the keyboard-layout orchestral instrument, which sounds bright, dry and penetrating and is written an octave lower than it sounds. It is distinct from the marimba, which is lower, wider and warmer.