Musical_instrument

A musical instrument is a device constructed or modified for the purpose of making music. In principle anything that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument. The expression, however, is reserved generally for items that have a specific musical purpose. The academic study of musical instruments is called organology.

Some examples of instruments are - trumpet, bassoon, trombone, flute, clarinet, oboe, piccolo, saxophone, violin, viola, violoncello, piano, guitar, bass, lute, koto, sitar, bagpipe, drum, xylophone, pipe organ, theremin, synthesizer, aeolian harp, etc.

Classification

There are numerous schemes for Musical instrument classification. One of the oldest and most widely taught in schools is the Strings, Percussion, and Wind classification scheme which organizes instruments based on how they initially produce sound (e.g. an electric guitar is still considered a string instrument even though there is further sound modification

History

Archaelogical evidence for musical instruments was discovered in excavations at the Royal Cemetery in the Sumerian city of Ur. These instruments include nine lyres, two harps, a silver double flute, sistra and cymbals. These excavations, carried out by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, uncovered non-degradable fragments of instruments and the voids left by the degraded segments which, together, have been used to reconstruct them.de Schauensee, Maude (2002). Two Lyres from Ur. UPenn Museum of Archaeology, 1–16. Retrieved on 2008-01-26.  The graves to which these instruments were related have been carbon dated to between 2600 and 2500 BCE, providing evidence that these instruments were being used in Sumeria by this time.Moorey, P. R. S.1977. What do we know about the people buried in the Royal Cemetery? Expedition20:24–40.

A cuneiform tablet from Nippur in Mesopotamia dated to 2000 BCE indicates the names of strings on the lyre and represents the the earliest known example of music notation.West, M. L., \'The Babylonian Musical Notation and the Hurrian Melodic Texts\', Music & Letters, Vol. 75, No. 2. (May, 1994), pp. 161-179

See also

• Custom-made instrument
• Extended technique
• Folk instrument - a description and a list
• International Computer Music Conference (ICMC)
• List of musical instruments
• Music lessons
• New interfaces for musical expression (NIME)
• Orchestra
• Shorthand for orchestra instrumentation

References

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