MUSICAL
INSTRUMENT
Concina
Minnette A. BEED 2 – IRR
Partido
State University
College of Education
concina.minnette@yahoo.com
February
8, 2013
Musical
instrument
- a device created or adapted to musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument
- evolved in step with changing applications.
- developed independently in many populated regions of the world.
- The classification of musical instruments is a discipline in its own right, and many systems of classification have been used over the years. One may classify musical instruments by their effective range or their material composition; however, the most common method, Hornbostel-Sachs, uses the means by which they produce sound. The academic study of musical instruments is called organology.
History
·
Scholars agree that there are no completely reliable methods
of determining the exact chronology of musical instruments across cultures.
Comparing and organizing instruments based on their complexity is misleading,
since advancements in musical instruments have sometimes reduced complexity.
For example, construction of early slit drums involved felling and
hollowing out large trees; later slit drums were made by opening bamboo stalks,
a much simpler task.
·
Instruments
are the tools of musicians. And like other craftsmen, as the musician becomes
more skilled he/she becomes more capable of producing great works with his/her
tool.
Music seems to be a primal love of people. It seems that as new
ways were found to make music news of their development spread quickly. So
there are ancient drums, harps and whistles in Asia that look very similar to
ancient instruments in Africa, Europe and the Americas. Many modern instruments
are refinements of these very primitive instruments. It is only with the
development of electronics that the method of making music has dramatically
changed.
·
Musical instruments have been acquired more
as works of outstanding beauty than of musicological importance. This might at
first seem odd, especially when we consider that sound is the most important
aspect of a musical instrument. However, working instruments tend to be
discarded once they are no longer playable. Exceptionally beautiful examples
are more likely to be preserved, even if they end up as family mementoes or
artists' props.
Classification
- Idiophones, such as the xylophone and rattle , produce sound by vibrating themselves; they are sorted into concussion, percussion, shaken, scraped, split, and plucked idiophones.
Idiophone is
any musical instrument which creates sound primarily by way of the instrument
vibrating itself, without the use of strings or membranes. It is the first of
the four main divisions in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical
instrument classification.
- Membranophones, such as drums or kazoos , produce sound by a vibrating membrane; they are sorted into predrum membranophones, tubular drums, friction idiophones, kettledrums (timpani), friction drums, and mirlitons.
Membranophone is
any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by way of a vibrating
stretched membrane. It is one of the four main divisions of instruments in the
original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification.
- Chordophones, such as the piano or cello, produce sound by vibrating strings; they are sorted into zithers , keyboard chordophones, lyres , harps, lutes, and bowed chordophones .
Chordophones is any musical
instrument which makes sound by way of a vibrating string or strings stretched
between two points. It is one of the four main divisions of instruments in the
original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification.
- Aerophones, such as the pipe organ or oboe, produce sound by vibrating columns of air; they are sorted into free aerophones, flutes, organs, reedpipes, and lip-vibrated aerophones.
Aerophone is
any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by causing a body of air
to vibrate, without the use of strings or membranes, and without the vibration
of the instrument itself adding considerably to the sound.
The table below shows
some examples of each of the musical instruments classification (Table 1.1).
|
Classification
|
Example of Instrument
|
Definition
|
|
Idiophones
|
Xylophone
|
A percussion
instrument consisting of a row of chromatically tuned wooden bars, arranged in the manner of
a piano keyboard. The bars are supported by a wooden
frame over resonator tubes and they are sounded by being
struck with mallets.
|
|
Membranophones
|
Bass drum
|
|
|
Chordophones
|
Guitar
|
a string instrument of the chordophone family constructed
from wood and strung with either nylon or steel strings.
|
|
Aerophones
|
Flute
|
a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments
with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless
wind instrument that
produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening.
|
References:
wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_instrument
library.thinkquest.org/11315/instrum.html
