musical instruments definition of musical instruments in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

musical instruments are classified in various ways, but the system devised in 1914 by Kurt Sachs and E. M. von Hornbostel has been accorded recognition by both anthropologists and musicologists because it is applicable not only to modern Western instruments but to primitive and exotic instruments as well. This system divides instruments into five main classes: idiophones, membranophones, aerophones, chordophones, and electrophones. Most idiophones, which are instruments made of a sonorous material needing no additional tension, and membranophones, whose sound is produced by the vibrations of a membrane stretched over a hollow resonator, are popularly grouped as percussion instruments percussion instrument, any instrument that produces musical sound when its surface is struck with an implement (such as a mallet, stick, or disk) or with the hand.
..... Click the link for more information. ; certain instruments, however, such as the jew's-harp jew's-harp or jews'-harp, musical instrument of ancient lineage composed of a small metal frame containing a flexible metal tongue. The frame is held between the teeth and the metal tongue is plucked with the fingers.
..... Click the link for more information. and the glass harmonica (see harmonica harmonica.

1 The simplest of the musical instruments employing free reeds, known also as the mouth organ or French harp. It was probably invented in 1829 by Friedrich Buschmann of Berlin, who called his instrument the Mundäoline.
..... Click the link for more information. (2)), are idiophones, but are not percussion instruments. Aerophones are of two types: free aerophones, which include those reed instruments reed instrument, in music, an instrument whose sound-producing agent is a thin strip of cane, wood, plastic, or metal that vibrates as air is passed over it. The predecessor of these instruments is the Chinese sheng.
..... Click the link for more information. employing free reeds, and wind instruments wind instrument, in music, any instrument whose tone is produced by a vibrating column of air. In the pipe organ the column of air is set into vibration by mechanical means.
..... Click the link for more information. , which produce sound by means of an enclosed, vibrating column of air. Chordophones are stringed instruments stringed instrument, any musical instrument whose tone is produced by vibrating strings. Those whose strings are plucked with the finger or a plectrum include the balalaika , banjo , guitar , harp , lute , mandolin , zither , the sitar of India and Pakistan, the koto
..... Click the link for more information. . Electrophones, a development of the 20th cent., are of two types: those which simply add an electric amplifier to some existing instrument, e.g., the piano, guitar, or reed organ, and those whose sounds originate as electrical vibrations, e.g., the electric organ. See articles on individual instruments, e.g., dulcimer dulcimer (dŭl`sĭmər), stringed musical instrument.
..... Click the link for more information. .

Bibliography

See K. Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments (1940); K. Geiringer, Musical Instruments (1943, 2d ed. 1978); A. Buchner, Musical Instruments: An Illustrated History (rev. ed. 1973).