An object that can be used to produce music is called a musical instrument. A musical instrument may be as large and complicated as a pipe organ or as small and simple as a tiny bell or whistle. The power of musical instruments is so great that many cultures believe them to be the invention of the gods. Musical instruments are found in almost all cultures and all periods of history. Scientists have found clay drums and shell trumpets that were used thousands of years ago by some of the earliest humans. They have also found evidence that the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, India, East Asia, and the Americas all had a wide assortment of musical instruments. UsesMusical instruments have great power to stir human feelings. In some places, they were thought to have magical powers. Drums were used to chase away evil spirits in many cultures. During eclipses of the moon, Chinese people struck gongs to frighten away the dragon that they thought was devouring the moon. Instruments are also used in religions around the world. Many Christian churches have bells in a steeple and an organ inside the building. Jews mark certain holy days by blowing upon the shofar, or ram's-horn trumpet. Japanese Buddhists ring in the new year with huge temple bells that are struck with the ends of logs. Musical instruments also have a military function. Drums and bagpipes have been used on battlefields to inspire soldiers to heroic deeds. Marching bands can stir the patriotic feelings of onlookers. Trumpeters blow fanfares and drummers beat kettledrums to announce the arrival of kings and other important persons. Musical instruments are played for pleasure and entertainment as well. They can be played alone or with other instruments. In Western music, the term for a small group of musicians playing together is chamber music. A larger group is known as an orchestra. Types of instrumentsMusic scholars have grouped musical instruments according to the way they produce the vibrations that people hear as sound. Idiophones are percussion instruments that make a sound when they are struck, shaken, scraped, plucked, or rubbed. Membranophones, such as drums, have a stretched skin that vibrates when struck or rubbed. Chordophones, also known as stringed instruments, make use of a stretched string that vibrates when plucked, struck, or rubbed with a bow. Aerophones, or wind instruments, use a column of vibrating air to produce sound. Electrophones are electronic instruments, which produce sound by means of electronic circuits. Musicians themselves group instruments according to the way they are played. In this system the four main groups are percussion, string, wind, and keyboard. Percussion instrumentsPercussion instruments may be idiophones or membranophones. Most percussion instruments are used to establish rhythm, though some, including kettledrums, the xylophone, and bells, can be tuned to play specific tones. Membranophones consist mostly of drums, which come in many different shapes and sizes. They can be beaten with the hands or with other objects, including sticks. Idiophones include cymbals, castanets, bells, gongs, and one of the simplest and earliest forms of instruments—rattles. Stringed instrumentsStringed instruments are chordophones. They are divided into categories based on how the strings are attached to the body of the instrument. The main groups are lutes, zithers, lyres, and harps. The strings are generally plucked or played with a bow. Lyres and harps date back to the earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. The harp has many strings, each of which produces a different note. The length of the string determines its pitch, with shorter strings producing higher notes. In zithers the strings are stretched across a frame that has no projecting neck or arms. The stringed instruments of the modern symphony orchestra include (from smallest to largest) the violin, viola, cello, and double bass. They are all in the lute family, which means that the strings of each are stretched over a long neck that extends from the body of the instrument. They make sounds when the strings are rubbed with a horsehair bow or plucked with the fingers. Pitch is changed by using the fingers of the other hand to press down on the strings at different points of the neck. The wooden body of the instrument amplifies the sound. Guitars and banjos belong to the lute family as well. They are played with a pick or by plucking the strings with the fingers. Pitch is controlled with the aid of frets, which are ridges that run across the fingerboard. Wind instrumentsWind instruments are aerophones. The sound is created by a stream of air that flows through or around the body of the instrument. In most cases the air comes from the player's mouth. In modern Western orchestras wind instruments are divided into brass instruments and woodwinds (which are not necessarily made of wood). A brass instrument's sound is produced by the player's own vibrating lips, held against a mouthpiece. Brass instruments include the trombone, trumpet, French horn, and tuba. The woodwinds are divided into reed instruments and flutes. The clarinet and saxophone are single-reed woodwinds. In these instruments the player's breath causes a flat reed to vibrate against a mouthpiece. Double-reed instruments, such the oboe and the bassoon, have no mouthpiece. Instead, the player blows through the two reeds to create a vibrating column of air. The flute and related instruments such as the high-pitched piccolo have no reeds. The player blows across an opening in the side of the instrument. Woodwind pitch is controlled by means of keys or finger holes that change the column of air as it flows through the body of the instrument. People throughout the world play different types of flutes. The whistle flute is played by blowing air over the opening at one end of the instrument. Panpipes are a set of flutes bound together in a row. Each is slightly smaller than the one next to it, and as a player blows air over the openings the panpipe produces a different pitch for each pipe. Bagpipes are another form of wind instrument. In this instrument air is either blown by mouth or produced by bellows and is stored in a bag. The air flows from the bag through a pipe with a reed. Another pipe has finger holes and is used to play particular notes. Keyboard instrumentsKeyboard instruments may be grouped according to what kind of mechanism the keys control. The carillon is an idiophone, because the keys ring bells. The piano and harpsichord are both chordophones. The strings of a piano are struck with hammers, while the strings of a harpsichord are plucked. The pipe organ is an aerophone, because compressed air is pumped through pipes to make the sounds. The accordion is another aerophone. A flow of air from a pleated bellows is pushed past reeds to make the sound. The electronic organ and the synthesizer are electrophones. They can make many different kinds of electronic sounds. HistoryAlthough scientists have found instruments that are thousands of years old, they have not been able to determine exactly how the instruments were developed. Prehistoric people sang, clapped their hands, and stamped their feet. It is possible that they then found that objects like sticks, gourds, and shells could be used to beat rhythms and make pleasing sounds. Animal skins stretched on a frame were found to be useful as drums. To make the sound louder, the skin was set against a hole or a gourd or a pot. Some of the earliest instruments that have been discovered were rattles, scrapers, drums, and other basic forms of percussion. These may have been used at first only to communicate with other people or as part of ceremonies. Flutes made of bone and other types of wind instruments are also among the oldest forms. About 6,000 years ago people began to settle in communities and form civilizations—such as those at Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt in the Middle East. They also began to create more complex instruments and to use them for entertainment as well as ceremonies. One important discovery was that a stretched string made of animal gut or vegetable fiber can produce musical notes. One of the earliest forms of such a stringed instrument was the lyre. Samples of these dating from about 2600 BC have been found in the area that was Mesopotamia. These cultures had early forms of trumpets and horns as well. These early instruments spread into the rest of the world, though each area developed its own forms of instruments as well. In Central and South America wind instruments, particularly panpipes, became especially important. Drums became especially well developed in Africa. There they are still used for ceremonies, as musical instruments, and to communicate with others. Talking drums from West Africa can be heard over a distance of 20 miles (32 kilometers). The player can adjust the skin of the drum so that it makes different sounds that echo the language of the area. Keyboard instruments were developed mostly in Europe. In the Middle Ages, from about 500 to 1500 AD, contact between different groups of people increased as travel increased. As a result, musical instruments spread to new areas. Also during this period improvements were made to existing instruments. The stringed instruments had been played by plucking the strings until the bow was developed in the Middle Ages. More changes were made to instruments, and new forms were developed, as musicians began to write more music to take advantage of the different sounds that could be made by different instruments. By the 18th century most of the instruments of the modern Western orchestra were in existence, though changes continue to be made. In the 20th century electronic instruments were added to the collection. |