Musical Instruments | music theory

INSTRUMENT FAMILIES
CLASSIFICATION • SOUND PRODUCTION • ENSEMBLE ROLES

Understanding Instrument Families

Musical instruments can be grouped into families according to how they produce sound. Explore the main instrument families, learn how individual instruments work, and discover the roles they play in orchestras and other ensembles.

Western Classification

The system used in the west today, dividing instruments into wind, strings, and percussion, is of Greek origin.Wind Instruments Woodwind Instruments The woodwind instruments look like long tubes with lots of keys. Some have pieces of wood, called reeds that performers blow into to make sounds. Others, like flutes and piccolos, have a hole across which players blow to make sound. The modern orchestra's woodwind section typically includes flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons. The piccolo, cor anglais, bass clarinet, E-flat clarinet, and contrabassoon are commonly used supplementary woodwind instruments.

Brass Instruments

The brass instruments are made from metal and are curvy. Performers blow into them through metal mouthpieces. The brass family members that are most commonly used in the orchestra include the trumpet, French horn, trombone, and tuba.

String Instruments

All string instruments produce sound from one or more vibrating strings, transferred to the air by the body of the instrument. They are usually categorised by the technique used to make the strings vibrate (or by the primary technique, in the case of instruments where more than one may apply). The three most common techniques are plucking, bowing, and striking.

Bowed String Instruments
Bowing is a method of playing instruments using a bow. The bow consists of a stick with many hairs stretched between its ends. Bowing the instrument's strings makes them vibrate. Instruments normally played by bowing may also be plucked, a technique referred to by the Italian term pizzicato. The bowed strings are the largest family of instruments in the orchestra and come in four sizes: the violin, which is the smallest, viola, cello, and the largest, the double bass, sometimes called the contrabass.

Plucked String Instruments

Plucking is a method of playing string instruments using a finger, thumb, or plectrum to make the strings vibrate. In the orchestra, the main plucked string instrument is the harp.

Struck / Hammered String Instruments

Another method of sound production in string instruments is to strike the strings. The piano uses this method, with small hammers striking the strings when the keys are pressed.

Keyboard Instruments

Keyboard instruments can be difficult to classify because they produce sound in different ways. The piano has strings that are struck by hammers, the harpsichord has strings that are plucked, while instruments such as the organ produce sound without strings. For this reason, keyboard instruments are often treated as a separate family based on the way they are played rather than on how the sound is produced.

THE ORCHESTRA Discover how the orchestra is organised and how the different instrument families work together.

Percussion Instruments

The percussion family is the largest in the orchestra. Percussion instruments produce sound when they are hit, shaken, or scraped. Unlike most other orchestral players, a percussionist will often play several different instruments within a single piece of music.

Tuned (Pitched) Percussion Instruments

Tuned percussion instruments produce musical notes of one or more definite pitches and can therefore be used to play melodies. Examples include the xylophone, glockenspiel, marimba, vibraphone, and timpani.

Untuned (Unpitched) Percussion Instruments

Untuned percussion instruments produce sounds without a definite musical pitch. They are mainly used to create rhythm, accents, and different sound effects. Examples include the bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, triangle, tambourine, and castanets.