Classifying musical instruments

Idiophone categories

• Percussion idiophones are hit with sticks, beaters, or clappers (bells, steel drums).
• Shaken idiophones are shaken (maracas, eggs, jingle bells).
• Concussion idiophones are played by clashing two of them together (castanets, claves, spoons).
• Friction idiophones are made to vibrate by rubbing them (as when you make a wine glass ring by rubbing its rim).
• Scraped idiophones are played by scraping a stick across a set of notches or corrugations on the instrument (guiro, washboard).
• Stamping idiophones are stamped on the ground, floor, or hard surface. (Tap shoes are in this category.)
• If the main sound is coming from the surface that is being stamped on, it is a stamped idiophone.
• Plucked idiophones have a thin tongue of metal or bamboo that vibrates when plucked (jew's harp, mbira or thumb piano).

Electrophones

An instrument that is not amplified electrically is an acoustic instrument. There are instruments (such as the electric-acoustic guitar, vibraphone, and electric saxophone) that keep their acoustic resonators but are also amplified and altered electronically. Actually any instrument sound that has been through a microphone and amplifier, or even been saved as a recording, belongs in this category. These instruments are probably best categorized as they would be before being amplified.

There are also a large number of instruments that could be categorized as either mechanical or electrical. Mechanical instruments are played by some mechanical mechanism instead of by a person. (Music boxes, player pianos, and carillons are in this category.) Electric instruments (electric guitar, electric bass) rely on electronics instead of a resonator to amplify and alter the sound. These hybrid instruments may be categorized as mechanical or electric instruments, or they may be classified according to how the sound is produced before it is amplified (electric guitar is still a plucked lute chordophone, for example, or perhaps simply an electric chordophone) or after the mechanism causes it to play (carillons are percussion idiophones - bells).

But there are some instruments that are true electrophones ; their sound is both produced and amplified by electronic circuits. (This group includes the electric organ, synthesizer, and theremin.)

Activities

Acknowledgements

Except for "Basic Chordophone Types", all illustrations are by Margaret Jones. When copying this material under the Creative Commons license, please make appropriate attribution. Thank you.