Types of musical instruments

A musical instrument is an equipment used to create musical sounds. The musical instrument’s history goes back to 67000 years ago, it is believed that the earliest known musical instrument was a flute (pipe bones were used as flute at that time).

There is no defined number for types of musical instruments but generally, there are four general types given as follows:

Stringed musical instruments: also known as Chordophones, these instruments consist of strings, a string is a vibrational element that is responsible for producing sounds. String instruments are Harp, Piano, guitar, Ukelele, Cello and other members related to the Violin family. The strings installed in them are flexible and are stretched to release the tension with which the strings are held by the instrument. These instruments are played by the musicians by plucking the strings using their bare hands or a plectrum.
Membrane musical instruments: also known as a membranophone, these instruments have membranes in them which vibrates to produce sound. Examples of membrane instruments are drums, kazoo, friction drums and mirliton. Drums are classified into different types based on their shapes such as conical, cylindrical, goblet, long, footed, waisted and vessel, Bongo is one of them.
Plate type musical instruments: These are a type of percussion instruments, in which two plates are generally used together to produce sound in some ways. The music is produced by vibration among thick plates. Examples of these types of instruments are Manjira (Cymbals), Jal-Tarang, Chekkaht e.t.c.
Wind musical instruments: These instruments basically use air columns to produce sound. There are so many types of wind instruments and all of them differs in diversity, sonority and structure. These are mainly used in orchestra and are grouped into two categories: brass and woodwinds. Flutes, mouthorgan and saxophones come under woodwinds and cornett and serpent come under brass.

Music notation is a system of representing the music of any kind using written or printed symbols. These marks or symbols show how the piece of music has to be performed. There are musical symbols that are used to communicate between different musical elements such as dynamics, duration, pitch, tempo, metre or any other detail about the music. These musical notations vary depending upon different regions and cultures. In professional classical music performances, sheet music notations are used consisting of staves and noteheads but for country music, the Nashville Number system is used. These symbols are an amalgamation of ancient and modern symbols, and these symbols are used to represent only the rhythms and melodies thus they limit our understanding of music. Nowadays, computer programs are available to produce notation of any musical instrument and it has not remained the complex task it once was.

Types of musical instruments

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