| Name | Image | Tradition | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Madal |  | Nepal | The madal is a hand drum which originates in Nepal. It is cylindrical in shape with a slight bulge in the middle. Its main frame is made of wood or clay, and leather in two of its heads is what vibrates and produces the sound. Both heads are played with hands, holding the Madal drum horizontally. This typical Nepalese percussion instrument is the backbone of most of the Nepalese folk music. |
| Madhalam |  | India | Madhalam is a barrel drum from Kerala, South India. It is made out of the wood of the jackfruit tree. It has two sides for playing, made out of leather, which give different beats. This is a heavy instrument which is tied around the waist of the person playing and the player stands all the while to perform. It is one of the three kinds of drum used in the Panchavadyam (a temple associated art form). |
| Mandocello |  | United States | The mandocello (or mandacello) is a musical instrument of the mandolin family. It is similar in general appearance to a mandolin, but is much larger, usually having a scale length of about 25 inches (65 cm), which is similar to that of a guitar. The mandocello has four courses of strings, tuned C'/C G/G d/d a/a. The mandocello is played with a plectrum and is fretted, typically having 23 frets and the pear-shaped body usually allows easy access to the 20th fret, giving the mandocello a range from two octaves below middle C to the F an octave above middle C. |
| Mandola |  | United States | The mandola (US and Canada) or tenor mandola (Europe, Ireland, and UK) is a fretted stringed musical instrument. The mandola has four double courses for a total of eight strings. The instrument is tuned in fifths, to the pitches of the viola (C-G-D-A low-to-high), a fifth lower than a mandolin; the courses are tuned in unison rather than in octaves. The scale length of the mandola is typically around 16.5 inches (420mm). The mandola is typically played with a plectrum (pick). |
| Mandolin |  | Italy | A mandolin is a musical instrument which is plucked, strummed or a combination of both. It is descended from the mandora. The most common design as originated in Naples, Italy has eight metal strings in four pairs (courses) which are plucked with a plectrum. Variants include four-string (one string per course), six-string (one string per course) as per the Milanese design, twelve-string (three strings per course), and sixteen-string (four string per course). It has a body with a teardrop-shaped soundtable (i.e. face), or one which is essentially oval in shape, with a soundhole, or soundholes, of varying shapes which are open and not latticed. The image shows a F-Style mandolin with hand-rubbed varnish finish. |
| Mandora |  | Ukraine | The mandora or mandore, also known as the gallizona or gallichon, is a type of 6 or 8-course bass lute (possibly a descendant of guiterne and/or chitarra italiana) used mainly for basso continuo, in Germany, Austria and Bohemia, particularly during the 18th and early 19th centuries. The construction of the mandora is similar to other baroque lutes. It has a vaulted body (shell) constructed of separate ribs, a flat soundboard with either a carved rose or one which is inset into the soundhole, and a bridge (without a saddle) consisting of a wooden bar acting as a string-holder glued to the soundboard. The image shows a Ukrainian Cossack with a mandora, c.1750. |
| Manjira |  | India | The Manjira is a traditional percussion instrument in India. It is a pair of tiny hand cymbals. The Manjira is used in various religious ceremonies of India, especially bhajans - devotional songs dedicated to some Indian god or goddess. |
| Maraca |  | Puerto Rico | Maraca, or rhumba shaker, is a simple percussion instruments (idiophones), usually played in pairs. The maraca is made out of the hollowed shell of the fruit of the "crescentia cujete" evergreen tree. A piece of wood pierces through the shell as a handle and dried seeds or pebbles inside rattle when the musicians shake the instrument. |
| Maravanne |  | Mauritius | The maravanne, or kayamb, is a flat percussion instrument used in the Mascarene Islands to play sega and maloya music. Maravanne is made of reed (or sugar cane flower stems) and is filled with jequirity (Crab's Eye) or canna seeds, it is shaken horizontally with both hands. |
| Marching Bass Drum |  | United States | The "bass line" is a unique musical ensemble consisting of graduated pitch marching bass drums commonly found in marching bands and drum and bugle corps. Each drum plays a different note, and this gives the bass line a unique task in a musical ensemble. |
| Marimba |  | Guatemala | Guatemala's national instrument is the marimba, an idiophone from the family of the xylophones, which is played all over the country, even in the remotest corners. The marimba is used to play a variety of styles of music, including both local folk and internationally well-known and sophisticated popular music. Keys or bars (usually made of wood) are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys to aid the performer both visually and physically. The marimba's first documentary evidence of existence comes from an account of a performance in front of the cathedral of Santiago de Guatemala, present-day Antigua Guatemala, in 1680. |
| marímbula |  | Cuba | A marímbula (pronounced "mah-REAM-boo-lah") is a folk musical instrument of Caribbean Islands. With its roots in African instruments, marimbula originated in the province of Oriente, Cuba in 19th century. Eventually it spread throughout the Caribbean and the Americas. The sound of a marimbula is produced by plucking the free ends of springy plates ("tongues" or keys) attached by one end to a resonator box. |
| Mark Tree |  | United States | A mark tree (also known as a chime tree or set of bar chimes) is a percussion instrument used primarily for musical color. It consists of many small chimes – typically cylinders of solid metal approximately 6 mm (one-quarter inch) in diameter – of varying lengths mounted hanging from a bar. The chimes are played by sweeping a finger or stick through the length of the hanging chimes. They are mounted in pitch order to produce rising or falling glissandos. The mark tree is named after its inventor, studio percussionist Mark Stevens. He devised the instrument in 1967. |
| Masenqo |  | Ethiopia | The masenqo (also spelled masenko or masinqo) is an instrument used by Ethiopian minstrels, or azmaris ("singer" in Amharic). It is a single-string bowed lute. The square- or diamond-shaped resonator is normally covered with parchment or rawhide. The instrument is tuned by means of a large tuning peg. |
| Matouqin |  | Mongolia | The matouqin (Chinese: 馬頭琴; literally "horse-head fiddle") or morin khuur (Mongolian: морин хуур) is a chordophone from Mongolian. It is played with a bow and produces a sound which is poetically described as expansive and unrestrained, like a wild horse neighing, or like a breeze in the grasslands. It is the most important musical instrument of the Mongolian people, and is considered a symbol of the Mongolian nation. The instrument consists of a wooden-framed sound box to which two strings are attached. It is held nearly upright with the sound box in the musician's lap or between the musician's legs. The strings are made from hairs from horses' tails, strung parallel, and run over a wooden bridge on the body up a long neck to the two tuning pegs in the scroll, which is always carved into the form of a horse's head. |
| Mbila |  | Mozambique | Mbila is a musical xylophone of Mozambique, belonging to the idiophone classification within the percussion family of instruments. Plural of the instrument is timbila. The Mbila achieves sound amplification using resonators made from the spherical hard shells of the Masala Apple, one mounted under each key. The tuning of any a key is achieved through first roasting the wood around a fire and then shaping the the key to achieve the desired tone. The resonator is tuned to the key through (1) the careful choice of size of resonator, (2) the adjustment of the diameter of the mouth of the resonator using wasp wax, and (3) adjustment of the height of the key above the resonator. The mbila is played by striking the bars with mallets. The instrument is traditionally associated with the Chopi people of the Inhambane Province, in southern Mozambique. |
| Mbira |  | Zimbabwe | In Zimbabwean music, the mbira is a musical instrument consisting of a wooden board to which staggered metal keys have been attached. It is often fitted into a deze that functions as a resonator. Mbira performances are usually accompanied by hosho (a type of rattle). The Mbira Dzavadzimu is very significant in Shona religion and culture. It is the national instrument of Zimbabwe, and is considered sacred. |
| Mellotron |  | England | The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. The heart of the mellotron is a bank of magnetic audio tapes (which are parallel linear, not looped as has sometimes been reported or presumed). Each tape has approximately eight seconds of playing time. Playback heads (underneath each key) enable the playing of pre-recorded sounds. The earlier MKI and MKII models contained two side-by-side keyboards: On the right keyboard were 18 selectable "lead/instrument" sounds (such as strings, flutes, and brass instruments). The left keyboard played pre-recorded musical rhythm tracks (in various styles). |
| Melodeon |  | England | A melodeon or diatonic button accordion is a type of button accordion where the melody-side keyboard is limited to the notes of diatonic scales in a small number of keys (sometimes only one). The bass side usually contains the principal chords of the instrument's key and the root notes of those chords. There is some geographic disagreement over the terms button accordion and melodeon. In England a bisonoric (different note on push and draw of the bellows) button accordion with one, two or three rows of buttons on the right hand (melody) side is likely to be called a melodeon. In Ireland a melodeon refers only to one-row instruments, while in the southern United States even these are called accordions. |
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