| Name | Image | Description | Video |
|---|---|---|---|
| Acoustic Bass Guitar |  | The acoustic bass guitar (also called ABG or acoustic bass) is a bass instrument with a hollow wooden body similar to, though usually somewhat larger than a steel-string acoustic guitar. The first modern acoustic bass guitar was developed in the early 1960s by Ernie Ball of San Luis Obispo, California. Ball's aim was to provide bass guitarists with a more acoustic-sounding instrument that would match better with the sound of acoustic guitars. | |
| Appalachian Dulcimer |  | The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings, although contemporary versions of the instrument can have as many as twelve strings and six courses. The body extends the length of the fingerboard and traditionally has an hourglass, teardrop, triangular, or elliptical shape (also called the galax). As a folk instrument, wide variation exists in Appalachian dulcimers. A traditional way to play the instrument is to lay it flat on the lap and pluck or strum the strings with one hand, while fretting with the other. | |
| Autoharp |  | The Autoharp is a musical string instrument having a series of chord bars attached to dampers which, when depressed, mute all the strings other than those that form the desired chord. Despite its name, the autoharp is not a harp at all, but a zither. The generic term for the instrument is chorded zither. Autoharps have been used in the United States as bluegrass and folk instruments, perhaps most famously by Maybelle Carter and Sara Carter of The Carter Family. | |
| Banjo |  | The banjo is a stringed instrument developed by enslaved Africans in the United States, adapted from several African instruments. The modern banjo comes in a variety of different forms, including four- (plectrum and tenor banjos) and five-string versions. A six-string version, tuned and played similar to a guitar, is gaining popularity. The plectrum banjo (see image) has four strings, lacking the shorter fifth drone string, and around 22 frets; it is usually tuned CGBD. As the name suggests, it is usually played with a guitar-style pick (that is, a single one held between thumb and forefinger), unlike the five-string banjo, which is either played with a thumbpick and two fingerpicks, or with bare fingers. | |
| Banjolin |  | A "banjolin" is a type of 4 string banjo, pitched in the same register as a mandolin popularized in the 1920s. It is tuned and played the same as a mandolin. The major difference it has from a Mandolin is a 10.5- to 11-inch banjo-body which serves to amplify the instrument relative to a standard mandolin (especially important in the days before widespread electric amplification). The banjolin has 4 strings (as opposed to the mandolin and mandolin-banjo which have 4 courses). The scale length and tuning are identical to the mandolin (low to high: GDAE). | |
| Baritone Guitar |  | The baritone guitar is a variation on the standard guitar, with a longer scale length that allows it to be tuned to a lower range. The Danelectro Company was the first to introduce the baritone guitar in the late 1950s. The baritone guitar was not originally popular with players or listeners. However, the instrument began to appear in surf music, as well as background music for many movie soundtracks, especially spaghetti westerns. It also has the ability to be used as a bass guitar if strung correctly. The image shows Clifton Hyde with a Mustapick acoustic baritone guitar; Brooklyn, NY 2007. | |
| Bass Saxophone |  | The bass saxophone is the second largest existing member of the saxophone family (not counting the subcontrabass tubax). It is similar in design to a baritone saxophone, but it is larger, with a longer loop near the mouthpiece. Unlike the baritone, the bass saxophone is not commonly used. The bass saxophone enjoyed some measure of popularity in jazz combos between World War I and World War II, with the bass saxophone used primarily to provide bass lines. | |
| Bell Tree |  | A bell tree is a percussion instrument, consisting of vertically nested metal bowls. The bowls are placed on a vertical rod with the smallest on the bottom and the rounded part facing up. They are played with a triangle beater or a glockenspiel mallet by sliding the mallet down the tree, producing an effective glissando. | |
| Chamber Organ |  | A chamber organ is a small pipe organ, often with only one manual, and sometimes without separate pedal pipes, that is placed in a small room, that this diminutive organ can fill with sound. It is often confined to chamber organ repertoire, as often, the organs have too little voice capabilities to rival the grand pipe organs in the performance of the classics. The sound and touch are unique unto the instrument, sounding nothing like a large organ with few stops drawn out, but rather much more intimate. They are usually tracker instruments, although the modern builders are often building electropneumatic chamber organs. The image shows a chamber organ in a church of Williamsburg, Virginia. | |
| Chapman Stick |  | The Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. He set out to create an instrument designed for the "Free Hands" tapping method of both hands parallel to the frets that he invented in 1969. The first production model of the Stick was shipped in 1974. Superficially, a Stick looks like a wide version of the fretboard of an electric guitar, with 8, 10 or 12 strings. It is usually played by tapping or fretting the strings, rather than plucking them. | |
| Chord Organ |  | A chord organ is a free-reed musical instrument, similar to a small reed organ, in which sound is produced by the flow of air, usually driven by an electric motor, over plastic or metal reeds. Much like the accordion, the chord organ has both a keyboard and a set of chord buttons, enabling the musician to play a melody or lead with one hand and accompanying chords with the other. Chord organs have seen a recent revival amongst minimalist and ambient musicians. The image shows a Magnus 890 electric chord organ. | |
| Cigar Box Guitar |  | The cigar box guitar is a primitive chordophone whose resonator is a discarded cigar box. Because the instrument is homemade, there is no standard for dimensions, string types or construction techniques. Many early cigar box guitars consisted only of one or two strings that were attached to the ends of a broomstick that was inserted into the cigar box. The earliest proof of a cigar box instrument found so far is an etching of two Civil War Soldiers at a campsite with one playing a cigar box fiddle. | |
| Clapper |  | A clapper is a basic form of percussion instrument. It consists of two long solid pieces that are clapped together producing sound. The plastic thundersticks (see image) that have recently come to be popular at sporting events can be considered a form of inflated plastic clapper. | |
| Continuum Fingerboard |  | The Continuum is a music performance controller developed by Lippold Haken and sold by Haken Audio, located in Champaign, Illinois. Technically a MIDI controller, the Continuum features a touch-sensitive neoprene playing surface. Sensors under the playing surface respond to finger position and pressure in three dimensions and provide pitch resolution of one cent (one one-hundredth of a semitone) along the length of the scale (the X dimension), allowing essentially continuous pitch control for portamento effects and notes that aren't on the chromatic scale, apply vibratos or pitch bends to a note. The Continuum does not itself generate sounds. Rather, it must be connected to a sound-producing source that will receive MIDI input, such as a synthesizer module. | |
| Contrabass Saxophone |  | The contrabass saxophone is one of the lowest-pitched members of the saxophone family. It is extremely large (twice the length of tubing of the baritone saxophone, with a bore twice as wide, standing 1.9 meters tall, or 6 feet four inches) and heavy (approximately 20 kilograms, or 45 pounds), and is pitched in the key of EE♭, one octave below the baritone. Approximately 25 examples of this instrument exist in the world today including recently made instruments and a handful of surviving examples from the saxophone craze of the 1920s by Evette-Schaeffer and Kohlert. The worldwide number of existing contrabass saxophones is currently growing by 4 or 5 instruments each year. | |
| Cowbell |  | The cowbell is an idiophone hand percussion instrument used in various styles of music incuding salsa and infrequently in popular music. It is named after the similar bell historically used by herdsmen to keep track of the whereabouts of cows. There are numerous examples of the cowbell being featured as an instrument in popular music. An early pop recording example is Hugh Masekela's 1968 instrumental "Grazin' in the Grass". The image shows a display of cowbells formerly used by farmers in the Appalachian region of the United States, in the Museum of Appalachia. | |
| Dobro |  | Dobro is a trade name now owned by Gibson Guitar Corporation and used for a particular design of resonator guitar. A resonator guitar is an acoustic guitar whose sound is produced by one or more metal cones (resonators) instead of the wooden soundboard. Gibson now uses the name "Dobro" only for models with the inverted-cone design used originally by the Dobro Manufacturing Company. | |
| Drum Machine |  | A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums and/or other percussion instruments. Drum machines are very useful instruments for a wide variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music. They are also a common necessity when session drummers are not available or desired. The image shows a Yamaha RY30 Drum Machine. | |
| Electric Bass Guitar |  | The electric bass guitar is a bass stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers (either by plucking, slapping, popping, or tapping) or using a pick. The bass is similar in appearance and construction to an electric guitar, but with a larger body, a longer neck and scale length, and usually four strings tuned one octave lower in pitch than the four lower strings of a guitar. In the 1930s, inventor Paul Tutmarc from Seattle, Washington, developed the first guitar-style electric bass instrument that was fretted and designed to be held and played horizontally. | |
| Electric Guitar |  | An electric guitar is a type of guitar that uses pickups to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into electrical current, which is then amplified. The signal that comes from the guitar is sometimes electronically altered to achieve various tonal effects prior to being fed into an amplifier, which produces the final sound. The electric guitar was first used in jazz and is also long been used in many other popular styles of music, including almost all genres of rock and roll, country music, jazz, blues, ambient (or "new-age"), and even contemporary classical music. | |
| Electric Piano |  | An electric piano is an electric musical instrument whose popularity started in the late 1960s, was at its greatest during the 1970s and still is big today. Many models were designed for home or school use or to replace a (heavy) and un-amplified piano on stage, while others were originally conceived for use in school or college piano labs for the simultaneous tuition of several students using headphones. Unlike a synthesizer, the electric piano is not an electronic instrument, but electro-mechanical. Electric pianos produce sounds mechanically and the sounds are turned into electronic signals by pickups. | |
| Electronic Keyboard |  | An electronic keyboard or digital keyboard is a type of keyboard instrument. Its sound is generated or amplified by one or more electronic devices. Electronic keyboard instruments are typically inexpensive, smaller, with mediocre sound quality, and lack many features offered by professional instruments. | |
| Electronic Organ |  | An electronic organ is an electronic keyboard instrument originally designed to imitate the sound of a pipe organ. It has developed today into two forms of the instrument, the imitation pipe organ as used in churches, and the Hammond organ-style instrument used in more popular music genres. The imitation pipe organ is often referred to as pipeless or digital organ. | |
| Fairground Organ |  | A fairground organ is a pipe organ designed for use in a commercial public fairground setting to provide loud music to accompany fairground rides and attractions. Unlike organs designed for indoor use they are designed to produce a large volume of sound to be heard over and above the noise of crowds of people and fairground machinery. Organs were designed to mimic the musical capabilities of a typical human band. For this reason they are known as band organs in the US. Consequently the pipes and percussion and their divisions were chose specifically to fulfil this concept. | |
| Fife |  | A fife is a small, high-pitched, transverse flute that is similar to the piccolo, but louder and shriller due to its narrower bore. The fife is a simple instrument usually consisting of a tube with 6 finger holes, and diatonically tuned. Some have 10 or 11 holes for added chromatics. The fife was one of the most important musical instruments in America's Colonial period, even more widespread than the violin or piano. The fife can still be heard in some Appalachian folk music, playing lively dance tunes. | |
| Flexatone |  | The flexatone is a modern percussion instrument (an indirectly struck idiophone) consisting of a small flexible metal sheet suspended in a wire frame ending in a handle. A wooden knob mounted on a strip of spring steel lies on each side of the metal sheet. The player holds the flexatone in one hand with the palm around the wire frame and the thumb on the free end of the spring steel. The player then shakes the instrument with a trembling movement which causes the beaters to strike the sides of the metal sheet. While shaking the handle, the musician makes a high or low-pitched sound due to the curve given to the blade by the pressure from his thumb. A vibrato is thus produced. | |
| Flutina |  | The flutina is an early precursor to the diatonic button accordion, having one or two rows of treble buttons, which are configured to have the tonic of the scale, on the "draw" of the bellows. There is usually no bass keyboard: the left hand operates an air valve (silent except for the rush of air). A rocker switch, called a "bascule d'harmonie" is in the front of the keyboard. Many of these "Flutina" (see image) accordions were imported into the United States and were common photographers' studio props. | |
| Guitar Zither |  | The guitar zither (or harp zither) is a musical instrument consisting of a soundbox, with two sets of unstopped strings. One set of strings is tuned to the diatonic scale and the other set is tuned to make the various chords in the key of the diatonic strings. The guitar zither came into use in the 19th Century, and was widely mass-produced in the United States and in Germany. A form of psaltery, the guitar zither is closely related to the Autoharp. It differs from the concert zither in not having a fret board. The name guitar zither is apparently derived from its sound, as the concert zither is more closely related to the guitar, in performance method, and in physical form, than is the guitar zither. The image shows a fretless Musima guitar zither with 21 melody strings and 24 chord strings. | |
| Hammered Dulcimer |  | The hammered dulcimer (also known as the hammer dulcimer or four hammer dulcimer) is a stringed musical instrument with the strings stretched over a trapezoidal sounding board. The instrument is typically set at an angle on a stand in front of the musician, who holds a small mallet, called a hammer in each hand with which to strike the strings. The word dulcimer comes from the Latin dulcis or "sweet" and the Greek melos, meaning "song". The origin of the instrument is uncertain, but tradition holds that it was invented in Iran roughly 2000 years ago, where it is called a Santur. The image shows an reenactor playing a hammered dulcimer, New Salem, Illinois, 2006. | |
| Hammond Organ |  | The Hammond organ is an electric organ which was invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company until the 1970s. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the pipe organ, it became the de facto standard for jazz, blues, and rock music (in the 1960s and 1970s) and gospel music. | |
| Handbell |  | A handbell is a bell designed to be rung by hand. To ring a handbell, a ringer grasps the bell by its slightly flexible handle - traditionally made of leather, but often now made of plastic - and moves the wrist to make the hinged clapper inside the bell strike. The bells used in American handbell choirs are almost always English handbells. "English handbells" is a reference to a specific type of handbells, not to the country of origin. The image shows members of Slater Elementary School’s girls bell group, 2004. | |
| Hi-hat |  | A hi-hat, or hihat, is a type of cymbal and stand used as a typical part of a drum kit by percussionists in disco, jazz, rock and roll, and other forms of contemporary popular music. The hi-hat consists of two crash cymbals that are mounted on a stand one on top of the other and clashed together using a pedal on the stand. A narrow metal shaft or "hi-hat rod" runs through both cymbals into a hollow tube and connects to the pedal. The top cymbal is connected to the rod with a "hi-hat clutch" while the bottom cymbal remains stationary resting on the hollow tube. When the "footplate" of the pedal is pressed, the top cymbal crashes onto the bottom cymbal (closed hi-hat). When released, the top cymbal returns to its original position. | |
| Ipu |  | Ipu is a percussion instrument made from gourds that is often used to provide a beat for hula dancing. There are two types of ipu, the ipu heke and the ipu heke 'ole. Both are made from gourds that have been cut off at the neck and hollowed. The ipu heke is two such gourds joined together with a hole cut in the top to allow the sound to escape. Ipu are usually polished smooth with sand or sandpaper. | |
| Jug |  | A jug is a musical instrument when the musician holds the mouth of the jug about an inch from his or her mouth and emits a blast of sound, made by a "buzzing" of the lips, directly into it. The jug does not touch the musician's mouth, but serves as a resonating chamber to amplify and enrich the sound made by the musician's lips. Changes in pitch are controlled by loosening or tightening the lips, and an accomplished jug player might have a two octave range. Some players augment this sound with vocalizations, didgeridoo style, and even circular breathing. | |
| Keyboard Bass |  | The keyboard bass is the use of a low-pitched keyboard or pedal keyboard to substitute for the bass guitar or double bass in popular music. | |
| Lap Steel Guitar |  | The lap steel guitar is a type of steel guitar. There are three main types of lap steel guitar: lap slide guitars, resonator guitars and electric lap steel guitars. The lap steel probably began in La'ie, Hawai'i in the late 1800s. Various people have been credited with the innovation. The instrument was hugely popular in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. | |
| Lithophone |  | A lithophone is a musical instrument consisting of a plurality of rocks or pieces of rock, in which musical notes are sounded by striking one or more of the rocks in combination (harmony) or succession (melody). One of the most celebrated examples of a lithophone is The Great Stalacpipe Organ of Luray Caverns (see image), Virginia, USA, which uses 37 stalactites to produce the tones of the Western scale. | |
| Mandocello |  | 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 |  | 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). |
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