| Name | Image | Description | Video |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marching Bass Drum |  | 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. | |
| Mark Tree |  | 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. | |
| Mezzo-soprano Saxophone |  | The mezzo-soprano saxophone, also sometimes called the F alto saxophone, is an instrument in the saxophone family. It is in the key of F, pitched a whole step above the alto saxophone. It can be easily confused with the alto because of its similar size and sound in the low register. In the upper register, however, it is sweeter, more like a soprano. Very few of them exist today, and were only produced by one company (C. G. Conn) during two years (1928 and 1929). It is the only saxophone pitched in F, besides a few prototypes of an F baritone saxophone that was never actually manufactured. The image shows a mezzo-soprano (left) and an alto (right) saxophones. | |
| Moonlander |  | The Moonlander is a bi-headed electric guitar with 18 strings: 6 normal strings and 12 sympathetic strings. The guitar is a custom-made instrument, built in 2007 by Yuri Landman for Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth ( an American alternative rock band formed in New York City in 1981.) Although it closely resembles an electric version of a harp guitar it is actually an electric sympathetic string guitar, because the droning strings are not meant to be plucked, but resonate on the played tones from the six normal strings. | |
| Musical Saw |  | A musical saw is the application of a hand saw as a musical instrument. The saw is generally played seated with the handle squeezed between the legs, and the far end held with one hand. It is generally played with the teeth facing the body, though some more timid players opt to face them away. To make a note, a sawyer first bends the blade into an S-curve. The parts of the blade which are curved are dampened from vibration, and do not sound. At the center of the S-curve a section of the blade remains relatively flat: this "sweet spot" can vibrate across the width of the blade, producing a distinct pitch (the wider the section of blade, the lower the sound). Sound can be created by drawing a bow across the back edge of the saw at the sweet spot, or by striking the sweet spot with a mallet. | |
| Native American Flute |  | The Native American flute has achieved some measure of fame for its distinctive sound, used in a variety of New Age and world music recordings. The instrument was originally very personal; its music was played without accompaniment in courtship, healing, meditation, and spiritual rituals. Now it is played solo or along with other instruments or vocals both in Native American music and in other styles. There are two different types of Native American flute, the plains flute and the woodlands flute, each with slightly different construction. | |
| Nose Flute |  | The nose flute is a popular musical instrument played in Polynesia and the Pacific Rim countries. Other versions are found in Africa, China and India. Ohe hano ihu in Hawaiian means "bamboo, breath, nose." It is made from a single bamboo node with a hole at the node area for the breath and three holes for the notes on the top side of the tube. It was often used in conjunction with chants and song. The Hawaiians believe that the nose is pure and innocent unlike the mouth which can say many things. So the breath entering and exiting the 'ohe hano ihu is purer than the mouth. | |
| Ovation Guitar |  | Ovation guitars are guitars manufactured by the Ovation Guitar Company, a company based in Bloomfield, Connecticut, USA. Ovation guitars are differentiated by their composite synthetic bowl, rather than the traditional wooden back and sides of the modern acoustic guitar as produced by luthiers starting in the late 18th century. The image shows musician Tsutomu Kobori performing with an Ovation guitar. | |
| Pahu |  | The pahu is a traditional dance drum of the native Hawaiian people. It is carved from a single piece of coconut log and covered on the playing end with a stretched sharkskin. The player’s palms and fingers are used to beat the drum. It is considered a sacred instrument and was generally kept in a temple (heiau), and used to accompany a repertoire of sacred songs called hula pahu. | |
| Pencilina |  | The pencilina is a custom-made string instrument invented in the 1980s by Bradford Reed. The instrument is a double neck 3rd bridge guitar. The pencilina's two "necks" each have a bridge, tuning pegs, and a set of strings; six strings on one neck are tuned like a guitar and four strings on the other are tuned like a bass guitar. There are four built-in pickups: two are contact mics mounted in the bridges at one end of each neck, and two are guitar-style electromagnetic pickups which are placed under the strings toward the opposite end. In addition, there are four bells – a fire bell, a door bell, and two brass telephone ringer bells – mounted at the end of one of the necks. The contact mics pick up the ringing of the bells through the wood of the instrument. They also pick up percussion anywhere else on the wooden necks, so any spot that happens to produce a nice sound is available for drumming. The pencilina is played by striking its strings and bells with sticks. The strings may also be plucked or bowed. | |
| Player Piano |  | The player piano is a piano containing a pneumatic mechanism that plays on the piano action pre-programmed music via perforated paper rolls. The true player piano was designed to be a fully interactive musical experience rather than merely an automatic instrument and hence they are fitted with interactive control levers intended for the "player pianist" or "pianolist" to create a music performance to their own taste. | |
| Rhodes Piano |  | A Rhodes piano is an electromechanical musical instrument, a brand of electric piano. Its distinctive sound has appeared and still does in thousands of songs of all musical styles since it was first introduced in 1965. | |
| Rhythmicon |  | The Rhythmicon, also known as the Polyrhythmophone, was the world's first electronic drum machine (or rhythm machine). In 1930, the avant-garde American composer and musical theorist Henry Cowell commissioned Russian inventor Léon Theremin to create the remarkably innovative Rhythmicon. Cowell wanted an instrument with which to play compositions involving multiple rhythmic patterns impossible for one person to perform simultaneously on acoustic keyboard or percussion instruments. The invention, completed by Theremin in 1931, can produce up to sixteen different rhythms. The image shows Joseph Schillinger and the Rhythmicon (1932). | |
| Sampler |  | A sampler is an electronic music instrument closely related to a synthesizer. Instead of generating sounds from scratch, however, a sampler starts with multiple recordings (or “samples”) of different sounds, and then plays each back based on how the instrument is configured. Because these samples are usually stored in RAM, the information can be quickly accessed. The sampler has become an important instrument in hip hop, electronic music, and avant-garde music. | |
| Slide Guitar |  | Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide is in reference to the sliding motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides, which were the necks of glass bottles. Instead of altering the pitch of the strings in the normal manner (by pressing the string against frets), a slide is placed upon the string to vary its vibrating length, and pitch. This slide can then be moved along the string without lifting, creating continuous transitions in pitch. Slides may be used on any guitar, but slides generally and steels in particular are often used on instruments specifically made to be played in this manner. | |
| Slide Whistle |  | A slide whistle (variously known as a swanee whistle, piston flute) is a wind instrument consisting of a fipple like a recorder's and a tube with a piston in it. It thus has an air reed like some woodwinds, but varies the pitch with a slide. Because the air column is cylindrical and open at one end and closed at the other, it overblows the third harmonic. The slide whistle is most commonly used as a sound effect, but it is also possible to play melodies on it. | |
| Sousaphone |  | The sousaphone is a wearable tuba descended from the hélicon, and designed in an ergonomically efficient way such that it fits around the body of the wearer, and so it can be easily played while being worn. Often used in a marching band, it is sometimes referred to as a marching tuba. It is named after John Philip Sousa, a famous march composer and conductor. | |
| Spoon |  | Spoons can be played as a makeshift percussion instrument, or more specifically, an idiophone related to the castanets. A pair of spoons is held with concave sides facing out and with a finger between their handles to space them apart. When the pair is struck, the spoons sharply hit each other and then spring back to their original position. The spoons are typically struck against the knee and the palm of the hand. The fingers and other body parts may also be used as striking surfaces to produce different sounds and for visual effect. In U.S. culture, "playing the spoons" originated in Ireland as "playing the bones," in which the convex sides of a pair of sheep rib bones were rattled in the same way. In 1994, Seattle Grunge band Soundgarden had a hit with the song "Spoonman" that features a spoons performance by street artist Artis the Spoonman. | |
| Symphonic Organ |  | The symphonic organ (or concert organ) is a style of pipe organ which flourished during the first third of the twentieth century in town halls and other secular public venues (particularly in the United States and the UK). It is a variation of the classical pipe organ intended for the performance of orchestral transcriptions for pipe organs. The concert organ has seen a revival in the US, Europe and Japan in the latter part of the 20th and 21st century. The image shows a concert organ at the Yokohama Minato-mirai Hall of Kanagawa, Japan. | |
| Synthesizer |  | A synthesizer (or synthesiser) is an electronic instrument capable of producing musical sounds. The term originates from the Greek syntithetai. Synthesizers create electrical signals, which are then converted into a sound by a speaker. Analog synthesizers create sound by electrical oscillators which are fed to filters, and digital synthesizers by performing mathematical operations in a microprocessor. Sometimes both methods are used side by side. Both analog and digital synthesized sounds may sound dramatically different than recordings of natural sounds, though digital sampling synthesizers significantly blur this distinction. Music synthesizers sometimes include a keyboard, which makes them reminiscent of certain traditional musical instruments, like a piano or an organ. | |
| Tahitian Ukelele |  | The Tahitian Ukulele (also known as the Tahitian Banjo) is significantly different from other ukuleles in that it does not have a sound box. The body including the head and neck is usually carved from a single piece of wood, with a wide conical hole bored through the middle. The instrument seems to be a relatively recent invention, popular in eastern Polynesia, particularly French Polynesia. It is reported to have been introduced to the Cook Islands in 1990 by the band Te Ava Piti as a newly invented instrument. | |
| Teleharmonium |  | An early electromechanical instrument was the Telharmonium or Teleharmonium (also known as the Dynamophone), developed by Thaddeus Cahill in 1897. The Telharmonium was intended to be listened to using telephone receivers. Like the later Hammond organ, the Telharmonium used tonewheels to generate musical sounds as electrical signals by additive synthesis. An authoritative history of the Telharmonium is 'Magical Music from the Telharmonium' by Reynold Weidenaar, Scarecrow Press, 1995. | |
| Theatre Organ |  | A theatre organ is a pipe organ originally designed specifically for imitation of an orchestra, but in latter years new designs have tended to be around some of the sounds and blends unique to the instrument itself. Theater organs took the place of the orchestra when installed in a movie theatre during the heyday of silent films. Such instruments were typically built to provide the greatest possible variety of timbres with the fewest possible pipes, and often had pianos and other percussion instruments built in, as well as a variety of sound effects such as a siren. The imagw shows the horseshoe-shaped console of the 3/13 Barton Theater Pipe Organ at Ann Arbor's Michigan Theater. | |
| Timbales |  | Timbales (or tymbales) are shallow single-headed drums, shallower in shape than single-headed tom-toms, and usually much higher tuned. The player (known as a timbalero) uses a variety of stick and hand strokes, rim shots, and rolls on the skins to produce a wide range of percussive expression during solos and at transitional sections of music, and usually plays the shells of the drum or auxiliary percussion such as a cowbell or cymbal to keep time at other parts of the song. Timbales were invented in the early 20th century as a more portable replacement for the standard timpani used in Afro-Cuban orchestras. | |
| Tom-tom drum |  | A tom-tom is a cylindrical drum with no snare. The tom-tom originates from Native American or Asian cultures. The tom-tom drum was added to the drum kit in the early part of the 20th century. Today two "power" depth tom-toms of 12x10 (12" diameter by 10" depth) and 13x11 is the most common hanging tom configuration, and would be considered standard by most drummers. | |
| Tonette |  | The Tonette is a small, end-blown flute made of plastic, which was once popular in American elementary music education. The Tonette was introduced in 1938. Designed as a pre-band instrument, the tonette was nearly unbreakable, chromatic, and tunable. It was easy to blow and the fingering was simple. By 1941 over half of the grammar schools in the United States had adopted the Tonette as standard pre-band equipment. The Tonette's pleasant flute-like sound was also used for special novelty effects in radio, television and film. In World War II the armed services found the Tonette to be an inexpensive and entertaining way for idle troops to pass the time. | |
| Toy Piano |  | The toy piano is a musical instrument, made as a child's toy, but which has also been used in more serious musical contexts. The instrument was invented in Philadelphia in 1872 by a German immigrant named Albert Schoenhut. It is often in the form of a scaled down model of a piano, usually no more than 50 cm in width, and made out of wood or plastic. Rather than hammers hitting strings as on a standard piano, the toy piano sounds by way of hammers hitting metal bars or rods which are fixed at one end. | |
| Tromboon |  | The tromboon (also called a babone) is a musical instrument made up of the reed and bocal of the bassoon attached to the body of a trombone in place of the trombone's mouthpiece, combining the "worst" aspects of each instrument: a reed and a slide. The name of the instrument is a portmanteau of "trombone" and "bassoon". The sound quality of the instrument is best described as comical, loud, and annoying. This instrument is called for in the scores of P. D. Q. Bach in his oratorio The Seasonings as well as the Serenude (for devious instruments). | |
| Tubular Bell |  | Tubular bells (also known as chimes) are musical instruments in the percussion family. Each bell is a metal tube, 30–38 mm (1¼–1½ inches) in diameter, tuned by altering its length. They range from C4 (middle C) to F5. Tubular bells are typically struck on the top edge of the tube with a rawhide- or plastic-headed hammer. Often, a sustain pedal will be attached to allow extended ringing of the bells. The bands of the Indian Army use these bells when playing the Hymn Abide With Me. Tubular bells are used in popular music, as well. Tubular bells have been popularized in western culture by the song Carol of the Bells. | |
| Turntable |  | The phonograph, or gramophone, was the most common device for playing recorded sound from the 1870s through the 1980s. In more modern usage, this device is often called a turntable, record player, or record changer. The earliest known invention of a phonographic recording device was the phonautograph, invented by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville and patented on March 25, 1857. It could transcribe sound to a visible medium, but had no means to play back the sound after it was recorded. Thomas Alva Edison announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877, and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29. The device was patented on February 19, 1878 as US Patent 200,521. The image shows an Edison cylinder phonograph ca. 1899. | |
| Ukelele |  | The ukulele is a chordophone classified as a plucked lute; it is a subset of the guitar family of instruments, generally with four strings or four courses of strings. The ukulele is commonly associated with music from Hawaii, where the name roughly translates as "jumping flea", and was developed there in the 1880s as a combination of the Madeiran braguinha and rajão. | |
| Upright Piano |  | Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are placed vertically, extending in both directions from the keyboard and hammers. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. The grand piano hammers return by gravity, hence their return will always remain more consistent than the vertical hammers, thus giving pianists better control of their playing. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play smoother than a grand piano that has not been regulated for years, and the very best upright pianos now approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness. | |
| Vest Frottoir |  | A vest frottoir is an instrument used in Zydeco music. It is usually made from pressed, corrugated aluminium and is worn over the shoulders. It is played as a rhythm instrument by stroking either bottle openers or spoons down it. Many of these instruments are home made, but Don Landry of Louisiana is a renowned maker of frottoirs - or rub-boards as they are known, making them for Clifton Chenier's band (see image) and Elvis Fontenot and the Sugar Bees, amongst others. | |
| Vibraphone |  | The vibraphone, also known as vibraharp or vibes, is a musical instrument in the mallet subfamily of the percussion family. It is similar in appearance to the xylophone and marimba, although the vibraphone uses aluminum bars instead of the wooden bars of those instruments. The vibraphone also has a sustain pedal similar to that used on a piano. When the pedal is up, the bars are all damped and the sound of each bar is quite short; with the pedal down, they will sound for several seconds. The most common uses of the vibraphone are within jazz music, where it often plays a featured role, and in the wind ensemble, as a standard component of the percussion section. | |
| Walk-on Piano |  | Inside the FAO Schwarz, a specialty toy retailer based in New York City, there is a 22-foot walk-on piano ($250K). The piano was featured in the 1988 Tom Hanks film Big, in which Hanks and Robert Loggia danced "Heart & Soul" and "Chopsticks" on the store's piano. | |
| Washboard |  | The washboard is a musical instrument. The traditional washboard is usually constructed with a rectangular wooden frame in which are mounted a series of ridges or corrugations for the clothing to be rubbed upon. For 19th century washboards, the ridges were often of wood; by the 20th century, ridges of metal were more common. A "fluted" metal washboard was patented in the US in 1833. Zinc washboards were manufactured in the US from the middle of the 19th century. In the late 20th century and early 21st century, ridges of galvanized steel are most common, but some modern boards are made of glass. Washboards with brass ridges are still made, and some who use washboards as musical instruments prefer the sound of the somewhat more expensive brass boards. | |
| Washtub Bass |  | The washtub bass, or "gutbucket," is a stringed instrument used in American folk music that uses a metal washtub as a resonator. Although it is possible for a washtub bass to have four or more strings and tuning pegs, traditional washtub basses have a single string whose pitch is adjusted by pushing or pulling on a staff or stick to change the tension. The washtub bass was used in jug bands that were popular in some African-Americans communities in the early 1900s. In the 1950s, English skiffle bands used a variant called a tea-chest bass, and during the 1960s, US folk musicians used the washtub bass in jug band-influenced music. | |
| Waterphone |  | A waterphone is a unique type of atonal acoustic musical instrument constructed largely of a stainless steel resonator "bowl" with a cylindrical "neck", containing a small amount of water, and with brass rods around the rim of the bowl. The waterphone produces a vibrant ethereal type of music sometimes classified as "ambient music." Several sizes and design variants of the instrument are available. It is generally played in a seated position by a soloist and played by bowing or drumming and movement so as to affect the water inside, and thus the resonant characteristics of the bowl and rods. The waterphone appears in movie sound tracks, record albums, and is used in live performance. The image shows Alex Wong of The Animators playing the waterphone at The World Cafe Live on 01/21/2007. | |
| Xaphoon |  | The Xaphoon (also known as Maui Xaphoon or Bamboo Sax) is a single-reed keyless bamboo wind instrument. The Xaphoon was invented during the 1970s by the American instrument maker Brian Wittman, who still makes all of his instruments by hand, using local bamboo cut from the forests of the eastern end of his home island of Maui, Hawaii. It is very similar in construction to the chalumeau, a keyless European single reed folk instrument that was the ancestor of the clarinet. Although the Xaphoon is referred to as a Bamboo Saxophone, it is actually more similar in tone to a clarinet in its lower octave. Its sound also bears some resemblance to cylindrical double reed instruments with a similar timbre such as the Armenian duduk or the Chinese guan. |
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