The History of Musical Instruments

Accordion

An accordion is an instrument that uses reeds and air to create sound. Reeds are thin strips of material that air passes over to vibrate, which in turn creates a sound. The air is produced by a bellows, a device that produces a strong blast of air, such as a compressed bag. The accordion is played by pressing and expanding the air bellows while the musician presses buttons and keys to force the air across reeds of varying pitches and tones.

Conductor's Baton

In the 1820s, Louis Spohr introduced the conductor's baton. A baton, which is the French word for "stick," ​is used by conductors primarily to enlarge and enhance the manual and bodily movements associated with directing an ensemble of musicians. Prior to its invention, conductors would often use a violin bow.

Bell

Bells may be categorized as idiophones, or instruments sounding by the vibration of resonant solid material, and more broadly as percussion instruments.
The bells at the Agia Triada Monastery in Athens, Greece, are a good example of how bells have been associated with religious rituals over the centuries and are still used today to call communities together for religious services.

Clarinet

The clarinet's predecessor was the chalumeau, the first true single reed instrument. Johann Christoph Denner, a famous German woodwind instrument maker of the Baroque era, is credited as the inventor of the clarinet.

Double Bass

The double bass goes by many names: the bass, contrabass, bass violin, upright bass, and bass, to name a few. The earliest known double-bass-type of instrument dates back to 1516. Domenico Dragonetti was the first great virtuoso of the instrument and largely responsible for the double bass joining the orchestra. The double bass is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra. 

Dulcimer

The name "dulcimer" comes from the Latin and Greek words dulce and melos, which combine to mean "sweet tune." A dulcimer comes from the zither family of stringed instruments that consist of many strings stretched across a thin, flat body. A hammered dulcimer has many strings struck by handheld hammers. Being a struck string instrument, it is considered to be among the ancestors of the piano.

Electric Organ

The immediate predecessor of the electronic organ was the harmonium, or reed organ, an instrument that was very popular in homes and small churches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In a fashion not totally unlike that of pipe organs, reed organs generated sound by forcing air over a set of reeds by means of a bellows, usually operated by constantly pumping a set of pedals.

Canadian Morse Robb patented the world's first electric organ in 1928, known as the Robb Wave Organ.

Flute

The flute is the earliest instrument that we have archaeologically found that dates to Paleolithic times, more than 35,000 years ago. The flute belongs to the woodwind instruments, but unlike other woodwinds that use reeds, the flute is reedless and produces its sounds from the flow of air across an opening.

An early flute found in China was called a ch'ie. Many ancient cultures have some form of flute passed down through history.

French Horn

The modern orchestral brass double French horn was an invention based on early hunting horns. Horns were first used as musical instruments during 16th-century operas. German Fritz Kruspe has been credited most often as the inventor in 1900 of the modern double French horn.

Guitar

The guitar is a fretted string instrument, classified as a chordophone, with anywhere from four to 18 strings, usually having six. The sound is projected acoustically through a hollow wooden or plastic body or through an electrical amplifier and speaker. It is typically played by strumming or plucking the strings with one hand while the other hand presses strings along frets — raised strips that change the tone of a sound.

A 3,000-year-old stone carving shows a Hittite bard playing a stringed chordophone, most likely a predecessor of the modern-day guitar. Other earlier examples of chordophones include the European lute and the four-string oud, which the Moors brought to the Spanish peninsula. The modern guitar likely originated in medieval Spain.

Harpsichord

A harpsichord, the predecessor of the piano, is played by the use of a keyboard, which has levers that a player presses to produce a sound. When the player presses one or more keys, this triggers a mechanism, which plucks one or more strings with a small quill.

The ancestor of the harpsichord, circa 1300, was most likely a handheld plucked instrument called the psaltery, which later had a keyboard added to it. 

The harpsichord was popular during the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Its popularity diminished with the development of the piano in 1700. 

Metronome

A metronome is a device that produces an audible beat — a click or other sound — at regular intervals that the user can set in beats per minute. Musicians use the device to practice playing to a regular pulse.

In 1696 French musician Etienne Loulie made the first recorded attempt to apply the pendulum to a metronome, although the first working metronome did not come into existence until 1814.

Moog Synthesizer

Robert Moog designed his first electronic synthesizers in collaboration with composers Herbert A. Deutsch and Walter Carlos. Synthesizers are used to imitate sounds of other instruments like pianos, flutes, or organs or make new sounds generated electronically.

Moog synthesizers used analog circuits and signals in the 1960s to create a unique sound.

Oboe

The oboe, called a hautbois prior to 1770 (meaning "loud or high wood" in French), was invented in the 17th century by the French musicians Jean Hotteterre and Michel Danican Philidor. The oboe is a double-reeded wood instrument. It was the main melody instrument in early military bands until succeeded by the clarinet. The oboe evolved from the shawm, a double-reed instrument most likely originated from the eastern Mediterranean region.

Ocarina

The ceramic ocarina is a musical wind instrument that is a type of vessel flute, derived from ancient wind instruments. Italian inventor Giuseppe Donati developed the modern 10-hole ocarina in 1853. Variations exist, but a typical ocarina is an enclosed space with four to 12 finger holes and a mouthpiece that projects from the instrument's body. Ocarinas are traditionally made from clay or ceramic, but other materials are also used—such as plastic, wood, glass, metal or bone. 

Piano

The piano is an acoustic stringed instrument invented around the year 1700, most likely by Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy. It is played by using fingers on a keyboard, causing hammers within the piano body to strike the strings. The Italian word piano is a shortened form of the Italian word pianoforte, which means both "soft" and "loud," respectively. Its predecessor was the harpsichord.

Early Synthesizer

Hugh Le Caine, Canadian physicist, composer, and instrument builder, built the world's first voltage-controlled music synthesizer in 1945, called the Electronic Sackbut. The player used the left hand to modify the sound while the right hand was used to play the keyboard. Over his lifetime, Le Caine designed 22 musical instruments, including a touch-sensitive keyboard and variable-speed multitrack tape recorder. 

Saxophone

The saxophone, also called a sax, belongs to the woodwind family of instruments. It is usually made of brass and is played with a single, wood reed mouthpiece, similar to a clarinet. Like the clarinet, saxophones have holes in the instrument that the player operates using a system of key levers. When the musician presses a key, a pad either covers or lifts off a hole, thus lowering or raising the pitch.

The saxophone was invented by Belgian Adolphe Sax and exhibited to the world for the first time at the 1841 Brussels Exhibition.

Trombone

The trombone belongs to the brass family of instruments. Like all brass instruments, the sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate.

Trombones use a telescoping slide mechanism that varies the length of the instrument to change the pitch. 

The word "trombone" comes from the Italian tromba, meaning "trumpet," and the Italian suffix -one, meaning "large." Therefore, the instrument name means "large trumpet." In English, the instrument was called a "sackbut." It made its initial appearance in the 15th century.

Trumpet

Trumpet-like instruments have historically been used as signaling devices in battle or hunting, with examples dating back to at least 1500 BCE, using animal horns or conch shells. The modern valve trumpet has evolved more than any other instrument still in use. 

Trumpets are brass instruments that were recognized as musical instruments only in the late 14th or early 15th century. Mozart's father, Leopold, and Haydn's brother Michael wrote concertos exclusively for the trumpet in the second half of the 18th century. 

Tuba

The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, the sound is produced by moving air past the lips, causing them to vibrate into a large cupped mouthpiece.

Modern tubas owe their existence to the joint patent of the valve in 1818 by two Germans: Friedrich Blühmel and Heinrich Stölzel.