Contributor: Brian Anthony. Lesson ID: 12655
One man's music may be another man's cacophony. Different generations may disdain the other's music, and the same is often true of cultures. But step into India for some exotic instruments and sounds!
If you owned a music store and were stocking the shelves, how would you arrange the musical instruments pictured above? By color, shape, cost, construction, or something else?
Like most other things in the world, musical instruments can be classified, or grouped, according to shared characteristics.
Musical instruments can be grouped according to different qualities, like the materials used to make them, the ways in which the instruments produce sound, or other traits.
You are probably already familiar with many of the common Western musical instruments, like the guitar, the piano, the trumpet, the violin, and other instruments used to make some of the most well-known popular and classical music. These instruments and the way in which they are classified have a specific history.
As you learn about the families of musical instruments in the Western tradition, write down answers to the following questions:
Now, watch How Musical Instruments are Classified, by Christopher Wright:
Collect your information and ideas, then reflect on the following questions and record your thoughts in a journal entry:
The classification of musical instruments is useful for composers, who may select and group instruments for a particular piece or passage of music. Musicologists, or scholars who study the production and use of music around the world, classify instruments to better study their features.
In the Got It? section, expand your understanding of classification by examining the musical instruments of India!