Instruments in Music

The Six Main Families of Insrtuments in Music

There are six instrument families which are as follows.

We will take a small dive into them

Brass

I have dabbled in brass myself. They are one of my favorite instrument families. Any instrument that requires buzzing of the lips––musician speak for makng a fart sound––into a mouth piece would be considered brass. They are called brass instruments because they are often made from metal, but this is not necessary. From highest to lowest sounding the most common brass instruments are as follows

  1. Trumpet
  2. Trombone
  3. Baritone and Euphonium
  4. Tuba

I've played trumpet and trombone. I am much better at trombone, but trumpet, in my opinion, is much cooler.

Woodwinds

Intrestingly, I have also played some woodwinds too. Woodwinds are all of the horn-looking instruments that require "blowing" that dont require buzzing of the lips into a mouthpiece. Usually they utilize reeds (either one or two) but instruments like the flute and piccolo break this rule, physically functioning more like whistles. There are four sub families each with their own respective instruments for each range. These are:

I love the flutes, and saxophones and double reeds are cool. Unfortunately, clarinets also exist.

Strings

Strings are any instrument that produces sound from a vibrating string whether it be bowed, plucked, hammered or anything else. From high to low, the most common in an orchestral setting are:

  1. Violin
  2. Viola
  3. Cello
  4. Double Bass

Others include:

I tried voilin, but the learning curve was too steep. It was hard on my ears to say the least. I also played around with guitar but my fingers were not built to be put in crazy positions like that. Props to anyone who is good at a string instrument––they are not for the faint of heart.

Percussion

Percussion instruments are the ones that themselves vibrate to make sound. Think anything you hit with hands or sticks. The list of these is quite literally endless, but here is my sorry attempt at listing some.

Again, anything you can hit to make nose could probably cound as long as it does not fit in another instrument family

Keyboards

Now its time to get controversial.... Its finally time to talk about keyboards! Now there is some debate on whether these should be classified as their own family. Historically they have been technically been in the percussion family, however they do indeed make sound from a hammer hitting a string making it vibrate making it physically more like a string instrument, but one look and listen to the string instruments and you can tell keyboard instruments dont really belong, (imagine pianos and violins being in the same family––they couldnt be more different). Because the kayboard layout is so fundamentally different from other instrumetns, and because of the increasing diversity of keyboard instruments over the years, now any instrument that uses a keyboard to be played is classified as a keyboard instrument. Here are some

A small disclaimer––I am primarily a pianist, so I may be slightly biased in my inclusion of this family of instruments. I am however definitely right.

Electronic

Finally, in the modern era, there are countless, nearly infinite instruments that have no physical form at all. When you listen to pop or hiphop or really any modern genre, likely most of what you are hearing is sound that is completely digitally generated. Some of these include:

Just a note. Lots of electronic instruments aim to sound like acoustic instruments, so oftentimes if you think you are hearing acoustic strings or bass or percussion or horns or any sound produced in the physical world, there is a chance it is not recorded at all, but created electronically.