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Featured content. Free courses. All content. How do musical instruments produce sound? Updated Wednesday, 2nd January A crash course in sound The answer to that question is at once highly complex and entirely simple. So where do the different instruments come into this?
Hornbostel-Sachs proposes four categories for all musical instruments: Idiophones: whose own bodies vibrate, often, though not exclusively, by being struck this includes many percussion instruments. Membranophones: in which a membrane or thinly stretched material is vibrated. Consider a drum, but also a kazoo in which the human voice excites a membrane.
Chordophones: where sounds are produced by vibrating strings perhaps amplified through a body as in violins, guitars, or pianos. Aerophones: the instrument does not vibrate, nor do any strings; sound is produced by vibrating air i.
Study a free music course. Used with permission. Read more articles like this By Pixabay on www. Musicians, loops and the longest piece ever Dr Robert Samuels explores looping in music and demonstrates how technology can make musical use of the sound of a dog eating a carrot.
Read now Musicians, loops and the longest piece ever. Article Level: 1 Introductory. Copyright: BBC.
Others are highly technical or electric. Instruments vary around the world, and each has its own character. Acoustic instruments generate sound physically and electronic instruments create sound electrically. There are four acoustic groups: percussion hit or shaken , wind woodwind and brass; blown , string bowed or plucked , and keyboard played with fingers. An instrument creates sound when part of it vibrates rapidly. The envelope of an instrument describes the level variation of a note or chord over time.
It is divided into three parts: Attack, Sustain, and Decay. Although the envelope of an electronically synthesized instrument is described by attack, decay, sustain, and release, the purpose of this section is to explore the variables that determine the envelope of acoustic instruments.
Attack is a measure of time. It represents the time it takes a note to reach its maximum intensity. Instruments with short attack include percussion, piano, and plucked string instruments such as guitar or harpsichord. When a note is played on these instruments, the sound quickly reaches its maximum level.
Instruments capable of long attack include woodwinds, brass, and bowed string instruments such as violins. Notes played on these instruments can start quiet and slowly build to their maximum level. Sustain is a measure of time, in the context of acoustic instruments. It represents the duration of time that the steady-state intensity of a note is held.
Snare drums, banjos, and many other percussive instruments are examples of instruments with short sustain. Once the note played and reaches its maximum intensity, it quickly begins to decay. Instruments such as electric guitar, bowed string instruments, and wind instruments are capable of long sustain. The musician can hold a note for a sustained period of time at a steady-state intensity.
Decay is a measure of time. It represents the duration of time a note takes to fall from the steady-state intensity to complete silence.
Most percussion instruments have a short decay. The intensity of the note quickly falls after it the sustain period. Even if the instrument has a long sustain time, it can have a short decay time. For example, a violinist can hold a long, sustained note and then abruptly silence the instrument. Cymbals are one example of an instrument with a long decay time. Note that the musician playing the cymbal could shorten the decay significantly by silencing the cymbal with his or her hand.
It may seem obvious, but even the same note played on the same instrument might sound different depending on who is playing it. Instruments are ultimately a tool for expression and musical technique plays a critical role in the sound produced by that tool. The flute is a wind instrument. The player blows into the flute to make the air inside vibrate.
For other wind instruments, such as the oboe and clarinet, players blow across a reed to make the air vibrate. Different notes can be played on the flute by blocking holes. Flutes make deeper sounds lower pitched notes when more holes in the pipe are blocked. The bongo drum is a percussion instrument.
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