Talk:Musical instrument

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January 19, 2004 Refreshing brilliant prose Not kept
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Contents

[edit] Makers?

Aren't there any English articles on the different sorts of craftsmen that actually produce musical instruments? Piano makers, Violin makers etc?--Cancun771 13:31, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Range pictures

A question:

I have under my homepage http://www.hut.fi/~tbackstr/ranges/ranges.html a list of the ranges of the most common orchestral instruments. The data and pictures and everything is collected and created by myself, and thus it is not under any copyright and could be used on this page. So, the question is, in which format and where should they be added? If somebody whishes to do the actual work of copying the data, then please, go ahead... --Tbackstr

For information on uploading files see Wikipedia:Uploading images and Special:Upload. I would suggest then placing each image on the article of the appropriate instrument, and an example or possibly all at range (music), which has yet to be written. See also: Wikipedia:Images. Hyacinth 01:55, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Harp

Why isn't harp on it? Harp's pretty common (ok maybe not but it's important!) :)

  • If you're talking about my page mentioned above then you have a good question. I admit, I don't know. It just isn't included. --Tbackstr

Do you need to know the range? I think I know it...hmm 47 notes, with all the accidentals in between. The lowest note is the C three octaves below middle C and the highest note is the G three and a half octaves above middle C. At least I think so - I'll check later. dreamyshade

can you tell me instruments from around the world please

[edit] Earliest instrument and classifications

the "earliest instrument" question has to be speculation, since there are plenty of music-generating devices (human bodies, hollow logs, etc.) that don't leave music-specific archeological evidence.

boy, i'd much rather see the aerophone/membranophone/idiophone/chordaphone/electronaphone as the prime division of instruments; "keyboard instruments" is a confusing category, since any instrument in it belongs to at least one other category.

maybe all of the classification should be move to the "musical instrument classification" section, and instruments should be discussed in general terms of sound production, tone quality, relationship of musician to instrument. any thoughts? -jp2

I agree that the keyboard bit is a mess but I think that needs sorting separately. I don't agree that we should go over to -ophone classifications in this article - it's too scientific-sounding for an introductory article and will confuse many people. At least with "brass" or "woodwind" there is something familiar to hang onto. If the -ophones are going to be used people should be led gently to it later. By the same token I don't think it's an improvement that the little examples of types of instruments have been taken out - I think they were helpful. On a slightly different tack, the use of "tone quality" is an improvement of the previous spectral nonsense but oddly there is no linked article there - though there is a pretty short one at timbre: is that perhaps the answer? Nevilley 22:42 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

I just removed this:

The oldest known man made instrument is a mousterian bone flute from the "Divje babe I" 
cave site (Slovenia), made by neanderthals around 45,000-50,000 years ago from a 
cave bear bone.

See Divje Babe and especially Talk:Divje Babe; this is far from being a historical consensus and doesn't belong here without qualification or sources. --Craig Stuntz 13:11, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Examples

timbre link: nice idea.

i'm not averse to bringing back examples of instruments, but i would not want to see them in the current instrument family bullets; i'd be more apt to remove all detailed discussion of instrument families from this page and relocate such details to the "family" pages. a general discussion (instruments make sounds; sounds are affected in these fashions) might be a stronger gateway into the current referenced entries. jp2

[edit] Improvement drive

Percussion instrument is currently a candidate on Wikipedia: This week's improvement drive. Vote for this article if you want it to be improved. --Fenice 20:48, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Soft sound instruments

The following is not a major family of musical instruments, but could be incorporated somehow in string instruments:**

*Soft Sound instruments Soft and desirable instruments can be devided into eastern, western and 
oriental instruments. Tar, and tar family instruments, mandolin guitar ...

Karol 19:41, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
(edited for proper viewing Curran (talk) 01:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC))
(**Broken link Curran (talk) 01:14, 25 April 2007 (UTC))

[edit] harp

[edit] electric guitar

Does a solid body electric guitar fit the 'classical' definition of string instrument ?

Yes, it's original means of producing the sound is through vibrating strings, making it no different from an acoustic. Only difference of course is that it's amplified through pickups.68.232.203.30 -ChrisC 17:52, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GFDL violation at musical-instrument.koopal.com

One of the authors of this page might like to send a GFDL notice to the site owners of http://musical-instrument.koopal.com/. See what I did (from a position of ignorance) at Talk:Double_bass#Plagiarism/Copyright Issues? and the e-mail I sent at Talk:Double_bass/Copyright_notice which then led me to find the proper things to do at Wikipedia:Standard GFDL violation letter and WP:MF. This last site contains steps that a contributor might want to follow. There are related koopal.com transgressions - I don't have time to track them all down. Andrew Kepert 10:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] surprisingly arbitrary and misleading article

I found this page surprisingly arbitrary, based on arbitrary classification methods, and in general full of mistakes.

The human voice is classified as a "solid state" instrument because, the article says, the sound is generated by the vibrating vocal cords. So why call a clarinet a woodwind then? Woodwind instruments using reeds such as clarinet, saxophone, oboe and many others generate sound by vibrating reeds. Should we classify them as "solid state" instruments as well then ? I prefer to stick to their claffication as woodwind instruments :) And if we really have to classify the human voice as an instrument then I would put it among the wind instruments. But basicly I don't think the human voice should be considered as an "instrument" because if we do so, then we have to consider any part of the body that can generate a sound as instruments; like hands, feet, teeth, stomach, throat, and so on. I think the term "instrument" which means a device built for some purpose, can not comprehend natural parts of a human body, which were not "built" for some purpose. (I do not want to start a philosophic or a religious discussion here :) But simply put, I am observing that there are not any "voice makers" and if I want a good voice there is no shop I can but it from)

Friction intruments. Is there really such a group of instruments ? What is the source of this information ? The example given is a glass harmonica. But if the sound is made by vibrating glass, then why not put it among lamellophones ?

Lamellophones. Is there really such a group of instruments ? What is the source of this information ?

The entire sections dedicated to "Instruments that generate sound from matter in its liquid state", "Instruments that generate sound from matter in its plasma state" and "Quintephones (instruments that generate sound informatically)" are nonsense. A water flute is a kind of flute that instead of air uses water. One can make water organs too. But as long as they remain a science park toy, I would not classify them as musical instruments. If anything making a sound is here considered a musical instrument, then this article is missing millions of objects producing sound.

"Instruments that generate sound from matter in its plasma state" and "Quintephones (instruments that generate sound informatically)" simply do not exist. The sound is NOT created by matter in plasma state or by information or data. It is created by loudspeakers which are connected to an electronical device sending electrical output to the speakers which produce sound. They should be classified as electronic instruments like a digital keyboard. How you obtain these electronic output which in the loudspeaker becomes a sound is irrilevant. You can use ionized gaz if you want but the SOUND doesn't come from the ions as the name of these instruments misleadingly suggest. I can make an isntrument playing "colours" then. It would have a camera capturing the colurs put in front of it. An electronic cpu would give a value to this colour being ultraviolet and infrared the two ends of the range. And then it would assign a sound to that colour. So I can play melodies showing to the camera diferent colours in rapid succession. It can be made. Easily too. Now would this intrument be a colorphone ? Would it make sound from colours ? Or would it simply be an electronic device capable of, or pragrammed to produce sounds ?

greetings,

Giandrago 03:02, 10 November 2007 (UTC)giandrago

[edit] Improving this article

If anyone is interested, I'd like to start a collaboration to improve this article. It is listed at Wikipedia:Vital articles and it is currently an embarrassment. I went through the history and noticed that back in late 2007, a vandal blanked most of the article and no one even noticed. I tried restoring the blanked content without losing any recent additions.

I'd like to start a discussion of what information folks think should be in this article, and what sources we might be able to use. Right now.. it's just a mess. It looks like someone tried writing about a classification system for instruments based on a mixture of physics and other things, and there is a little history. --Laser brain (talk) 05:22, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Working outline

What should the major topics be in this article? Let's hash out a working outline:

  • Lead
  • Archeology
  • History of musical instruments
    • Primitive and prehistoric
    • Antiquity
    • Middle Ages
      • Seems like a rather big jump to make here, where should another division be made? --Kakofonous (talk) 21:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
        • Do you mean the jump between Antiquity and Middle Ages? Or between Middle and Modern? My intent was that Antiquity would take us through the early centuries A.D., Middle Ages would take us until about 1400. Alternate suggestions? --Laser brain (talk) 15:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
    • Modern
  • Classification of musical instruments
    • Ancient systems
    • Hornbostel-Sachs
    • Schaeffner
    • Range
  • Construction
    • Materials
    • Production (i.e., luthier)
  • User interfaces (need a better name)
  • Culture
    • Mythology
    • Popular culture
      • What type of pop culture references? This seems quite vague and an invitation for random lists. --Kakofonous (talk) 21:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
        • I was thinking about some well-referenced text about how musical instruments can be seen as status symbols and how some manufacturers (like Fender Corporation) have grown into brand images on clothing, etc. Thoughts? --Laser brain (talk) 15:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
  • See also
  • Notes/references

Add/edit/delete at will. --Laser brain (talk) 19:45, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

This article should discuss the impact of musical instruments on musical acts (bands and solo), and also how cheaper guitars and the hundreds of cheap synths in the 80s/90s meant more and more people could start making their own music. There should also be some mention of how computers are now a big part of making music. Computers are often used as a musical instrument in the production of newer releases, most commonly with software-based synthesizers. Another thing to make sure of is that we represent a world view, instead of focusing on one country/region of the world. Various musical instruments have all originated from different parts of the world. — Wackymacs (talk ~ edits) 13:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Great ideas! I was thinking your first idea would fit into the Popular Culture section. Your second idea, about computers, is what I was trying to get at with "User interfaces" but I think we need a better heading. The section would be about modern ways people make music outside of "traditional" musical instruments. --Laser brain (talk) 15:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Since the computer-related stuff is basically synthesizers, it could go into Modern History. The first common synthesizers date back to the 1960s, and the Fairlight CMI was introduced in 1979, which is basically a powerful (for its time) computer connected to a music keyboard. The recent software-based stuff dates from the 90s to present, so all that info seems fitting for 'modern history'. — Wackymacs (talk ~ edits) 15:49, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. Thanks for the ideas. --Laser brain (talk) 16:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Working bibliography

I thought I'd list some books I've obtained to work on this article. Please add to the list if you have other good sources. --Laser brain (talk) 04:15, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Marcuse, Sibyl (1975). A Survey of Musical Instruments. Harper & Row. ISBN 0060127767. 
  • Sachs, Curt (1940). The History of Musical Instruments. W. W. Norton & Company. 
  • Kartomi, Margaret J. (1990). On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments. University of Chicago Press. 
  • Remnant, Mary (1989). Musical Instruments: An Illustrated History from Antiquity to the Present. Batsford. ISBN 0713451696. .

[edit] Google Books sources

A search for "history of musical instruments" brings up 2124 results on Google Books (limited preview). I've been using limited preview on Google Books to write several articles, and it works extremely well. Some of the better titles available:

Simply click on the 'Preview' tab to read the books. Similar searches can be made to provide research for the rest of the article, such as "musical instruments culture", "impact of musical instruments" and so on. Hope they become useful. — Wackymacs (talk ~ edits) 13:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC)