99 Fun Facts About Musical Instruments

How many keys does a standard modern piano have?

88 keys, 52 white and 36 black. Early pianos had far fewer; makers kept widening the keyboard because composers asked for more range.

Bartolomeo Cristofori invented the piano around 1700 while employed by the Medici as what?

Cristofori was Keeper of the Instruments for Prince Ferdinando de' Medici in Florence; his hammers struck the strings and fell back, letting the player control volume as a harpsichord could not.

Which piano maker's Imperial model has 97 keys instead of the usual number?

Bösendorfer built the Imperial after pianist Ferruccio Busoni asked for extra bass notes to do justice to Bach's organ works; its 97 keys span a full eight octaves.

The saxophone has a metal body, yet it belongs to which family of instruments?

Woodwind: the sound comes from a single reed on the mouthpiece, and that, not the metal, decides the family. Adolphe Sax patented it in 1846, hoping to join woodwind agility to brass power.

Adolphe Sax patented the saxophone in France in 1846, but he came from which other country?

Belgium: Sax was born in Dinant in 1814 and is said to have survived so many childhood accidents that neighbours called him 'little Sax, the ghost'. He moved to France in 1842.

The four strings of a violin are tuned in which interval?

Perfect fifths: G, D, A and E from low to high. A violinist tunes the A string first, then sets the others from it by ear, a fifth at a time.

The 'Lady Blunt' violin, which fetched a then-record $15.9 million in 2011, was made by which craftsman?

Antonio Stradivari made it in 1721. It is named for Lady Anne Blunt, Lord Byron's granddaughter, and its owners sold it to raise money for victims of Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari families all built their violins in which Italian city?

Cremona: Andrea Amati is credited with giving the violin its modern form there in the 1500s, and makers still build by hand in the city, so UNESCO put its violin craftsmanship on the intangible heritage list in 2012.

The theremin, an early electronic instrument, is unusual because it is played how?

Without touching it: the player's hands move near two antennas. Leon Theremin found the effect by accident, when a device he built to measure gases changed pitch as his hand came closer.

Which instrument plays the eerie, swooping high line on the Beach Boys' 'Good Vibrations'?

An Electro-Theremin, which trombonist Paul Tanner devised with inventor Bob Whitsell because a true theremin was so hard to pitch: a slider along a marked strip finds the notes.

Traditional didgeridoos are made from eucalyptus branches that have been hollowed out by what?

Termites hollow out the trunk by eating the dead heartwood and leaving the living sapwood; makers tap trunks to find ones already eaten through.

The Hawaiian word 'ukulele' roughly translates as what?

'Ukulele is usually glossed as 'jumping flea', from 'uku (flea) and lele (to jump), said to describe the player's quick, darting fingers.

The ukulele descends from small guitar-like instruments brought to Hawaii by immigrants from where?

Portugal: cabinet makers from Madeira landed in Honolulu on the Ravenscrag in 1879 and built small guitars like those of home. King Kalākaua played the new instrument for his guests, and it caught on.

Which Roman emperor, by Suetonius's account, vowed to perform in public on an early bagpipe?

Nero: Suetonius says that late in his reign he vowed to celebrate a victory by performing on the bagpipes. A Greek writer of his day also describes a ruler, perhaps Nero, playing a pipe with a bag under his arm.

Which instrument gives the orchestra its tuning note, a concert A?

Oboe: its bright, penetrating tone is easy to hear across the orchestra. Another reason often given is that its pitch is hard to adjust on the day, so everyone else matches it.

The oldest known musical instruments, found in caves in Germany, are flutes made from what?

Vulture bone and mammoth ivory: the best-preserved, from Hohle Fels cave, is a vulture's wing bone with five finger holes, at least 35,000 years old, a sign that music reached Europe with the first modern humans.

Which Fender guitar, launched in 1954 with three pickups, did Jimi Hendrix play at Woodstock?

The Stratocaster. Leo Fender, the radio repairman whose firm made it, was no guitarist himself; its body was contoured so it would sit comfortably against the player.

The modern classical guitar's shape was settled around 1850 by makers from which country?

Antonio de Torres Jurado, working in Seville and later Almería in Spain, fixed the larger body and fan-braced top that every classical guitar since has copied.

What tune did Gemini 6's Wally Schirra play on a harmonica during the December 1965 mission?

Jingle Bells: the crew first radioed that they had spotted a strange satellite about to re-enter. Then Schirra played a tiny harmonica while Tom Stafford shook small bells; both are now at the Smithsonian.

Which harmonica maker was founded in the town of Trossingen in 1857 by a trained clockmaker?

Hohner: Matthias Hohner trained as a clockmaker before turning to harmonicas in 1857. From the 1860s he shipped them to America, which was his biggest market for decades.

The pipe organ with the most pipes in the world, 33,112, stands in a boardwalk hall in which New Jersey resort?

Atlantic City: state senator Emerson Richards designed the Boardwalk Hall organ to fill the vast arena without amplification. It has not worked fully since the great Atlantic hurricane of 1944.

The earliest known organ, built by Ctesibius in the 3rd century BC, used what to keep its wind steady?

Water pressure: pumps pushed air into a chamber standing in water, and the water's weight evened out the wind. The Greeks named it the hydraulis, from their words for water and pipe.

In Hornbostel-Sachs classification, an instrument whose own body vibrates, like a triangle, is called what?

Idiophone joins the Greek idios, 'own', to the word for sound. Hornbostel and Sachs coined it to replace the older 'autophone', which they feared would suggest instruments that play themselves.

Hornbostel and Sachs credited their instrument numbering to which library system?

Dewey Decimal: in their 1914 scheme each added digit narrows the class, so the violin and the guitar share the number 321.322, which marks a lute with a box body and a neck.

George Harrison first played a sitar on which Beatles song?

Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown): Harrison had discovered the sitar on the set of the film Help! earlier in 1965 and bought a cheap one from a shop on London's Oxford Street.

A sitar's extra strings that run beneath the frets and hum along with the melody are known as what?

Sympathetic strings: a sitar has up to 13, tuned to the notes of the raga, and each rings by resonance whenever a played string sounds its pitch.

How does a trumpet player produce the sound?

Vibrating the lips in the mouthpiece: the buzz is where the sound begins, so the cup that receives it matters. A deep cup gives a mellower, darker tone and a shallow one a brighter tone.

The international society for players of the 'French horn' recommends which name for the instrument?

The horn: every issue of the society's journal says HORN is the correct English name. The instrument in modern orchestras is in any case the German design, not the French one with piston valves.

The Italian word 'violoncello', shortened to cello, literally means what?

Little violone: a violone is itself a 'big viola', so the full word stacks a big ending and a little ending on viola, which makes the cello, literally, a small large viola.

The double bass differs from the rest of the orchestral string family in being tuned in which interval?

Fourths: the tuning is a legacy of the viol, the older family the double bass is often traced to, while the violin, viola and cello are tuned in fifths. A bass guitar's E, A, D, G strings copy it.

Which brothers founded a Chicago drum company in 1909 around their design for a workable bass drum pedal?

The Ludwigs: William and Theobald Ludwig opened their shop to build the pedal. After Ringo Starr played a Ludwig kit on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, demand was so heavy that the factory added a night shift.

The steelpan, first hammered out of discarded oil drums, is the national instrument of which country?

Trinidad and Tobago, where the pan grew out of Carnival percussion bands. Parliament only wrote its national status into law in 2024, a year after the UN made 11 August World Steelpan Day.

The tuba was patented in 1835 in which country?

Prussia: the Berlin military bandmaster Wilhelm Wieprecht wanted a secure low bass for his bands, so he and the maker Johann Moritz patented the valved bass tuba. It pushed out the keyed serpent and ophicleide.

On a five-string banjo, what is unusual about the drone string?

It starts at the fifth fret, from a peg set into the neck. Though it sits beside the lowest string, where a guitarist expects the deepest note, it is tuned the highest, and the thumb sounds it as a drone.

The banjo's ancestors were brought to the Americas from which continent?

Africa: Thomas Jefferson noted in the 1780s that the 'banjar' was the instrument enslaved Virginians 'brought hither from Africa'. Early banjos had fretless necks, and frets became standard only late in the 19th century.

An instrument called the accordion was first patented in 1829 in which city?

Vienna: the organ and piano maker Cyrill Demian and his sons were granted the patent in May 1829. He named the little bellows box for the ready-made chords it played: Akkord is German for a musical chord.

Which composer's Piano Concerto No. 1 features the triangle so prominently it is nicknamed the 'triangle concerto'?

Liszt: the critic Eduard Hanslick damned the piece as a 'Triangle Concerto' in the 1850s. The label stuck so hard that Hanslick's home city heard it no more until Sophie Menter played it there in 1869.

Johann Christoph Denner is credited with creating a single-reed instrument around 1700 by adding a register key to which older one?

The chalumeau: without a register key it was confined to its low fundamental notes, about an octave and a half. The added key opened a second register a twelfth higher, which more than doubled the range.

Which instrument opens Gershwin's 1924 rhapsody with a famous upward glissando?

The clarinet's opening glissando began as a rehearsal joke by Paul Whiteman's clarinettist Ross Gorman; Gershwin liked it and kept it for the 1924 premiere.

Which orchestral instrument has seven pedals, one for each note name?

The harp has only seven strings to the octave, so each pedal shifts every string of one note name by a semitone or two, which is how it reaches the sharps and flats of any key.

The celesta, heard in Tchaikovsky's 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy', was invented in which city?

Paris: Auguste Mustel patented it there in 1886. Tchaikovsky found it on a visit and used it first in his ballad The Voyevoda, a year before the Sugar Plum Fairy made it famous.

Which 1874 tone poem uses the xylophone to imitate rattling skeleton bones?

Danse macabre by Saint-Saëns opens with one note plucked twelve times for midnight. The xylophone then clatters as the bones of the skeletons Death has called up.

Leon Theremin, the physicist who gave his name to the theremin, was born in which country?

Russia: Lev Termen was born in St Petersburg and became Leon Theremin in the West. Back home he built bugging devices for Soviet security, which were used against foreign embassies.

Who invented the glass harmonica, a set of friction-played glass bowls, in 1761?

Benjamin Franklin nested the bowls on a spindle turned by a foot treadle, so the player only had to touch the wet spinning rims. Mozart and Beethoven both wrote for it.

The modern ocarina was developed in the 19th century from a clay toy whistle in which country?

Italy: Giuseppe Donati of Budrio turned an earthenware carnival whistle that sounded only a note or two into a tuned instrument. Ocarina is a diminutive of oca, goose, after its shape.

Which of these is a smaller member of the harpsichord family?

Spinet: a small harpsichord with one string to each note. Its strings run at a slant to the keyboard, not straight back as in a full-size instrument, which keeps the case compact.

Historically, what were harpsichord plectra, which pluck the strings, made from?

Bird quill, usually crow, with leather as the alternative. Each quill sits in a pivoted tongue, so when the key is released it swings back and slips past the string without plucking it twice.

Before wooden and metal tubes, what hung beneath each bar of a traditional marimba to make its note ring?

A hollow gourd, often with a thin membrane over a hole to add a buzz. The instrument probably crossed the Atlantic with enslaved Africans, and in the Americas the gourds gave way to wooden, then metal, tubes.

On a set of bagpipes, what is the melody pipe played with two hands called?

The chanter is the fingered melody pipe. Its sound never stops while the bag is squeezed, so a piper cannot tongue a note and separates repeated notes by flicking in quick grace notes instead.

In a 2000 'Saturday Night Live' sketch, Christopher Walken's producer demands more of which instrument?

Cowbell is what Will Ferrell's character hammers through Blue Öyster Cult's '(Don't Fear) The Reaper' in the sketch. The instrument is named after the bells herdsmen hang on cattle.

B.B. King gave which name to his guitars after two men fighting over a woman set a dance hall ablaze?

Lucille worked at the dance hall in Twist, Arkansas, though King never met her. He gave every later guitar the name as a reminder never again to run into a burning building.

Which rock guitarist built his 'Red Special' with his father, using wood from an old fireplace mantel?

Brian May carved the neck from a fireplace mantel that a family friend was about to throw away. He has played the home-made guitar on Queen's albums and tours ever since.

Which two-foot plastic noisemaker droned through nearly every match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup?

Vuvuzela blasts hold a single note near B flat and reach about 120 decibels at one metre, the threshold of pain. FIFA still allowed them into the stadiums.

Which eight-stringed instrument plays the main riff of R.E.M.'s 1991 hit 'Losing My Religion'?

Mandolin was new to guitarist Peter Buck, who found the riff while teaching himself to play one. Its eight strings are tuned in four matched pairs.

In a 1979 Charlie Daniels Band hit, the Devil visits Georgia to win a soul in a contest on which instrument?

Fiddle is simply the everyday name for the violin, and young Johnny outplays the Devil to win a golden one. Daniels wrote the song because his album lacked a tune that showed the instrument off.

In 2022 Lizzo played a 200-year-old crystal flute that had once belonged to which US president?

James Madison was sent the crystal flute by a French maker to mark his second inauguration. Lizzo tried it at the Library of Congress, then played it onstage at a Washington arena.

Catgut, long used for violin and guitar strings, usually came from the intestines of which animal?

Sheep intestines, or sometimes a goat's, were cleaned, twisted and dried into the cord. No record shows that catgut was ever actually made from cats.

Which brass instrument, whose name means 'large trumpet', changes pitch with a slide instead of valves?

Trombone players lengthen the tube with a telescoping slide where other brass players press valves. A rarer valve version does exist, with three valves like a trumpet's.

Which orchestral instrument gave its name to the 1973 Mike Oldfield album heard in 'The Exorcist'?

Tubular bells are hanging metal tubes struck with a hammer to sound like church bells. Oldfield's album was the very first release on Richard Branson's Virgin Records.

In Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf', which low wind instrument plays Peter's grumbling grandfather?

Bassoon tubing runs to more than eight feet, so it is doubled back on itself to stay playable. Its name in several languages, fagotto or Fagott, comes from an old word for a bundle of sticks.

Which copper-bowled drums can be retuned to exact notes mid-performance with a foot pedal?

Timpani have a pedal that tightens or slackens the drumhead, which lets a skilled player change note in seconds. Each drum can therefore play a definite pitch, not just a beat.

Which instrument, whose name means 'small', sounds an octave higher than the standard concert flute?

Piccolo fingerings match the full-size flute's, but every note comes out an octave higher. Armies prized such piercing little flutes because they could be heard above a battle.

Which string instrument reads most of its music in the alto clef?

Viola parts sit in the alto clef because the instrument's range falls between the violin's and the cello's. It has been the alto voice of the violin family since the 18th century.

Which percussion instrument taps out the same rhythm 169 times through Ravel's 'Boléro'?

Snare drum players hold the pattern steady while the whole orchestra slowly swells around them. The drum's crisp rattle comes from strands called snares lying against its lower head.

Which simple, valveless brass instrument traditionally sounds 'Taps' at American military funerals?

Bugle players have no valves to press, so every note of 'Taps' is shaped by breath and embouchure alone. The call began as the army's signal for lights out at the end of the day.

Which wraparound marching tuba is named after the American bandleader known as the 'March King'?

Sousaphone design followed the wishes of John Philip Sousa, composer of 'The Stars and Stripes Forever'. It circles the player's body and ends in a big bell that throws the sound forward.

Brass, the alloy that gives trumpets and tubas their family name, is copper mixed with which metal?

Zinc typically makes up about a third of the mix, with copper supplying the rest. Swap it for tin and the result is bronze instead.

Which guitarist and multitrack recording pioneer gave his name to a Gibson guitar launched in 1952?

Les Paul had already built his own prototype, the Log, around a length of four-by-four timber. His experiments with overdubbing changed how records were made.

Wendy Carlos's 1968 album 'Switched-On Bach' was performed on which electronic instrument?

Moog synthesizer notes could only be played one at a time, so every chord on the album was built up note by note on tape. It went on to win three Grammys.

Which cymbal maker, founded in Constantinople in 1623, is among the world's oldest companies?

Zildjian means 'son of a cymbal maker', a surname an Ottoman sultan granted to the Armenian metalsmith behind the firm. His descendants moved the business to the United States in the 20th century.

Which piano maker began in a Manhattan loft in 1853 and later built a company town in Queens?

Steinway & Sons was started by German immigrant Heinrich Steinweg, whose family anglicised the name in 1864. The factory in the old company village in Queens is still in use.

Which Japanese company, whose logo is three interlocking tuning forks, began by making reed organs?

Yamaha is named after its founder, Torakusu Yamaha, who set up shop in Hamamatsu. The tuning forks in the logo are a nod to those musical beginnings.

Bongos and the tall conga drum, both staples of salsa bands, originated on which Caribbean island?

Cuba's eastern provinces produced the bongos at the end of the 19th century, and the island's son and rumba groups made both drums famous long before salsa existed.

Gamelan, played on bronze gongs and metal-keyed percussion, is the traditional music of which country?

Indonesia's gamelan belongs to the Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese peoples, with hand drums called kendang keeping the beat. UNESCO added it to its cultural heritage list in 2021.

Which national instrument of Japan stretches 13 strings over movable bridges along a six-foot body?

Koto players pluck the strings with picks worn on three fingers of the right hand. Sliding the bridges retunes the instrument from one piece to the next.

Which British rock band is fronted by a flautist famous for playing while balanced on one leg?

Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson traded in his electric guitar for a flute and had played it for only about two weeks when the band began. The one-legged stance became his signature pose.

Which bebop trumpeter adopted an upturned bell after dancers fell on his instrument at a 1953 party?

Dizzy Gillespie liked the altered sound so much that he had trumpets specially made with the bell raised 45 degrees. The party, at a Manhattan club, was for his wife Lorraine.

Which flamboyant pianist made a candelabrum his trademark after seeing one in a Chopin biopic?

Liberace borrowed the prop from the 1945 film 'A Song to Remember'. At the height of his fame he was the world's highest-paid entertainer, playing pianos crusted with rhinestones and mirrors.

What substance do violinists rub on the bow so its hair grips the strings?

Rosin gives the bow hair the grip it needs to sound a string. Baseball pitchers and ballet dancers use the same stuff in powdered form to stop themselves slipping.

Which buzzing instrument, patented in 1883, is played by humming into it rather than blowing?

Kazoo players' humming sets a thin membrane buzzing, which gives the voice its raspy edge. American inventor Warren Herbert Frost chose the name for his patent.

Which mallet instrument resembles a small xylophone but has bars made of metal rather than wood?

Glockenspiel is German for 'bell play'. It is often wrongly called a xylophone, and toy versions have even been sold under that name.

Which mallet instrument, made famous in jazz by Lionel Hampton, gets its shimmer from spinning discs?

Vibraphone bars each hang over a tube with a spinning disc inside, which makes the note pulse. Hampton first tried one that had been left behind in the studio at a Louis Armstrong session.

Which hand-held percussion instrument has pairs of small metal discs, called zills, set into its frame?

Tambourine players can produce a rapid roll just by running a thumb around the skin near the rim. Some versions have no drumhead at all, only the rattling frame.

Which tape-replay keyboard plays the flute-like opening of the Beatles' 'Strawberry Fields Forever'?

Mellotron keys each pull a strip of magnetic tape across a playback head, so every note is a recording of a real instrument. Its famous flute sound blends an alto and a soprano flute.

Which sitar virtuoso, who taught George Harrison, played at both the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock?

Ravi Shankar is also the father of two musicians, singer Norah Jones and sitar player Anoushka Shankar. His live album from Monterey gave him his highest placing on the US pop chart.

The charango, a small lute of the Andes, traditionally had a back made from which animal's shell?

Armadillo shell gave the charango its rounded back, but most modern makers carve it from wood instead. Some players think the wooden version resonates better anyway.

Japan's shakuhachi and India's bansuri are both flutes traditionally made from which fast-growing plant?

Bamboo grows as a ready-made tube, so a bansuri needs only a single shaft with a row of finger holes. The shakuhachi is blown from the end instead of the side.

Which acoustic guitar body style, first built by Martin in 1916, shares its name with a type of warship?

Dreadnought guitars borrowed the name of the big-gun battleships of the day because their bodies dwarfed other guitars. The loud, bold shape is now one of the most common of all.

Which three-stringed instrument with a triangular body comes in sizes up to a floor-standing contrabass?

Balalaika players pluck the smaller sizes with their fingers or a pick. The giant contrabass rests on legs on the floor and needs a leather plectrum.

Which rope-tuned goblet drum is said by Mali's Bambara people to be named after a call to gather in peace?

Djembe bodies are carved from hardwood and topped with rawhide, most often goatskin. Players use only their bare hands, with no sticks.

Which string instrument is sounded by a hand-cranked wheel that rubs the strings like an endless bow?

Hurdy-gurdy players press keys that push small wedges against the melody strings while drone strings hum underneath. The result sounds a lot like bagpipes.

Which steam-whistle instrument, a fixture of riverboats and circuses, shares its name with a Greek Muse?

Calliope whistles were originally locomotive whistles, and even a small set can be heard for miles. Riverboats fed theirs straight from the boilers that drove the boat.

Which German-born button squeezebox became the signature sound of Argentine tango?

Bandoneon comes from Heinrich Band, the German dealer who named and sold it. Emigrants and sailors are thought to have carried it to Argentina around 1870.

Anton Karas's theme for the 1949 film 'The Third Man' is played entirely on which stringed instrument?

Zither music made up the whole soundtrack, with no other instruments at all. Karas was an unknown tavern player before the theme topped charts around the world in 1950.

The morin khuur, a bowed instrument with a carved horse's head, is a national symbol of which country?

Mongolia's morin khuur was originally strung with hair from a stallion's tail for one string and a mare's for the other. Its music is on UNESCO's heritage list.

Armenia's duduk, the mournful pipe heard in 'Gladiator', is carved from the wood of which fruit tree?

Apricot wood is so central to the duduk that its other Armenian name, tsiranapogh, means 'apricot-made wind instrument'. UNESCO lists its music as a heritage of humanity.

Which Roland drum machine, a commercial flop in 1980, later shaped hip-hop with its booming bass drum?

TR-808 production ended after about 12,000 units because its parts could no longer be restocked. Cheap second-hand machines then won a cult following among underground musicians.

What nickname did Rickenbacker's 1930s lap steel, a pioneering electric guitar, earn for its shape?

Frying Pan fitted the circular cast-aluminium body and long neck of the instrument. George Beauchamp created it in 1931 but had to wait until 1937 for his patent.

Which part of a drum kit holds two cymbals face to face and claps them together with a foot pedal?

Hi-hat cymbals give a crisp 'chck' when the pedal closes them, and a drummer can also strike them with a stick while they are open or shut. The lower cymbal stays fixed while the upper one moves.