What Exactly Is A Chordophone? (With Examples)  (2023)

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What Exactly Is A Chordophone? (With Examples) ? ›

chordophone, any of a class of musical instruments in which a stretched, vibrating string produces the initial sound. The five basic types are bows, harps, lutes, lyres, and zithers. The name chordophone replaces the term stringed instrument when a precise, acoustically based designation is required.

Chordophones are instruments that produce sound by vibrating strings. The Hornbostel-Sachs classification system breaks chordphones down further into simple and composite chordophones.

ˈkȯrdəˌfōn. plural chordophones. : any of a class of musical instruments (such as a guitar or piano) whose sound is generated by plucking, bowing, or striking stretched strings : stringed instrument compare aerophone, electrophone, idiophone, lamellophone, membranophone.

The guitar is classified as a chordophone – meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood with its strings made of catgut.

Examples of chordophones that are played by plucking are banjo, guitar, harp, mandolin and ukulele. The piano, dulcimer and the clavichord are examples of chordophones that are struck. ... Electric guitars and electric pianos are examples of traditional instruments that are electronically amplified.

The musical bow is the most basic chordophone instrument. It consists of one or more strings stretched from one end of a wooden bow to the other.

Chordophones. Instruments that produce sound by the vibration of strings.

' Chordophones have a long history. The earliest surviving stringed instruments to date are the Lyres of Ur, plucked chordophones, which currently exist in fragments that date back to 4,500 years ago.

In the traditional Hornbostel-Sachs system of categorizing musical instruments, the piano is considered a type of chordophone. Similar to a lyre or a harp, it has strings stretched between two points.

Examples of aerophones are flutes, trumpets, trombones, tubas, clarinets, saxophones. You must blow into all of these instruments to make a sound. Examples of chordophones are violins, violas, cellos, double bass, harp, guitar, ukulele.

Is a banjo a chordophone? ›

The five-string banjo (hereafter simply 'banjo') is a plucked spike-lute chordophone of the United States.

The violin, sometimes known as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular use.

The guitar is a necked box lute chordophone. It is a plucked or strummed composite chordophone with the 321.322 classification number in the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system. It applies to string instruments such as the acoustic guitar, classical guitar, and electric guitars.

The term chordophones is generally used to classify musical instruments that produce sound by way of vibrating strings, that can be plucked by a plectrum, rubbed by a bow or played by hand. Research has verified the existence of seven different instruments that can be listed under this category.

The guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning.

The guitar is a musical instrument of the chordophone family. The standard guitar has six strings, others…

chordophone, any of a class of musical instruments in which a stretched, vibrating string produces the initial sound. The five basic types are bows, harps, lutes, lyres, and zithers.

Aerophones. Simplest type of chordophone, which consist of a single string attached to two ends of a curved stick, like the bow archers use. Most common type of harp in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is similar to the musical bow, except that it has several strings instead of just one strung across a curved stick.

The most common types of chordophones are lutes, which include strings pulled across the body of the instrument (the resonator) and up the instrument's neck. Lute instruments include guitars, banjos, violins, fiddle, and cellos.

In musicology, string instruments are known as chordophones. It is one of the five main divisions of instruments in the Hornbostel–Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification.

What organ instrument is a chordophone? ›

The piano and harpsichord are chordophones, and the organ is an aerophone that uses air columns flowing through pipes to create sounds, but all three are traditionally operated by a single musician at a keyboard, so they are typically considered part of the keyboard family.

The harp is a multi-stringed musical instrument, or chordophone, that has a resonator (or soundboard) that vibrates with the movement of the strings, producing the sound of the notes.

Bowed chordophones seem to have originated in Central Asia and spread rapidly throughout Eurasia in perhaps the 10th century.

The oud (Arabic: عود, romanized: ʿūd, pronounced [ʕuːd];) is a short-neck lute-type, pear-shaped, fretless stringed instrument (a chordophone in the Hornbostel–Sachs classification of instruments), usually with 11 strings grouped in six courses, but some models have five or seven courses, with 10 or 13 strings ...

The yueqin (or yueh-ch'in) is a plucked box-lute chordophone of the Han Chinese. Known to the English-speaking world as the 'moon lute,' its name derives from the characters for 'moon' ('yue') and 'stringed instrument' ('qin').

The ukulele is a string instrument that originated in Portugal in the second century B.C. With a small, guitar-shaped body that is fitted with four strings, it is considered a member of the chordophone family. Sound is produced through these instruments by plucking and strumming the strings.

The 'ukulele (or, in English, ukulele) is a plucked/strummed box-lute chordophone currently distributed worldwide but most strongly associated with the Hawaiian Islands. All three instruments pictured here are soprano 'ukuleles; other more-or-less standard sizes are the concert, tenor, and baritone.

The hurdy-gurdy is a mechanically bowed box-zither chordophone with keyboard-operated tangents.

What is the oldest instrument? ›

The oldest musical instrument in the world, a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute is a treasure of global significance. It was discovered in Divje babe cave near Cerkno and has been declared by experts to have been made by Neanderthals.

A bass drum is a percussion instrument that belongs to the membranophone percussion group because it produces sound when a pedal hits the drum head (membrane).

Reed aerophones can be further sub-divided into two distinct categories: single-reed and double-reed instruments. The former includes clarinets and saxophones, while examples of the latter are oboes and bassoons.

Tenor banjos are 4 string banjos that have a shorter neck and come in two varieties, the 17 fret and the 19 fret. The name “tenor” has nothing to do with a lower pitch such as a vocalist who is a tenor or a tenor saxophone.

The bandurria is a plucked chordophone from Spain, similar to the mandolin and bandola, primarily used in Spanish folk music, but also found in former Spanish colonies.

For many centuries, the organ has been considered as the Queen of all instruments. It is the largest and noblest instrument as concerns the equipment. This is why playing the organ is no easy task to learn.

membranophones, such as drums or kazoos, which produce sound by a vibrating membrane; chordophones, such as the piano or cello, which produce sound by vibrating strings; aerophones, such as the pipe organ or oboe, which produce sound by vibrating columns of air.

Idiophones are instruments whose own substance vibrates to produce sound (as opposed to the strings of a guitar or the air column of a flute); examples include bells, clappers, and rattles. Membranophones emit sound by the vibration of a stretched membrane; the prime examples are drums.

Free aerophones are instruments where the vibrating air is not confined to the inside of the instrument itself (eg. accordions and pitch pipes). In non-free aerophones, the vibrating air is confined inside of the instrument (eg. ocarinas and bagpipes).