Musical Instruments Quiz — 10 Free Questions

Question 1

Which double-reed woodwind has a bright, penetrating, slightly nasal tone that cuts through a full orchestra, and by tradition sounds the tuning note for the whole ensemble because its pitch is so stable?

Question 2

Which is the bass member of the double-reed woodwind group, a long conical wooden tube folded back on itself to a manageable height, with the reed carried on a thin curved metal tube called the crook or bocal?

Question 3

Which small keyboard instrument sounds soft, bell-like tuned metal bars, struck by felt hammers through a piano-style action, each bar sitting over a little wooden resonator box?

Question 4

What is the name for one of the thin metal ridges set across the neck of a guitar, lute, mandolin or sitar, against which the player presses the string so that it always stops at an exact, repeatable pitch?

Question 5

Which North Indian percussion instrument is a pair of hand drums, a smaller wooden one played with the dominant hand and a larger metal one played with the other, each head bearing a black tuning paste at its centre?

Question 6

Which instrument, built by an American engineer from the mid-1960s, generated and shaped sound electronically through modules, oscillators, filters and envelope shapers, that the player connected with a tangle of patch cords?

Question 7

What is the name for the internationally agreed standard that fixes the A above middle C at 440 vibrations per second, so that instruments made in different countries can be played together in tune?

Question 8

Which orchestral woodwind has no reed at all: the player blows a stream of air across the edge of a hole near one end, and the stream splits and flutters against that edge to set the air column vibrating?

Question 9

Which Chinese bowed instrument has just two strings and no fingerboard, so the player stops the strings by pressing them in mid-air, over a small resonator traditionally covered with snakeskin, with the bow hair permanently threaded between the two strings?

Question 10

What is the name for the assembled group of drums and cymbals arranged so that a single seated player can reach them all, striking some with sticks and working the bass drum and the hi-hat with foot pedals?

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About Musical Instruments

This quiz is about how musical instruments work: the families they fall into, the mechanism or quirk that defines each one, the parts they are built from, the playing techniques and the physics of sound behind them. It is the knowledge companion to the separate picture quiz that only asks you to recognise instruments by sight. Each of the eighty questions describes an instrument, a family, a part, a technique, an acoustic idea or a maker, and asks you to name it from four choices, then explains it.

The first pack is the essentials: the four orchestral families and how each makes its sound; the violin, piano, pipe organ, guitar, flute, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, timpani, saxophone, harp and double bass; the reed, the bow and the octave; and the layout of the orchestra itself.

The second pack goes wider. The rest of the orchestra, viola, cello, oboe, bassoon, French horn, tuba, snare drum, vibraphone, harpsichord and recorder. The parts, the bridge, the soundboard, the fret, the valve, the mouthpiece, the sound post and the three piano pedals. The techniques and acoustics, pizzicato, vibrato, harmonics, the mute, transposing instruments, the harmonic series, timbre, resonance, equal temperament and concert pitch. And a tour of the world: the sitar and tabla, bagpipes, the didgeridoo, the djembe, the steelpan, the accordion, the erhu and the kora.

The third pack is history, invention and oddity: the Hornbostel-Sachs classification; Adolphe Sax and the Stradivarius; the theremin, the Moog and the Mellotron; circular breathing and the wolf tone; the Boehm key system; Franklin's glass harmonica; the Hardanger fiddle and the hurdy-gurdy; the Cristofori piano action and the prepared piano; the bullroarer; the magnetic pickup and the player piano; the giant octobass; the ondes Martenot; and the wrap-around sousaphone.

The wrong answers are always the same kind of thing as the right one, a family beside families, a part beside parts, a technique beside techniques, so a shaky guess is easily caught. Nothing here assumes the reader can play or read music; every term is explained where it appears.

Images are used carefully and only where they cannot give the answer away. Because a photograph of an instrument would simply be the answer on most questions, a plain instrument or score photo appears only on a question about a part, a technique or an acoustic idea, and is chosen so that the pictured instrument is equally consistent with all four options. Facts have been checked, including the repeated blind-test finding that expert players cannot actually tell a Stradivarius from a fine modern violin, and the fact that the 'woodwind' family now contains metal flutes and brass saxophones.