Musical Instruments Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

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 2

Which stringed instrument is sounded by a rosined wooden wheel turned by a hand crank, which bows all the strings at once, while the melody is stopped by a row of keys pressing small wooden tangents against one or two of them?

Question 3

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 4

Which Belgian instrument maker, working in Paris, patented in 1846 a new family of single-reed brass instruments with a conical bore, one of which became indispensable to jazz and carries his name?

Question 5

Which shallow, two-headed percussion instrument has a set of thin metal wires stretched across its lower head, so that striking the upper head makes those wires rattle against it and produces a sharp, dry crack rather than a clear pitch?

Question 6

Which is the largest and lowest brass instrument, the one that supplies the foundation of the brass section, usually with three to five valves and a bell pointing up at the ceiling?

Question 7

What is the name for the mechanism, worked out for the flute in the 1830s and later adapted to the clarinet, that places the tone holes where the acoustics demand rather than where fingers naturally fall, and links them with a web of rings, rods and padded keys so that one finger can close several at once?

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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.