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A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle any object that produces sound can be a musical instrument – it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture. Early musical instruments may have been used for rituals: such as a trumpet to signal success on the hunt, or a drum in a religious ceremony. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance of melodies for entertainment.


Musical instruments are also often classified by their musical range in comparison with other instruments in the same family. These terms are named after singing voice classifications:

Some instruments fall into more than one category: for example, the cello may be considered tenor, baritone or bass, depending on how its music fits into the ensemble, and the trombone may be alto, tenor, baritone, or bass and the French horn, bass, baritone, tenor, or alto, depending on the range it is played in. Many instruments have their range as part of their name: soprano saxophone, tenor saxophonebaritone hornalto flutebass guitar, etc. Additional adjectives describe instruments above the soprano range or below the bass, for example: sopranino saxophonecontrabass clarinet. When used in the name of an instrument, these terms are relative, describing the instrument’s range in comparison to other instruments of its family and not in comparison to the human voice range or instruments of other families.
