Instruments

Musical instruments are devices designed to produce music, frequently by plucking or striking a string or bell or drum surface, or by forcing air to resonate (see wind instruments).

The history of musical instruments goes back many centuries. In ancient Greece and Ireland, lyres and harps were frameworks holding strings of fixed length and tension, which the player plucked with his or her fingers. These evolved into lutes, and later guitars and ukeleles. Somewhere along the line, the strings were laid out horizontally and plucked by elaborate mechanisms connected to keyboards, giving the harpsichord. Later hammers were connected to the keyboard, giving the pianoforte (Italian for soft-loud) or piano. The piano differed from the harpsichord in allowing the player to vary the loudness of notes; the plucking mechanism always produced the same loudness.

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