Instruments Flashcards
The word “guitar” is derived from this word, which is used to describe any instruments with strings stretched over a thin, flat body.
Zither
The expression “to pull out all the stops” originated with what kind of performer?
An organist. The “stops” are components that block air to certain organ pipes; the instruments will play its loudest with all the stops pulled out, as it were.
Andrea Amati and his sons and grandsons are best known for their skill at making what?
Violins, cellos
What is the name of the good-sounding musical instrument pictured here, often confused with a baritone, and considered a kind of saxhorn or tuba with higher-than-normal range?
Euphonium
What term was used and perhaps introduced into the English language in February 1813, in the name of a London society formed for the promotion of instrumental music? The society still exists today, and the term in question has, over time, become synonymous with a symphony orchestra?
Philharmonic
The musical instrument known as a harmonium is a “pump” or “reed” version of what other instrument (and in fact those quoted words often precede this other instrument as alternate terms for the harmonium)?
Organ
In playing this instrument whose early version was called a sackbut, it’s about 6″ from A to B, about 7″ from C to D.
Trombone
On what kind of musical instrument could you play a “paradiddle”?
Drums
What was, for decades, the only acceptable instrument for women to play in an orchestra, with the result that 95% of performers today are still female?
Harp
This term is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or tone. It is what makes a particular musical sound have a different sound from another, even when they have the same pitch and loudness.
Timbre
The musical instrument known as a shawm is a predecessor of what other instrument, which shares the shawm’s basic form and mostly replaced the shawm by the end of the 17th century?
Oboe
When referred to in its relation to a guitar, the object used in musical performance that is known formally as a plectrum is better known by what other term?
Pick
What seven-letter word for a certain classical orchestral instrument shares an etymology with the term for the membrane in mammals that separates the outer ear from the middle ear?
Timpani
