Musical instrument classification and some other woodwinds, such as the flute and bagpipe), other wind instruments such as the organ, and the stick-struck santur (a board zither). The distinction between fretted and open was in classic Persian fashion. Musical instrument classification Throughout history, various methods of musical instrument classification have been used. The most commonly used system divides instruments into string instruments, woodwind instruments, brass instruments and percussion instruments; however, other schemes have been devised. The oldest known scheme of classifying instruments is Chinese and dates from the 3rd millennium BC. It grouped instruments according to the materials they are made of. Instruments
Recorder (musical instrument) "silently practicing a tune" or "sing or render in song" (both almost exclusively referring to songbirds), long after the recorder had been named. Thus, the recorder cannot have been named after the sound of birds. The name of the instrument is also uniquely English: in Middle French there is no equivalent noun sense of "recorder" referring to a musical instrument. Partridge indicates that the use of the instrument by "jongleurs" led to its association with the verb: "recorder" the minstrel's action, a "recorder" the minstrel's tool. The reason we know this instrument as the recorder and not one of the