Musical instrument Musical instrument A musical instrument is an instrument created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered 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 ritual, 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 evolved in step with changing applications. The date and origin of the
Recorder (musical instrument) in each hand. In others, flutes of the same length have differing hand positions. In a final case, the pipes are parallel, in contact with each other, and differ in length. While the iconographic criteria for a recorder are typically a clearly recognizable labium and a double handed vertical playing technique, such criteria are not prescriptive, and it is uncertain whether any of these depictions should be considered a single instrument, or constitute a kind of recorder. The identification of the instrument depicted is further complicated by the symbolism of the aulos, a double piped instrument associated with the satyr