Grade Five Music Theory - Lesson 15: The Instruments of the Orchestra
Instruments for Grade 5 Music Theory
You need to know about all the standard orchestral instruments, and about the voice.
You need to know which family each instrument belongs to, the relative pitch of each instrument and which clef they use.
You also need to know which instruments can play each other’s music without a change in pitch occurring.
Families of Instruments
There are four families of instrument. Each family is defined by the way the instruments produce sound.
- Instruments which use strings are called string instruments (funnily enough!)
- Instruments which produce sound when they are hit or shaken are called percussion.
- Instruments which use air are divided into two groups- those that are always made of metal and which are played with a funnel-shaped mouthpiece are brass instruments, and those which can be made of wood are called woodwind.
Family Members of Instruments
Here’s a table to summarise the standard orchestral instruments.
In each family the instruments are listed in order from the smallest (=highest) to the biggest (=lowest).
You can see which clef the instruments normally use, and if they are transposing.
Click on the Audio icon to hear what the instrument sounds like. (All audio was recorded by the Philharmonia Orchestra. Visit their site for thousands more free sounds!)
Information about the ranges of each instrument is here.
Reed Instruments
In the woodwind family, the clarinet, oboe and bassoon all produce sound using a reed. The clarinet is a single-reed instrument, and the oboe and bassoon are double-reed instruments. A double reed is simply two reeds bound together at one end You may be asked about which are single- or double-reed instruments, so learn this!
Unpitched Instruments
The instruments in the strings, woodwind and brass families are all pitched instruments. This means they play notes which have a specific pitch, which you can write on a stave. In the percussion family, some instruments are pitched, and others are unpitched. Unpitched instruments make a "sound" but not a "note". Here are some examples.
Pitched Percussion
Xylophone (made of wood), glockenspiel (made of metal), timpani (or "kettle drums").
A kettle drum can only be tuned to play one note at a time, so usually you find two or three in an orchestra, each tuned to play different notes (e.g. the tonic and dominant).
Unpitched Percussion
Gong, triangle, cymbals, castanets, bass drum, snare drum.
Non-Standard Instruments
There are plenty more instruments around as you probably know! They are not considered to be "standard" orchestral instruments though, because they are not used in a basic "standard" symphony orchestra.
Some examples include the guitar, the saxophone (pictured), the harp, the piano and the recorder.
Brass and woodwind instruments come in a variety of different sizes. A small flute is called a piccolo, whereas a big flute is called a bass flute. Clarinets come in many sizes too - you might have seen a small clarinet called an E flat clarinet, or a very big one which is a bass clarinet. A variant of the oboe is the cor anglais.
These instruments are often used in symphony orchestras, but they are not "standard" because they are used in addition to (and not instead of) the standard instruments. Many brass instruments are used mainly in brass bands, and not so often in symphony orchestras, for example, the cornet or the flugelhorn (pictured).
For Grade 5 Theory, you need only to know about the "standard" instruments, but you will not be penalised if you want to show off your knowledge! If you are asked "What is the highest member of the woodwind family?", you may answer "flute" (standard instrument), or "piccolo" (non-standard instrument).
However, you would not be right if you answered "recorder" (pictured), because it is not used in symphony orchestras.
The Voice
There are four basic ranges of voice. Women’s voices can be soprano (the highest voice) or alto, and men’s voices can be tenor or bass (the lowest voice).
In between soprano and alto, there is another female voice called mezzo-soprano, and between tenor and bass there is another male voice which is called baritone.
Here is the complete range from highest to lowest:
Soprano - Mezzo Soprano - Alto - Tenor- Baritone - Bass
You can listen to examples of each voice on the Oxford University Press website.
