A piano has 7,500 working parts, and if even one of those parts is not fully functional, the piano could go out of tune.
There are 7,500 parts in every piano, and these parts work together to form a sound unlike any other instrument – a sound produced by both string and percussion elements.
The oldest musical instrument in the world (60,000 years) The oldest musical instrument in the world, a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute is a treasure of global significance. It was discovered in Divje babe cave near Cerkno and has been declared by experts to have been made by Neanderthals.
The flutes, made from bird bone and mammoth ivory, come from a cave in southern Germany which contains early evidence for the occupation of Europe by modern humans - Homo sapiens. Scientists used carbon dating to show that the flutes were between 42,000 and 43,000 years old.
By studying fossils, we can establish that once our ancestors had the horseshoe-shaped hyoid bone in the throat in a similar position to modern humans, they would have had the physical ability to sing as we can. That date is over 530,000 years ago.
Because Paleolithic humans had a deep connection with the melodic properties that helped them navigate in a cave, they likely celebrated the unique acoustics by singing in conjunction with their painting sessions.
“Hurrian Hymn No. 6” is considered the world's earliest melody, but the oldest musical composition to have survived in its entirety is a first century A.D. Greek tune known as the “Seikilos Epitaph.” The song was found engraved on an ancient marble column used to mark a woman's gravesite in Turkey.
Did you know? The didgeridoo is perhaps the oldest wind instrument in the world. Some argue that the didgeridoo has been in use for over 40,000 years, but the oldest verifiable records (in the form of rock and cave paintings) of Aborigines playing the instrument puts the date closer to 1500 years ago.
It is estimated that there are over 1500 different musical instruments in the world. These instruments are segregated into different categories that include woodwind, percussion, brass, keyboard, and the guitar family.
Orchestra Instrument Families: Strings, Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion | Oregon Symphony.
Rock bands may include a variety of instruments, but the most common configuration is a 4-part band consisting of lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, and drums.
Pipe organs range in size from a single short keyboard to huge instruments with over 10,000 pipes. A large modern organ typically has three or four keyboards (manuals) with five octaves (61 notes) each, and a two-and-a-half octave (32-note) pedal board.
The piano reigns supreme as the ultimate solo instrument. It has 88 keys as well as the ability to play complete orchestrations. It's pretty obvious that the piano is the king of solo repertoire – it's not even close!
The harp is a unique instrument and many elements of how it is constructed bring light to how to play or write for the instrument. The modern harp has 47 strings and 7 pedals which raise or lower each pitch-class of strings.
The short answer is: No one knows who invented music. No historical evidence exists to tell us exactly who sang the first song, or whistled the first tune, or made the first rhythmic sounds that resembled what we know today as music. But researchers do know it happened thousands of years ago.
The oldest song is Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1975), while the most modern song is Harry Styles's "As It Was" (2022).
To find the oldest known complete song, you need look back just 3,400 years. Composed of lyrics, musical notation and tuning instructions for a Babylonian lyre carved into a clay tablet, it is called Hymn to Nikkal, or Hurrian Hymn No 6.
The Hurrian Hymn was discovered in the 1950s on a clay tablet inscribed with Cuneiform text. It's the oldest surviving melody and is over 3,400 years old. The hymn was discovered on a clay tablet in Ugarit, now part of modern-day Syria, and is dedicated the Hurrians' goddess of the orchards Nikkal.
For example, there is evidence that people struck stalactites or "rock gongs" in caves dating from 12,000 years ago, with the caves themselves acting as resonators for the sound. So, we know that music is old, and may have been with us from when humans first evolved.
Musical Instruments
Making music is a universal human trait that goes back to at least 35,000 years ago.
Researchers have long debated when humans starting talking to each other. Estimates range wildly, from as late as 50,000 years ago to as early as the beginning of the human genus more than 2 million years ago.
The first theory is that language started with people making different sounds, mostly imitating the things around them, like animal calls, nature sounds and the sounds of tools. Eventually they started using these sounds to talk to each other.
The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English or "Anglo-Saxon", evolved from a group of North Sea Germanic dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century; these dialects generally resisted influence from the then-local Common Brittonic and British Latin languages.