Vocabulary: musical instrument

• a large musical instrument with strings stretched on a triangular frame, played by plucking with the fingers

  She has played the harp since she was eight.

Iconic in folk music: Cajun, polka, tango. From the Italian word for "chord".

• a portable musical instrument with metal reeds blown by bellows, played by means of buttons or keys

  He played the accordion at the wedding.

Root of violinist.

• a stringed musical instrument played with a bow, the smallest and highest-pitched of its family

  She has played the violin since she was five.

Also called a "mouth organ" or "blues harp". Played by drawing and blowing through reeds. Iconic in American folk, blues, and country music.

• a small rectangular wind instrument played by blowing through it

  He pulled out a harmonica and played a tune.

Famous trumpeters: Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie. "Blow one's own trumpet" (UK) = boast about oneself; US version: "toot one's own horn".

• a brass musical instrument with a bright tone

  He plays trumpet in a jazz band.

Held horizontally in the modern concert flute. James Galway is a famous flutist. "Champagne flute": tall thin wine glass.

• a high-pitched woodwind instrument

  She plays flute in the orchestra.

Largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Distinctive deep "oompah" sound. Often the comic instrument in cartoons.

• a large brass instrument with a deep tone

  He played the tuba in the band.

A single-reed woodwind instrument. The player is a 'clarinetist'.

• a woodwind instrument with a single reed and a cylindrical tube, played by covering holes and keys

  She played a haunting solo on the clarinet.

Short for 'violoncello'. The player is a 'cellist'. Plural: cellos.

• a large stringed instrument of the violin family, played upright between the knees

  She has played the cello since she was six.

• a brass instrument with a coiled tube, valves, and a wide bell

  He plays the French horn.

• a stringed instrument like a small U-shaped harp with strings fixed to a crossbar, used especially in ancient Greece

  He played the lyre.

• a small four-stringed guitar of Hawaiian origin

  Playing the ukulele.

• a large brass wind instrument with straight tubing in three sections, ending in a bell over the player's left shoulder, different notes being made using a forward-pointing extendable slide

  He plays the trombone in a jazz band.