The Wide World of Music: A Guide to 100 Musical Instruments [Interactive]

Click any instrument to hear what it sounds like!

Click any instrument to hear what it sounds like!

Explore the wide array of sounds with our interactive list of musical instruments! Games online are rarely ever this educational and fun. From the xylophone to the alphorn, click each image to not only see but hear this musical instruments list A-Z (or should we say A-X?). Before kids decide which one they want to play when they grow up, they can listen to the variety of stringed, brass, percussion, and wind instruments here first. While sorting the name list of musical instruments in alphabetical order, we’ve also included which of them are aerophones (wind and brass), membranophones (percussion), chordophones (stringed), and electrophones (synthetic) as well as the general note range (which clef they’re played in).

In addition, we included which musical instruments for kids are usually in an orchestra. Only a small fraction of classic instruments are typically included. Everything from piccolos to flutes to cellos to violas to trumpets to timpani feature as the normal components of an orchestra, but that is certainly not representative of all of the beautiful sounds human beings have managed to make with hundreds-of-years-old musical instruments. The list of musical instruments in a Chinese orchestra might include a yangquin, huqin, dizi, or bianzhong, for instance. There’s a huge variety, and this interactive instruments-of-the-orchestra list can help illustrate that.

Of course, this shows only a small fraction of the options out there for kids’ musical instruments. You can make music with anything, even a can, stick, fence, or rock. It’s important that adults reinforce using music as play, letting kids flex their creative muscles to create sounds, as there are many mental and physical benefits to making music. Instruments list many nations of origin, too, so children can learn about other cultures by exploring the music of Irish, Spanish, African, and other under-represented cultures in the typical cannon of American music.

Use our interactive, musical list of instruments to find some cool sounds, but know that there are far more out there than just our list of 100 instruments. Try some of the other music games for kids and check out interactive sites for education on music theory. Games like turning this page into a guess-the-instrument-sound game can really hone the musical ear, and some musical instrument games for preschoolers can really help them get ahead. For older students, elementary music games online will allow them to decide on which instruments they’ll want to learn, without being coerced into a traditional role.

Click around, explore, and have fun with our musical instruments game and music theory interactive!