Different forms of instruments have been around for centuries. Over time, those instruments were adapted and more were invented, allowing a wider range of tone and music. WIth more instruments came more way to combine their sounds, creating a more types of music.

The earliest instruments belonged to the percussion family. Percussion instruments are ones that are hit, scraped, shaken, or crashed together to make sound. These were very simple at first, just rocks and hollowed gourds, but over time more and more percussion instruments were created. Drums, the most well known of the percussion family, were originally made from stretched animal signs. More recently, drums are made of things such as plastic or polyester.
Next came wind instruments, which are instruments that you blow air into to make sound. The first wind instrument ever created was the flute, dating back to around 67,000 years ago. The first flutes were carved from bone, but were later made from ivory or wood. Nowadays, they are made of a variety of metals, like most wind instruments. Pan pipes, hollowed pieces of wood bound together, were also an early wind instrument.

Instruments were grouped together based on how they are made and what sound they produce. Percussion and wind instruments are two of the groups. Another section was made for brass instruments, which are similar to wind instruments in that they require air to make sound, but are made from a different material and create a different sound than woodwinds. The last faction of instruments is the string instruments, which use the vibration of strings to produce sound.

Instruments can be combined in different ways. Orchestras, symphonies, marching bands, and string quartets all vary from each other in their structure and the usual amounts of instruments present. This allows each of these music ensembles to produce a sound that cannot quite be matched by the others.

Instruments and music in general have remained an integral part of the culture of each nation and its people. Similar to the differentiation between types of music ensembles, cultures have created distinct styles of music simply by combining instruments in a way that others hadn’t before.

As time moved on, more instruments were created, improved, sorted into groups of similar instruments, and combined in different ways for different music ensembles. While music has changed constantly ever since instruments were first made over thousands of years ago, the one thing that has remained constant is how much it can mean to people. Each person encounters, experiences, and interprets music in their own unique way. Despite how long music has been around, people continue to find new and divergent forms of music, producing music that contains a unique personalization, impossible to replicate.