Which Is My Family? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Brass family

The brass family of instruments are instruments that use a cup-shaped mouthpiece that you have to buzz your lips into to make a sound. There are three main varieties of brass instruments: valve; slide; and natural.

When you play a brass instrument, you can play different notes just by changing how fast you buzz your lips and use your air. On a natural brass instrument (without valves or a slide), you can only play a certain series of notes, called the harmonic series. A brass instrument with valves (3 or 4), however, can add different lengths of tubing with every combination of valves opened. This means that they can play ALL the different possible notes.

Answer: String family

These instruments are all part of the violin family, and are primarily played with a bow. Players can also pluck strings when desired (this is called 'pizzicato', but most of the time, the sound is made by drawing the bow across the strings.

The violin, viola and cello each have four strings that are tuned a fifth apart, with the double bass being the odd one out, with strings tuned a fourth apart.

Violin: G, D, A, E
Viola: C, G, D, A
Cello: C, G, D, A (one octave lower than the viola)
Double Bass: E, A, D, G

Answer: Percussion family

There is a huge variety of instruments that fall within the percussion section, although there are just two main divisions: pitched and non-pitched.

A non-pitched percussion instrument is any that you can't play a melody that requires changes in pitch. So, they are the kinds of percussion instruments that play rhythms and accents without having to relate to the melody or harmony.

Answer: Woodwind family

Woodwind instruments are generally divided into two families - flutes and reed instruments, with reed instruments being divided into single and double reeds.

As a general family, flutes are basically any type of wind instrument that is not a brass or reed wind instrument, where the sound is typically produced by blowing across the edge of a hole (flutes, ocarinas), or by blowing into a duct where the air is split by encountering a sharp edge (recorders, whistles).

Answer: String family

There is a wide variety of instruments that fall within the plucked string family. The small selection presented here are popular in North America, but only the harp is ever present within the orchestra. Guitars are often found in popular music, in both acoustic or electric varieties, while ukuleles and banjos are found in more specialized ensembles.

Answer: Woodwind family

The double reed family of woodwind instruments is my personal favourite. I play both the oboe and the bassoon. The unique sounds of double reed instruments come from, as you might expect, the combination of two reeds both vibrating to make a unified sound. Unlike single reed instruments where a reed is attached to a mouthpiece, with double reeds the two reeds are tied to each other.

Answer: Brass family

Brass instruments with slides work on the same principle that valved brass instruments do, but instead of lengthening the instrument by opening a valve to different tubes, slide brass instruments do the same thing by sliding two overlapping tubes apart in steps.

Answer: Keyboard family

Keyboard instruments can technically fall within different families, depending on how the sound is produced, but they all have one thing in common - a keyboard. That is a row of keys that represent each note of the chromatic scale.

An organ (the non-electric kind) produces sound by opening a path of air through a pipe when a key or pedal is depressed. Pipes of different sizes allow for different pitches to be played. The harpsichord is similar to a piano, but instead of hammering a string, pushing a key will cause a string to be plucked. Clavichords are kind of halfway in between a piano and a harpsichord - pushing the key will just cause the other end of the key to touch a string, and that string will make a sound just as long as the key is still touching it. A spinet is a smaller variety of harpsichord, built with the strings at a different angle.

Answer: Woodwind family

Single reed woodwind instruments have a reed (typically made of cane, although plastic reeds are also common now) that is attached to a plastic or metal mouthpiece with a ligature. The side of the mouthpiece with the reed on it is placed on the lower lip with the top teeth on the top of the mouthpiece.

There are many clarinets and saxophones within their respective sub-families, but the most common are:
B-flat clarinet, A clarinet, Eb clarinet, alto clarinet, and bass clarinet; and
Alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, and soprano saxophone.

An octavin is similar in range to a soprano saxophone, but is made of wood and is shaped somewhat similar to a bassoon.

A xaphoon is similar to a clarinet in appearance, but has a sound more like that of a saxophone. It is also called a 'bamboo sax'.

Answer: Percussion family

Pitched percussion makes up the other of the two generalized categories of percussion. These are instruments that can play tones and have the ability to play melody and/or harmony as needed.

Xylophones and glockenspiels look like a piano keyboard in their layout, but are played by striking different-sized bars (wood and metal, respectively) with mallets. Chimes also follow a similar chromatic layout to a keyboard, but are long tubes of metal that are struck at one end (the top) with a hammer. Timpani are tunable drums that each only play one pitch, but in combinations of multiple drums, can play melodies or (more typically) harmonies in support of the music.