111 musical instruments from six regions of the world, browseable by category or region — a quick visual reference for what they are, where they come from, and how they're played.
The directory covers 111 well-known instruments spanning 14 categories — from strings and percussion to wind and electronic instruments — and six world regions: Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, and Oceania, giving a broad sense of the instrumental diversity across musical traditions worldwide.
Filter by region, category, or use the search box, and combine filters together to narrow down to exactly the instruments you're curious about — useful for music students, researchers, or anyone curious what a specific traditional instrument from a particular region actually is.
This is a curated selection rather than an exhaustive catalogue of every instrument that exists — with thousands of traditional and regional instruments worldwide, 111 well-known examples across major categories and regions gives a solid, browsable overview without becoming an unwieldy encyclopedia.
No — this is a curated selection of 111 well-known instruments across 14 categories and six regions, not an exhaustive catalogue. Many countries and cultures have dozens more distinct traditional instruments.
Instruments are grouped the way ethnomusicologists broadly classify them: how they're played (struck, bowed, plucked, hammered, blown) and their family (percussion, string, wind, keyboard, electronic, bells, and thumb pianos).
Yes — pick a region and a category together, or add a search term, and the list narrows to match all of your filters at once.
