A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other types of keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struct idiophones operated by a keyboard, carillons, which are musical instruments that are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or other municipal buildings, and other non-acoustic instruments, such as various electronic organs, synthesizers, and keyboards which were designed to imitate the sound of other types of acoustic keyboard instruments or to create new musical sounds. Today, the term "keyboard" is mostly commonly used to refer to keyboard-style synthesizers. Under the fingers of a sensitive performer, the keyboard may also be used to control dynamics, phrasing, shading, articulation, and other elements of expression, depending on the design and inherent capabilities of the instrument.
Read more about Keyboard Instrument: History, Modern Keyboards
Famous quotes containing the word instrument:
“We ought, says Kant, to become acquainted with the instrument, before we undertake the work for which it is to be employed; for if the instrument be insufficient, all our trouble will be spent in vain. The plausibility of this suggestion has won for it general assent and admiration.... But the examination can be only carried out by an act of knowledge. To examine this so-called instrument is the same as to know it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)