The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans in the United States, adapted from African instruments of similar design. The banjo is frequently associated with folk and country music. Banjo can also be used in some rock songs. Many rock bands, such as The Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and The Allman Brothers, have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in African-American traditional music and the folk culture of rural whites before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century. Along with the fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay of American old-time music. It is also very frequently used in traditional ("trad") jazz.
The ukulele is a member of the lute family of instruments. It generally employs four nylon strings.
The oud is a short-neck lute-type, pear-shaped stringed instrument, usually with 11 strings grouped in 6 courses, but some models have 5 or 7 courses, with 10 or 13 strings respectively.
The National Music Museum: America's Shrine to Music & Center for Study of the History of Musical Instruments (NMM) is a musical instrument museum in Vermillion, South Dakota, United States. It was founded in 1973 on the campus of the University of South Dakota. The NMM is recognized as "A Landmark of American Music" by the National Music Council.
The cittern or cithren is a stringed instrument dating from the Renaissance. Modern scholars debate its exact history, but it is generally accepted that it is descended from the Medieval citole. It looks much like the modern-day flat-back mandolin and the modern Irish bouzouki, and is descended from the English guitar. Its flat-back design was simpler and cheaper to construct than the lute. It was also easier to play, smaller, less delicate and more portable. Played by all classes, the cittern was a premier instrument of casual music-making much as is the guitar today.
The pandura or pandore, an ancient string instrument, belonged in the broad class of the lute and guitar instruments. Akkadians played similar instruments from the 3rd millennium BC. Ancient Greek artwork depicts such lutes from the 3rd or 4th century BC onward.
Plucked string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by plucking the strings. Plucking is a way of pulling and releasing the string in such a way as to give it an impulse that causes the string to vibrate. Plucking can be done with either a finger or a plectrum.
The Yale Collection of Musical Instruments, a division of the Yale School of Music, is a museum in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1900 by a gift of historic keyboard instruments from Morris Steinert, and later enriched in 1960 and 1962 by the acquisition of the Belle Skinner and Emil Herrmann collections. Initially housed under the dome of Woolsey Hall, it was moved in 1961 to a historic Romanesque structure on Hillhouse Avenue, constructed in 1895 for the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.
The Navy Museum is a maritime museum in Lisbon, dedicated to all aspects of the history of navigation in Portugal. The museum is administered by the Portuguese Navy and is located in the tourist district of Belém. It occupies a part of the neo-Manueline Western wing of the Jerónimos Monastery with the National Museum of Archaeology, as well as a modern annex built to the North of the monastery.
The Cathedral Treasure or Sacred Art Museum is a museum incorporated in the Braga Cathedral in Braga, Portugal.
The Pius XII Museum is located in Braga, Portugal, in the same building of the Museum Medina, as the name from the Pope Pius XII.
The Image Museum or in Portuguese Museu da Imagem is located in Braga, Portugal and is dedicated to photography.
The mandore is a musical instrument, a small member of the lute family, teardrop shaped, with four to six courses of gut strings and pitched in the treble range. Considered a French instrument, with many of the surviving music coming from France, it was used across "Northern Europe" including Germany and Scotland. Although it went out of style, the French instrument has been revived for use in classical music. The instrument's most commonly played relatives today are members of the mandolin family and the bandurria.
The English guitar or guittar, is a stringed instrument – a type of cittern – popular in many places in Europe from around 1750–1850. It is unknown when the identifier "English" became connected to the instrument at the time of its introduction to Great Britain, and during its period of popularity it was apparently simply known as guitar or guittar. The instrument was also known in Norway as a guitarre and France as cistre or guitarre allemande. There are many examples in Norwegian museums, like the Norsk Folkemuseum and British; including the Victoria and Albert Museum. The English guitar has a pear-shaped body, a flat base, and a short neck. The instrument is also related to the Portuguese guitar and the German waldzither.
The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Musical Instruments Museum (MUSA) is the museum holding the instruments collection of musical instruments of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Its location is the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, Italy. It was designed by architect Renzo Piano and inaugurated in February 2008. In the exhibition gallery some 130 instruments are on display and about 50 luthiery tools in an open-air laboratory where the museum luthiers work.
The rajão is a 5-stringed instrument from Madeira, Portugal. The instrument traces back to the country's regional folk music, where it is used in folklore dances of Portugal in addition to other stringed instruments from the same region.
The Museum of Transport and Communication is a museum in Porto. northern Portugal, founded in 1992. The museum is located in the Alfandega Nova building, dating from 1860, located beside the Douro River.
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The Casa Museu Fernando de Castro is a historical house, located in the city of Porto, Portugal, that belonged to Fernando de Castro, a Portuguese poet, caricaturist, merchant and collector. It contains several paintings from the 17th to the 20th century, sculptures and ceramic pieces. The museum is now under administration of the Soares dos Reis National Museum.
The Museum of Portuguese Music is a small museum housed in the Casa Verdades de Faria in Estoril, municipality of Cascais, Portugal, on the Portuguese Riviera. It contains a collection of Portuguese musical instruments and other items, as well as a music documentation centre, and is also used for recitals.
