An idiophone is any musical instrument that creates sound primarily by the instrument as a whole vibrating—without the use of strings ormembranes. It is the first of the four main divisions in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification. The early classification of Victor-Charles Mahillon called this group of instruments autophones.
Most percussion instruments that are not drums are idiophones. Hornbostel-Sachs divides idiophones into four main sub-categories. The first division is the struck idiophones (sometimes called concussion idiophones). This includes most of the non-drum percussion instruments familiar in the West. They include all idiophones made to vibrate by being struck, either directly with a stick or hand (like the wood block, singing bowl, steel tongue drum, triangle or marimba)—or indirectly, by way of a scraping or shaking motion (like maracas or flexatone). Various types of bells fall into both categories.
The other three sub-divisions are rarer. They are plucked idiophones, such as the Jew's harp, amplified cactus, mazanki, kouxian, dan moi,music box or mbira (lamellophone / thumb piano); blown idiophones, of which there are a very small number of examples, the Aeolsklavier being one; and friction idiophones, such as the singing bowl, glass harmonica, glass harp, turntable, verrophone, daxophone, styrophone,musical saw, or nail violin (a number of pieces of metal or wood rubbed with a bow).[1]
Other classifications use six main sub-categories: Concussion idiophones are instruments that produce sound by being struck against one another. Percussion idiophones produce sound by being struck with a non-vibrating foreign object. Examples of non-vibrating objects aremallets, hammers, and sticks. Rattle idiophones are shaken. Scraper idiophones are instruments that are scraped with a stick or other foreign objects to give off a sound. Plucked idiophones produce sound by plucking a flexible tongue from within