Top 10 Music Instruments that Can Represent Animals in Music Compositions
There's a natural connection between music instruments and animal noises - animals can be imitated with basic orchestral instruments.Greatest examples within the classical canon:
Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns
Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev
Flight of the Bumblebee by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Heinrich Biber's Sonata Representativa
My list is based on similar examples of how composers used the instruments to imitate/represent different animals.
The flute is a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening. Sergei Prokofiev used it in 'Peter and the Wolf'.
Imitations of birdsongs are very common in music and have been used by many.
Oboes belong to the classification of double reed woodwind instruments. Oboes are usually made of wood, but there are also oboes made of synthetic materials.
The violin is a wooden string instrument in the violin family. It is the smallest and highest-pitched instrument in the family in regular use.
A trumpet is a blown musical instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group contains the instruments with the highest register in the brass family. Also, galloping horses were imitated by using empty coconut shells but I didn't add it to the list because the empty coconut shells aren't exactly basic music instruments, LOL. But it shows creativity and I wanted to mention it somewhere.
High screeching notes on clarinet as heard in Carl Nielsen's Imaginary Journey to the Faroe Isles
As in Saint-Saens's Carnival of the Animals
Creative list
The electric guitar is a type of guitar that unlike an acoustic guitar, is solid body instead of hollow. They use pickups and amps to produce sound that's audible from more than a few feet. They are mainly used in rock and metal music and in those genres are commonly the main instruments. A few notable electric guitarists are Eddie Van Halen, Slash, Jimi Hendrix, and Chuck Berry. I don't think metal musicians intentionally want to create this animal sound but when they use the whammy bar it often sounds like horse whinnying to me. For example, Jeff Waters of Annihilator often uses it.
Example: Annihilator - Schizos (Are Never Alone) Parts I & II (1:55-2:00, 3:00)
So this was my contribution to possible imitation of animal noises with musical instruments outside the classical canon.
The electric guitar is a type of guitar that unlike an acoustic guitar, is solid body instead of hollow. They use pickups and amps to produce sound that's audible from more than a few feet. They are mainly used in rock and metal music and in those genres are commonly the main instruments. A few notable electric guitarists are Eddie Van Halen, Slash, Jimi Hendrix, and Chuck Berry. As heard in Flight Of The Bumblebee by At Vance (metal cover of Rimsky-Korsakov's masterpiece).
I think it's not about the metal guitar or any particular features of the electric guitar sound - it's about the guitarist who can play this (Olaf Lenk) because Flight Of The Bumblebee wasn't written for guitar and it's very fast. But At Vance played it even faster.
