This book is an extraordinary pictorial dictionary of musical instruments from around the world, containing over 1500 drawings. Each instrument has been selected to provide a balanced historical overview of musical development: aero­phones, idio­phones, mem­bra­no­phones, chor­do­phones, mechanical and electrical instruments are all equally represented. All of the drawings have been created specifically for the details of features such as strings, frets and keys, together with characteristic decorative patterns, have been painstakingly reproduced. World Musical Instruments will serve both as a source of information and as an object of fascination for: scholars, musicians, artists and designers. The accompanying CD-ROM with high-resolution jpeg illustrations of all the instruments provides the reader with an invaluable resource.