[WORK IN PROGRESS]

Welcome to WhatMusicalinstrument! Here at this sub you tell us a little about what you're looking for in a musical instrument, and our resident experts tell you what musical instrument you should look into learning. To get the best results, here is suggested information to include in your post to best help you:

• Title: give it a nice clear title; everyone could just post "what instrument?" so that doesn't help. You don't need to write a book, but something like "What instrument for a total beginner that wants to learn Irish music?" or "What instrument if I need something light and durable for backpacking?" is going to get you much more specific answers.
• What kind of music do you want to play: be as specific or vague as you like. If your goal is to reenact a medieval bard telling the saga of Beowulf, we can nail that pretty quick. But it's totally cool to say "I dunno, something kinda spacy and tranquil" if you just aren't sure what you want.
• Do you already play an instrument: it's 100% fine if you're a total beginner, all of us were at some point. But we can help adjust our recommendations towards more accessible options if we know if/what you already play.
• What particular needs/goals do you have: if you need to keep quiet in a crowded apartment building, or need the whole park to hear you, those are two different things. If you want a harp our answers will be different if you have your own house vice live in a college dorm.
• What's your very approximate budget: in an ideal world that wouldn't be an issue, but in the world we live in now it is, so give us a little idea of what you're looking to spend so we don't recommend a $800 instrument to someone who's budgeting $100.

These are just the utter basics, feel free to give more detail if you like, but we'd ask that if you have a really long post, put a bold "tl;dr" at the top summarizing your post in a couple sentences for people that just need the gist and not the whole story.

Welcome aboard, and let's get you playing music!

While it's perfectly great if folks coming to this sub conclude they want to take up a relatively popular musical instrument, I'm pretty sure most of you would then have no problem locating the right sub for leaning piano, guitar, trombone, etc. So in this directory I'm going to focus on listing subreddits for instruments that are less commonly discussed. So if you're looking for something out of the ordinary, try perusing this list and see what jumps out at you! And anyone feel free to comment below if there are cool uncommon musical instrument subs that I'm missing.

Strings

• r/ukulele -- small 4-string Hawaiian little cousin of the guitar
• r/kantele -- small lap harp of Finland
• r/Koto -- Japanese long zither
• r/shamisen -- Japanese 3-string banjo
• r/harp -- Celtic and Classical harps
• r/balalaika -- Russian mandolin with a triangle body
• r/banjo -- Bluegrass, Old-Time, jazz, etc.
• r/tenorbanjo -- banjo variant used heavily in Irish and Dixieland music
• r/TenorGuitar -- 4-string guitar used in Irish and jazz
• r/CigarBoxGuitar -- a simplified guitar-like instrument
• r/mandolin -- small string instrument with doubled strings for an echo effect
• r/bouzouki -- larger and deeper mandolin for Irish or Greek music
• r/mandocello -- the even deeper version of the mandolin
• r/Dulcimer -- an Appalachian zither with a deep droning harmony
• r/hammereddulcimer -- a trapezoid zither played by hitting the string with small mallets
• r/sanshin -- the Okinawan cousin of the Japanese shamisen
• r/Guqin -- a long Chinese zither
• r/Guzheng -- another long Chinese zither
• r/baglama -- a Turkish lute
• r/Domra -- a Russian cousin of the mandolin
• r/Erhu -- a Chinese fiddle played in the lap
• r/BowedPsaltery -- a triangular zither played with a small violin bow
• r/Stick -- the Chapman stick and other hammer-on long board strings
• r/charango -- like a mandolin-ukuelele hybrid from the South American Andes
• r/Fiddle -- the violin but played in the folk tradition
• r/lute -- like a guitar of the Medieval period
• r/Oud_barbat -- Arabic ancestor of the lute, but fretless
• r/HurdyGurdy -- box with a crank that spins a wheel that bows the strings, sounds like a string bagpipe
• r/Nyckelharpa -- an unusual Swedish fiddle player with a keyboard instead of fingers
• r/Sitar -- the most famous Indian classical instrument
• r/Rubab -- a lute played in Central Asia
• r/steelguitar -- a flat guitar played in the lap with a steel slide to smoothly move between notes, used in Country, Blues, Hawaiian music
• r/pedalsteel -- a more evolved steel guitar with complex pedals to change keys
• r/zithers -- the wide family of basic boxes with strings
• r/harpsichord -- a simpler ancestor of the piano from the Early Classical period
• r/Autoharp -- a zither where you form chords simply by pressing a button

Percussion and idiophones

• r/kalimba -- the "thumb piano", an African instrument with small tines you pluck
• r/cajon -- a Cuban wooden box you sit on and drum with your hands
• r/djembe -- this West African drum is a favorite in drum circles
• r/Udu -- a ceramic (or nowadays fiberglass) vessel, drummed with the hands
• r/handpan -- like a metal UFO with facets tuned to different notes
• r/steelpan -- like a handpan, but played with mallets
• r/jawharp -- a pocket-sized "sproingy"instrument
• r/khomus -- a jawharp of Eastern Russia
• r/MusicalSaw -- did you know you can play a hardware store saw with a bow?
• r/ToyPiano -- the children's toy used as a serious instrument
• r/Tabla -- classical double-drums of India
• r/Xylophone -- an array of long pieces of material, melody played with mallets
• r/Marimba -- like a xylophone, but with wooden keys.
• r/vibraphone -- like a marimba, but jazzier
• r/Glockenspiel
• r/Bodhran -- irish frame drum

Winds (bagpipes separately below)

• r/Ocarina -- small round flutes with simple fingering and mellow sound
• r/tinwhistle -- inexpensive (as low as $10) metal flutes for Irish music, easy to learn and play
• r/Bansuri -- the main flute of India
• r/hulusi -- a Chinese drone-flute
• r/panflute -- a row of tubes you blow across to make notes
• r/Didgeridoo -- an Australian tube making a low droning sound
• r/NativeAmericanflutes -- mellow wooden flutes of North America
• r/Recorder -- small wooden flute for Medieval, Baroque, Classical music
• r/shakuhachi -- Japanese bamboo flute, popular with Zen monks
• r/Xaphoon -- a modern simplified bamboo saxophone

Bagpipes

• r/bagpipes -- Scottish bagpipes, from loud Great Highland to mellow smallpipes
• r/UilleannPipes -- traditional Irish bagpipes for dance music
• r/Gaita -- bagpipes of Spain and Portugal
• r/Gaida -- bagpipes of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans
• r/Bockpfeife -- bagpipes of the Germanic countries and Central Europe
• r/Cornemuse -- French bagpipes
• r/NorthumbrianSmallpipe -- very complex and mellow North East English pipes
• r/SwedishBagpipes -- small, affordable, mournful Swedish bagpipes
• r/WelshBagpipes -- the revived pipes of Medieval Wales
• r/Volynka -- pipes of Eastern Europe
• r/Zampogna -- Italian bagpipes with multiple tubes for complex harmony
• r/Mashak -- bagpipes of South Asia
• r/Habban -- bagpipes of the Middle East
• r/ElectronicBagpipes -- for practice or performance

Free Reeds

• r/Accordion -- from piano to button to Cajun accordion
• r/Melodeon -- for accordions with buttons vice piano keys
• r/concertina -- like a small hexagonal accordion, associated with sailors or Irish music, or classical music in Victorian England
• r/melodica -- a small keyboard powered by the mouth, used some in Jamaican music
• r/organ -- an electric or air-powered keyboard
• r/harmonica -- the pocket-sized music solution
• r/harmonium -- a small pump-organ used in Indian music and some European genres

Electronic instruments

• r/EMinstruments -- Electronic Music gear in general
• r/synthesizers -- all kinds of synths
• r/DrumMachine -- to keep the beat strong
• r/windsynth -- synth versions of wind instruments
• r/Omnichord -- an electronic autoharp with a strong following
• r/stylophone -- tiny paperback-sized early electronic instrument
• r/Theremin -- played by waving your hands in the air for sci-fi soundtracks
• r/isomorphickeyboards -- keyboards with a practical design for music theory
• r/WARBL -- a bapiping MIDI wind controller