Hornbostel-Sachs classification

In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone.

In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification, idiophones are first categorized according to the method used to play the instrument.

Per the Hornbostel-Sachs classification, this is classified as a "cojoined single-reed instrument," categorised by the number 422.22.

More recently kits have also included electronic instruments (Hornbostel-Sachs classification 53), with both hybrid and entirely electronic kits now in common use.

In fact, this distinction makes the babendil classified as a bell in the Hornbostel-Sachs classification (if it were struck at the boss, it would be considered a gong.)

Under the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, reedless wind instruments are aerophones in the most pure sense that there are no moving parts other than the air itself, and thus the attribution of the sound source is wholly the air.

The monumental five-volume catalogue of the collection Mahillon commissioned between 1880 and 1922 also included four versions of his essay on the methodical classification of both ancient and modern instruments, which was to serve as the basis for the organological Hornbostel-Sachs classification systems still used today.

In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification of musical instruments, lamellophones are considered plucked idiophones, a category that includes various forms of jaw harp and the European mechanical music box, as well as the huge variety of African and Afro-Latin thumb pianos such as the mbira and marimbula.