Before instruments were played alone, many people considered the voice to be the primary instrument of the time (“Medieval Music”). Instruments began to take their place in music around the 16th century. They have become much more than simply playing along with music composed for voices. Instrumentals (where instruments would be played without voices to music composed only for instruments) became more popular especially for dance. When composers of this time wrote music, they did not specify which instruments to play; an instrumental might sound completely different depending on the instrument used (Sggiare 335). Musicians of this era were called Minstrels and Troubadours (“Musical Instruments”). Musical instruments of this time were mainly used for secular songs and music and not for church music. Voices were still what was primarily used in church for singing hymns. ("Medieval Music"). Many of the instruments from the Middle Ages we still have today or have a variant of a similar type of medieval instrument (“Musical Instruments”). The two big categories of this day were outdoor and indoor instruments. External instruments were generally louder (trumpets), while internal instruments were softer and intended to be played indoors (lute) (Sggiare 335). As time went on, musical instruments were classified into three more specific groups: wind instruments, stringed instruments, and percussion instruments. To this day, we still have these types of musical instrument categories (“Musical Instruments”). The first group of instruments we will talk about are wind musical instruments. The instruments were blown and their sound was produced using air (“Musical instruments”). Some of these instruments, such as the flute, were used for softer music, indoors, while other instruments of the group were noisy and played outdoors, such as