There has been a considerable upsurge of interest in musical acoustics over the last 10 to 15 years and this article is an attempt to summarize the present position in this multidisciplinary field. It first looks at the essential physics involved, reduced to its simplest terms, goes on to consider the relationships between real musical instruments and the resonance tubes and sonometers of the old text-books on ‘sound’ and outlines the history of the subject up to the Second World War. The main section then discusses areas of current study and the relevant measurement techniques in relation to three of the main groups of musical instruments. The article concludes with a discussion of some aspects of the difficult, but all-important, subject of psycho-physics and a brief attempt to predict the future prospects for research in musical acoustics