The xylophone (from Ancient Greek ξύλον (xúlon) 'wood' and φωνή (phōnḗ) 'sound, voice';[1][2] lit. 'sound of wood') is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use.