mechanical instrument

British  

noun

1. a musical instrument, such as a barrel organ or music box, that plays a preselected piece of music by mechanical means

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Example Sentences

“We think about the piano as something expressive and delicate, but it’s in the percussion category simply because it’s about the sound of something being struck. It’s this mechanical instrument that strikes a string in a very advanced way. If you open up and get more control over how that string is strung, the possibilities for sound open up so much.”

From The Verge

“I try to breathe a lot when I’m playing,” Ms. Dinnerstein said, “and I try to think a lot about singing, or other instruments. Actually any instrument other than the piano. The piano’s such a mechanical instrument that you have to use your imagination to create these breaths, because you don’t need to breathe when you play.”

From New York Times

Brahms, who rarely wrote down metronome markings in his autographs, said he did so only when “good friends have talked me into putting them there, for I myself have never believed that my blood and a mechanical instrument go well together.”

From New York Times

Also, why would a consumer, someone who is likely purchasing a handgun to protect themselves, want to put the unreliability of a battery-powered new technology in a nearly flawless mechanical instrument?

From Forbes

If the problem is that a bureaucratic system is impersonal, unaccountable, creepy, and has a flawed or biased decision criteria, then why fetishize and render mysterious the mere mechanical instrument of the system’s will?

From Slate