Eli5: How did human beings come up with the exact shape of instruments that is required to produce nice sounds?

Question

Thinking about instruments like saxophones or violins I find it really hard to imagine how people figured out those shapes, let alone without modern computers.

In: 3

Answer 1

Most of the work was done before the science necessary to understand what was going on was developed, so mostly it was done through simple trial and error. If you observe that certain forms produce better sound than others, than you don’t bother to keep producing the inferior forms.