Tex, you may want to research synthesizers as you would get pretty attack, sustain and release for each instruments. After you have the shape of the fundamental wave, the synthesizer will then add the harmonics and you will get a final waveform with peeks that can reach quite high, but for very, very brief periods.
"Dynamic range" can be used to many sauce and is sometimes used (quite often here in this forum) as the difference between the lowest sustain level and the highest one (the part our brains are actually registering as low/loud). It can also mean the difference between the highesr point in a waveform and 0db. The various definitions are all good, it's just a matter of using the one appropriate to your needs.
I am sure you can get simple synt programs on a PC to experiment.
You can also look at samples for Samplers as they may be more "real life" and easy to check with a wafeform viewer.
