Sound Production by Musical Instruments

Musical instruments of the traditional acoustic kind can be classified within three groups:

• Chordophones
  or string instruments;
• Aerophones
  or wind instruments;
• Idiophones and Membranophones
  usually percussion instruments;

These categories of acoustic instruments usually have a fairly limited way in which they are getting played coming from thoroughly established musical traditions, Western and non-Western.

With the introduction of electricity and machines into people’s daily life, some composers/musicians and even non composers/musicians got inspired to start thinking about expanding the musical vocabulary, to incorporate the possibilities that these inventions offered in the field of sound production. Most notably around 1900 when the possibilities of electricity inspired Thaddeus Cahill to invent a gigantic electronic organ called the Telharmonium and around 1914 when the Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo build his Intonarumori or noise instruments in a bid to reproduce and bring under (human) control and expression, the various noises made by the machines of that day.

And thus, with the introduction of electricity more groups could get acknowledged:

• Sound exclusively produced by electrical means;
• Sound produced by a mix of electric and acoustic means, which would also include traditional instruments equipped with electronics

The introduction of these electronic instruments or electronically enhanced ones, also resulted into the exploration of the sonic possibilities of traditional instruments using alternate ways of playing traditional instruments or modifying traditional instruments to alter the sonic qualities.