Musical Instruments Top‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Musical Instruments, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of musical instruments on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Musical InstrumentsWikipedia:WikiProject Musical InstrumentsTemplate:WikiProject Musical Instrumentsmusical instruments Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

"A fifth top-level group, electrophones, instruments which make sound primarily by way of electrically driven oscillators, such as theremins or synthesizers, was added later."

Should Turntables (when used by DJs as "musical instruments") be added to this classifiation system and if so, which category sould they go in? Have any attempts been made to do this?203.214.75.1272005 (UTC)

• Tricky, but rightly I'd say a turntable is an ideophone (more precisely a lamellophone), since the vibrating element is the needle, which is (part of) its body. But probably some spoilsport has decided it's an electrophone. Tom Duff 02:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A turntable is indeed an idiophone (not an "ideophone," which is an onomatopoetic word...a very different animal). The amplification system, which need not be electronic (see, for example, a gramophone), can be replaced or removed without affecting the instrument's ability to make sound. A true electronophone becomes mute without the presence of electrons (hence the name). Instruments that are merely amplified (Fender Rhodes electric piano, say) are electro-acoustic, remaining in their top-level classification but receiving modifying numbers and dashes within the Dewey Decimal system to indicate their specifics.144.92.157.165 20:21, 27 December 2006 (UTC)Rikyu[reply]

While I'm here, the link to The original system as published in 1914 (in German) is broken, but the Internet Archive has a copy. I'm not sure what the party line is on Internet Archive links, so I haven't updated it. Tom Duff 02:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings! I made some changes to the discussion of chordophones and electronophones--please take a look. These are based on discussion in Tellef Kvifte's Instruments and the Electronic Age: Toward a Terminology for a Unified Description of Playing Technique (Oslo: Solum Forlag, 1989). I haven't figured out yet how to add bibliographic information to an entry...when I do I'll get that in.Rikyu 20:22, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I read that the AMIS and Galpin are considering a sixth top-level group: the "Hydrophone" or "Hydraphone". This new grouping is supposed to include all water-based instruments, like the Japanese water zither. Anyone else heard of this going on? - NDCompuGeek 16:40, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not entirely sure why they can't be included under the Aerophone group, with the classification reworked to include anything that uses a *fluid* (a term which encompasses gas, liquid, plasma, vapour, super-fine powder...) as its sounding medium instead of merely gas...? 193.63.174.115 (talk) 13:08, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are a good number of Hornbostel-Sachs pages, such as List of idiophones by Hornbostel-Sachs number and List of musical instruments by Hornbostel-Sachs number: 11 and List of musical instruments by Hornbostel-Sachs number: 111 and List of musical instruments by Hornbostel-Sachs number: 111.1 and List of musical instruments by Hornbostel-Sachs number: 112 (there are more) and all the templates that those later pages use, like {{H-S1}}, {{HS11}}, {{HS111}}, {{HS111.1}} (there are more). Some of templates have had or are having their own individual WP:RfD, like {{HS111}}. Are all of these really necessary? A search for all articles in the main Wikipedia space with the term "Hornbostel-Sachs" in the name returns 145 results. Banaticus (talk) 23:12, 13 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've been doing some work on this list and I think you make a good point that there are too many search returns. I would like to simplify things a bit. I'll continue to make it better. Ninehouse (talk) 01:53, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just out of curiosity, why is it necessary to have individual pages for each classification as well as a complete explanation of each classification on this page? Too much repetition and, I think, unnecessary detail. It would make more sense to me to have the complete explanation on one page, and build lists of relevant instruments (such as blown idiophones) through tagging. Rikyu (talk) 20:54, 26 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That is a problem throughout Wikipedia. It results from the lack of an overall editorial board. Broad topics often have sub-topics with their own articles, sometimes 3–5 levels deep. Where an article has sub-topics with articles devoted to them, sections for those sub-topics should have just enough information about the sub-topic to give the reader an overview. The {{Main}} template at the beginning of those sections should point readers to the article that has full coverage. Duplication of content doesn't help the reader, and makes maintaining the encyclopedia's quality and consistency more difficult.—Finell 01:23, 19 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]