Electronic musical instrument

An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces its sounds using electronics. In contrast, the term electric instrument is used to mean instruments whose sound is produced mechanically, and only amplified electronically - for example an electric guitar. Usually the instrument will have some way of controlling the sound, such as by adjusting the pitch, frequency, or duration of each note.

Related Topics:
Musical instrument - Electronics - Electric instrument - Electric guitar - Pitch - Frequency - Note

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All electric and electronic musical instruments can be viewed as a subset of audio signal processing applications. Simple electronic musical instruments are sometimes called sound effects; the border between sound effects and actual musical instruments is often hazy.

Related Topics:
Audio signal processing - Sound effect

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French composer and engineer Edgar Varèse created a variety of compositions using electronic horns, whistles, and tape. Most notably, he wrote Poème Électronique for the Phillips pavilion at the Brussels World Fair in 1958.

Related Topics:
Composer - Edgar Varèse - Poème Électronique - 1958

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Electronic musical instruments are now widely used in most styles of music. The development of new electronic musical instruments continues to be a highly active and interdisciplinary field of research. Specialized conferences, notably the International Conference on New interfaces for musical expression, have organized to report cutting edge work, as well as to provide a showcase for artists who perform or create music with new electronic music instruments.

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The STEIM foundation in Amsterdam ( in the Netherlands) is a highly influential research and development center for electronic music instruments. Many of the new concepts for musical man-machnine interaction have come from the STEIM research team; in collaboration with it's many guest researchers. These researchers are all active composers, musicians, artists, theater performers and engineers. Since the late seventies STEIM's director Michel Waisvisz has been an influential composer/performer and inventor of new concepts for live electronic music performance. He introduced early gestural sensor based instruments in the concert hall and also his recent work is an important inspiration for a new generation of live performers using physical sensor instruments to play laptop-based sound-synthesis in composed or improvised music.

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