Editing Electronic musical instrument (section)

== Classification ==
In musicology, electronic musical instruments are known as electrophones. Electrophones are the fifth category of musical instrument under the [[Hornbostel–Sachs|Hornbostel-Sachs]] system. Musicologists typically only classify music as electrophones if the sound is initially produced by electricity, excluding electronically controlled acoustic instruments such as [[pipe organ]]s and [[Instrument amplifier|amplified]] instruments such as [[electric guitar]]s.

The category was added to the [[Hornbostel-Sachs]] musical instrument classification system by [[Curt Sachs|Sachs]] in 1940, in his 1940 book ''The History of Musical Instruments'';<ref>{{citation|last=Galpin|first=Francis William|title=The History of Musical Instruments|year=1940|authorlink=Francis William Galpin}}</ref> the original 1914 version of the system did not include it. Sachs divided electrophones into three subcategories:

* 51=electrically [[Actuator|actuated]] [[acoustic instrument]]s (e.g., [[pipe organ]] with electronic [[tracker action]])
* 52=electrically [[Sound amplification|amplified]] acoustic instruments (e.g., [[acoustic guitar]] with [[Pickup (music technology)|pickup]])
* 53=instruments which make sound primarily by way of electrically driven [[oscillator]]s

The last category included instruments such as [[theremin]]s or [[synthesizer]]s, which he called [[wiktionary:radioelectric|radioelectric]] instruments.

[[Francis William Galpin]] provided such a group in his own classification system, which is closer to [[Victor-Charles Mahillon|Mahillon]] than Sachs-Hornbostel. For example, in Galpin's 1937 book ''A Textbook of European Musical Instruments'', he lists electrophones with three second-level divisions for sound generation ("by oscillation", "electro-magnetic", and "electro-static"), as well as third-level and fourth-level categories based on the control method.<ref>{{citation|last=Galpin|first=Francis William|title=A Textbook of European Musical Instruments|year=1937|authorlink=Francis William Galpin}}</ref>

Present-day [[ethnomusicologists]], such as [[Margaret J. Kartomi|Margaret Kartomi]]<ref>{{citation|last=Kartomi|first=Margaret|title=On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments|date=1990}}</ref> and Terry Ellingson,<ref>{{citation|last=Ellingson|first=Terry|title=PhD dissertation|year=1979}}</ref> suggest that, in keeping with the spirit of the original Hornbostel Sachs classification scheme, if one categorizes instruments by what first produces the initial sound in the instrument, that only subcategory 53 should remain in the electrophones category. Thus, it has been more recently proposed, for example, that the pipe organ (even if it uses electric [[Tracker action|key action]] to control [[solenoid valve]]s) remain in the [[aerophone]]s category, and that the [[electric guitar]] remain in the [[chordophone]]s category, and so on.