JultikaUniversity of Oulu repository

Software based musical instruments are new kind of musical instruments that employ digital technology in the generation of sound, user interface or both. In this work I describe a new software based musical instrument called Seq1 that was developed at the RFMedia laboratory in Ylivieska. Design choices for Seq1 came from findings in literature into similar phenomena. Research literature also unveiled the fact that although there are frameworks for describing different aspects of software based musical instruments there is no general model for classifying software based musical instruments. There are systems for classifying musical instruments such as the most prominent of these, the Hornbostel-Sachs system which is meant as a way to classify every type of musical instrument. It was originally created in 1914 and has since then been updated several times. The last update has been in 2011 which added tens of new subcategories for electrophones (electronic instruments). The subcategories meant for classifying software based musical instruments seem to be inadequate. This work introduces a sketch of a new model for classifying specifically software based musical instruments and introduces Seq1 as an example for the usage of the new classification system.