From musical instruments as ontological entities to instrumental quality: A linguistic exploration of musical instrumentality in the digital era

Abstract

The development of electricity, sound technology, electronics and computer science during the last 150 years has allowed the emergence of new kinds of musical devices. This paradigm shift from traditional to digital instruments has strong consequences for instrument identity and for the relationship between the musician and her/his instrument. Grounded in a situated cognitive linguistics perspective, this contribution first explores various definitions of the instrument (from general dictionaries and musicology literature) before analysing how members of the computer music community name and define their instrument/interface/device, etc. Analysing the different strategies of instrument naming used by designers and users of digital instruments and by authors in computer music literature allows us to study the on-going construction and negotiation of a new terminology. By highlighting the instability, the fuzziness but also the diversity of what an instrument is to these different speakers, these analyses contribute to a better understanding of the conditions of instrumentality in the digital era. More than just referring to a device, the notion of instrument rather qualifies the interaction with the users, thus allowing a new shift from the instrument as an ontological entity to an instrumental quality.