NavMusApp: Exploring the Instrumental Continuum: A Mobile App for Classifying Musical Instruments in a Global Perspective

Abstract

© 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. A systematic scientific taxonomy designated upon the musicological and physical sound properties of Musical Instruments dates since 1914; it is the legendary Hornbostel-Sachs classification scheme. However, lacking, then, the communicative ability to contemplate profoundly and at length the tremendous multiplicity of worldwide contemporary musical subtle differences in sound expression and nuances of national identities, it provided an “ontology”-based methodology for classifying the organological discourse in depth at a later time. Even further, as digitally mastered sounds have prevailed recently, mobile computing provides suitable instrumentation meant to anticipate, measure and scale hundreds of new or “marginalized” instruments that seek bibliographic classification. The multimedia potential, both for input and output of an App serving as a measuring device is figuratively presented.