Electrophone

An electrophone is any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by electrical means. It is one of the five main categories in the 1961 revision of the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification (though it was not included in the original scheme published in 1914). The other four are idiophone, membranophone, chordophone and aerophone.

Any instrument which produces sound purely by electric means is an electrophone, but the term was not originally applied to instruments where electricity was only used to amplify a sound produced by conventional measures (so that the electric guitar, for example, would be classified as a chordophone, not electrophone).

See also: Electronic musical instrument