Establish a Hornbostel Sachs three level flowchart/decision tree for new instrument additions.

[kyrieb-ekat]

This relates in two means to the necessity for a taxonomic divide between instruments; for us to articulate these differences, and for users (or our later workers processing items) to potentially make decisions about how to help future searches on UMIL happen.

I think this is important to keep in mind until we establish a clear tagging system (if we end up wanting one) for searching for instruments; e.g., tagging a trumpet as "brass" so a user can search by instrument material type or by HBS numbers. I'm uncertain how familiar some of our users will be with HBS or Dewey Decimal to intuitively figure out searching from there, and so think a chart for users and for our own internal workers to add at least three levels of an HBS number would be immensely helpful.

[kyrieb-ekat]

Building on this following a conversation with Ich—
I think a flowchart accompanying guidelines for users (and lab members) to follow will be very important, not least because the guidelines to delineating instruments and their types could endup getting quite dense, and I don't think having multiple sets of guidelines present will help with clear guidance. A flowchart, then, would be more accessible in terms of visualization as well as language (e.g., we shouldn't rely on a general user to know what 'zither' means).

[JoyfulGen]

@kyrieb-ekat I've been spending some quality time with Hornbostel and Sachs trying to figure all this out and I'm a BIG fan of flowcharts, so I'd be delighted to lend a hand in this! Please let me know if there's anything useful I could do.

[kyrieb-ekat]

Please!! Particularly since you've been up close and personal with figuring this out from a "contributor" perspective, an example of what is helpful for figuring out that first set of numbers would be sick. If you want to tool around with making one, go for it, but I think even figuring out a list of terms to check against an image or decide work as "yes/no" for going down the HBS "tree" would be immensely helpful.

The other reason I think sticking with only three layers of HBS and not going any deeper is that beyond this point some of the vocabulary gets really tricky; I want to be cognizant of the fact that our users (or ensuing DDMAL members who review entries and assign HBS numbers, however we decide to do this), aren't organologists or ethnomusicologists (or perhaps even musicians), so keeping things straightforward and using as simple language as possible is the move.

[JoyfulGen]

YAY ok excellent! I'm going to draft up an idea for a flowchart for idiophones and sent that to you by Friday.

[JoyfulGen]

@kyrieb-ekat, my current proposal is that there will be a first flowchart to determine whether the instrument is an idiophone, a membranophone, a chordophone, or an aerophone, and then each of those categories will have its own flowchart. I made the chart for the idiophones to give you an idea of where my brain is going (the formatting is not quite finished, but hopefully you'll get the idea!):

What do you think?

[kyrieb-ekat]

Gen this is amazing!! The colorcoding rules and phrasing etc is wonderful.

I whole heartedly agree with there being a first layer flowchart to determine which class is being worked with; I scratched out a very basic version of this, which you are welcome to use or discard as you see fit.

The only possible suggestion I have for your current idiophone chart are small picture; for example, of an mbira (hand piano) ti demonstrate what a lamellophone tooth/tongue etc may look like? Alternatively, could be almost like a footnote if someone might not know what the terms are?

[kyrieb-ekat]

This is said very poor back of the napkin layer 1 flowchart

[JoyfulGen]

The only possible suggestion I have for your current idiophone chart are small picture; for example, of an mbira (hand piano) ti demonstrate what a lamellophone tooth/tongue etc may look like? Alternatively, could be almost like a footnote if someone might not know what the terms are?

Yes, absolutely! Pictures are a great idea. I wanted to do some reorganizing anyway to make it tidier, so I'll see if I can chuck a few pictures in as well. Keep you posted!

[JoyfulGen]

@kyrieb-ekat, behold my magnum opus:

It's undeniably pretty squishy, but I tried to use the colours to make sure everything remains legible and easy to navigate. Please let me know what you think, and any improvements you can think of! I'll be so delighted to make three more!

[annamorphism]

just noticed while looking into #373 that "tambourine" has two HBS numbers:

I'm sure Hornbostel and/or Sachs had an idea of which one it should be, but I suppose it is both a rattle-thing and a membrane-thing...if different people come to different conclusions from the flowchart, do we give it two HBS numbers?

[JoyfulGen]

@annamorphism oh that's fun! Both classifications make perfect sense, depending on how the player is using the instrument to make sound... according to Wikipedia, the idiophone classification (112.1) is the main one--I guess because tambourines are shaken more than they are struck?

I personally am in favour of an instrument having two possible HBS classifications (if approved by us of course). I just think it'll be important to tell the difference between having two HBS numbers because an instrument can be played two ways, or having two HBS numbers because one is wrong and one is right! But I guess that's what the reviewers (editors? help) will be for!

[JoyfulGen]

@kyrieb-ekat, just to keep track of things: I made another one! Because membranophones are classified mostly by their shape, it's possible to reach a way more precise level of classification than with other instruments, so I made a little appendix in case people want to do that.

I'll tackle aerophones next!