In musicology, electronic musical instruments are known as electrophones. Electrophones are the fifth category of musical instrument under the Hornbostel-Sachs system. Musicologists typically only classify music as

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In the 18th-century, musicians and composers adapted a number of acoustic instruments to exploit the novelty of electricity. Thus, in the broadest sense, the first electrified musical

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The most commonly used electronic instruments are synthesizers, so-called because they artificially generate sound using a variety of techniques. All early circuit-based synthesis

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During the 1940s–1960s, Raymond Scott, an American composer of electronic music, invented various kind of music sequencers for his electric compositions. Step sequencers played rigid patterns of notes using a grid of (usually) 16 buttons, or steps, each step being

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Digital synthesis
The first digital synthesizers were academic experiments in sound synthesis using digital computers. FM synthesis was developed for this purpose; as a way of generating complex sounds digitally with the smallest number of

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The increasing power and decreasing cost of sound-generating electronics (and especially of the personal computer), combined with the

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In 1935, another significant development was made in Germany. Allgemeine Elektricitäts Gesellschaft (AEG) demonstrated the first commercially produced magnetic tape recorder, called the Magnetophon. Audio tape, which had the advantage of being

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