Geophone (musical instrument) Geophone (musical instrument) The geophone is a percussion instrument, invented by the French composer Olivier Messiaen for use in his large composition for piano and orchestra entitled "Des canyons aux étoiles…" ("From the canyons to the stars…"). It consists of a drum filled with thousands of small lead pellets, and is played by swirling it around slowly so that the noise of the pellets resembles the sound of dry shifting earth. Messiaen commissioned a Parisian instrument maker to construct one to his design, and he carried this instrument worldwide to early performances of the piece (which was given its first
Musical instrument which produce sound by electronic means. Within each category are many subgroups. The system has been criticised and revised over the years, but remains widely used by ethnomusicologists and organologists. Andre Schaeffner, a curator at the Musée de l'Homme, disagreed with the Hornbostel-Sachs system and developed his own system in 1932. Schaeffner believed that the pure physics of a musical instrument, rather than its specific construction or playing method, should always determine its classification. (Hornbostel-Sachs, for example, divide aerophones on the basis of sound production, but membranophones on the basis of the shape of the instrument). His system divided instruments