Virtual Instrument Museum at Wesleyan University

Virtual Instrument Museum at Wesleyan University

After pondering the fact that I had never made a blog entry for this class on any subject besides digitized images, I actively searched for digitized sound collections, and found this online gallery of world instruments and ensembles from Wesleyan University. The online version of the museum, which is set to have a physical space in 2008, began in 2003. It is searchable in a variety of ways, including by material, type, geographic region, genre, ensemble, and alphabetically. The site also includes a world map to illustrate the distribution of the instruments’ countries of origin in the collection. The website is incredibly innovative, and allows the user to view certain instruments in 360 degrees by manual manipulation, as well as via still images, video and audio clips.

The site currently displays 116 instruments out of a collection of over 300, and advertises that they are continually adding instruments to the online museum and updating the photo, video, and audio files. I believe the curators selected the most interesting or exotic instruments to first undergo digitization, as more “normal” or Western instruments seem to be largely ignored in the collection. At some point it seems that the goal of the museum is to include digital versions all the instruments in their physical collection.

The metadata for each object, when available, is quite extensive. The metadata includes:

• History
• Physical Description
  
• Tuning
• Technique
• Notation
• Context
• References
• Further readings
• Geographic Region
• Country of origin
• Subregion
• Climatic type
• Time period
• Classification
• SvH No.
• Is an Ensemble?
• Genres
• Related Web Sites
• Author

Unfortunately this information is not always available with every object in the collection. Usually the object includes metadata from at least some of these categories, but occasionally (and disappointingly) nothing at all accompanies the name of the instrument. The collection as a whole is very well-documented, and includes full credits of all performers, students, faculty, and staff who helped in its creation. Additionally, a page on the website briefly explains the history behind the collection: “Among universities, Wesleyan University has one of the largest and most diverse collections of world musical instruments. It contains three classes of holdings: daily-use instructional instruments and sets of instruments (e.g. gamelan, Ghanian drums, steelband); instruments brought to Wesleyan by students, alumni and faculty; and donated instruments. Early in Wesleyan's history, Methodist missionaries and alumni brought back exotic curios from around the world. Among objects from Africa, Oceania, and Asia were musical instruments… The launching of the Wesleyan Virtual Instrument Museum begins a new era for the instrument collection.”

The digital objects are available to the user for viewing using a variety of methods. The audio files play as MP3s, compatible with Quicktime, WinAmp, Media Player, iTunes, OSX, and XMMS. The video clips of people performing with the instruments are in streaming Quicktime (.mov) format, and smaller versions are available for download in MPEG1 format. The QTVR 360 degree movies are also viewable in Quicktime. The thumbnails for each instrument are rather small, but the images can be enlarged and viewed at 1000 x 612 and 780 x 472, often with more than one view of the same instrument (side, back, front). The video clips are easily watched, and are much larger and less grainy than videos in YouTube. The sound slips are of good sound quality.

The intended audience is probably anyone with any degree of interest in world music, or really just music in general. Students may find the site useful if they cannot hear or watch an instrument being played in real life. I’ll be forwarding this site to my father, an avid world drum collector- I don’t think even he has heard of all of these unique instruments!