This research investigates a music composition model that includes creating the musical instruments for which the score is written. In this method a musical instrument is considered, first and foremost, a formless container of meanings. Its design evolves in direct relationship with the conceptual domain of a composition or series of compositions intended for its use. It is therefore a guiding interface or mediation between the composer and the symbolic material that he has collected to arrive at a particular musical lexicon. Essential to this research is this model's relationship with religious material culture, graphic writing systems and art, particularly those from Central and Southern Africa. This aims at bringing into perspective how materials, shapes, symbols, social and environmental context form a narrative that constitutes the object ́s identity. The instrument is understood as a form of writing as its development generates new variables with potential to influence the written score. Therefore this research will be carried out in a framework of critical and overlapping studies of organology, music composition, acoustics, digital technology, art history, history, anthropology, and archeology. An important aspect to this study is the use the candidate makes of digital technologies such as 3D modeling software, rapid prototyping and computational simulation to allow the design, analysis, testing and development of any type of acoustic musical instrument.
Key words: digital organology, music composition, religious material culture, music performance, contemporary musical instruments