The 70ties and 80ties document an intensive fieldwork in organological research. The development has been interrupted in the 90ties especially for greater research teams in fieldwork. The changes took place continuously. The decline started by loosing the systematic financial base and the dropout of possibilities to modernize the movable audiovisual studio (AVIA) in the mid of the 90ties. Single researchers supported by grants and sponsors allowed only restricted fieldwork. Nevertheless some of the greater projects concerning musical instruments and instrumental music could continue - especially on the Slovak folk dance and dance music, instrumental ensembles, monographic research concentrated on some important instrumental types as the bagpipe, flutes, dulcimer, accordion, strings, children's instruments etc. Studies have been devoted to Slovak, Middle European and European instruments in general, provoked by topics on national and international conferences, workshops, seminars, festivals and many other events. Moreover audio and audiovisual documentation remained an important part of the continuing research, which has been directed to the technology of making instruments, to foremost players and endeavor of the young generation of instrumentalists. Referring to this state the coming aims for Slovak ethnoorganology are presented: they involve further project of field work and documentation, special studies on technology, distribution, transcription, acoustics, ensemble music, style of interpretation and analysis. A positive process is the growing interest of universities and by the students in general. It is documented in a bibliography and a list of Master-, Diploma and Dissertation issues (1990-2002) attached. Last but not least also the numerous editions on Cassette, CD's and Video series as well as monographs gives some perspective for the future development of Slovak ethnoorganology.
Comparative musical science, later ethnomusicology, was born and, in the positive sense of the word, developed in close relation to the historic development of audio-visual recording technologies. Especially its music analysis methods went through an important process of improvement in the last third of the 20th century in connection with the fast development of digital and later information and communication technologies and, above all, with the intensive improvement of technological devices which are capable of visualising the physical parameters of sound signals. This paper describes the background of the most important areas of ethnomusicological research of folk musical instruments in Slovakia in the context of the international scientific discourse. It deals with the forms of application of digital technologies in ethnoorganological research, the methodological issues associated with the sound recording of musical performers and, finally, with the specificities of the analysis of instrumental music sound records with an emphasis on the current research of playing styles. Digital technologies play a key role in all research stages leading to the understanding of the vocal essence of traditional music. This relates to several distinctive theoretical and methodological issues, a selection of which is discussed in the final part of the text.
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