Sorry everyone is being mean and downvoting your comments and post. You asked a question that many people (including myself) have never really considered and gave those with answers the opportunity to share. I enjoyed the post and the (helpful) comments
even putting aside electronic instruments, modern building tools and materials have allowed some acoustic instruments to shrink. check out "mr curly" for an example- a contrabass clarinet that's a bit shorter if anything than a soprano clarinet, made out of vinyl tubing. another example is the bass ukelele, an instrument smaller than a bass guitar that aproximates the sound of an upright bass thanks to thick rubber strings. in most cases the traditional form of an instrument is preferred just because of familiarity and knowledge passed down from generation to generation, so in order for something to "take off" it needs to address a specific problem, which for most instruments size is not
Instruments tend to have the size they do because their size directly influences what tones they can produce. A trivial example is a classical guitar vs electrical - latter is flatter because it no longer needs the space for acoustics. It is still as long, because string length is still important whether you're connecting it to an echo box or an amplifier.
Acoustic instruments rely on their size and shape for their acoustic properties. Reduce the size and you reduce the volume or alter the sound.
Most electronic instruments, on the other hand, have become smaller than their acoustic counterparts. Drumkits, keyboards, guitars, violins, just to name a few. While acoustic properties still matter in many electrical instruments, they’re not as important as before. I’ve seen an electronic cello that was pretty much just a plank with strings.
An electric version of any instrument can be as small as you want it to be. It’s just a matter of training and ergonomics at that point.
For example, if you’ve got 10,000 hours playing the cello it wouldn’t be very easy to translate that into having equivalent skill playing a tiny electric version. But it could be done. Nooo problem!
The technology is there, it’s just that there’s no demand 🤷
Most instruments rely on physics properties of materials - typically the standing wave frequencies of air in a closed tube to make a sound wave. That is a fixed constant and sort of dictates the shape and size of things to generate any particular note.
It has? Take a synthesizer from the 1960s versus one from the current year, for example. And, while this is only tangently related, the average laptop can master music just as well as a massive counter unit from thirty years ago.
As for acoustic instruments, there are two things to consider: first, the sound of an instrument is dictated by its shape; change the shape (size), and you change its sound (not the same instrument anymore). Second, music is a largely tradition-worshipping community. People want a big, old-style guitar because it’s what their idols played with.
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