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Music Telegraph- Elisha Gray
Elisha Gray (August 2, 1835 – January 21, 1901) was an American electrical engineer who co-founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. Gray is best known for his development of a telephone prototype in 1876 in Highland Park, Illinois and is considered by some writers to be the true inventor of the variable resistance telephone, despite losing out to
Alexander Graham Bell for the telephone patent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niDKqIu9YEs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niDKqIu9YEs -
The Singing Arc- William Duddell
The Singing Arc consisted of the predecessor to the filament lightbulb--the Carbon Arc Lamp which generated light by creating a spark between two carbon nodes. Well, the Carbon Arc lamp was placed on streets throughout Europe, but it made a constant hum. So, it was later replaced by Edison's patented lamps. He hooked up a keyboard to several of these lamps which he tuned
to different frequencies by modulating the voltage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rasp88nbsRw -
Telharmonium- Thaddeus Cahill
Thaddeus Cahill's idea was to connect electrical dynamos (alternators) to telephone receivers, and the result should be a simple sine tone. An organ keyboard was to be connected to a series of dynamos, so that a harmonic series could be produced for each key on the keyboard. This required a large switching system to turn dynamos on and off, and miles of wiring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG1C0E7L8wU -
The Audion- Lee de Forest
"Electronic amplifying vacuum tube"
Detects radio signals - makes them audible
Provides amplification
Made by combining gas and electricity to power sound (from the electrical grid within) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT0i5iprLos
Distributed to the U.S. Navy - 1920s
Used as radio transmitters
Used in tube radios, which were then common household items -
Theremin- Léon Theremin
The theremin is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the thereminist (performer). It is named after the westernized name of its Russian inventor, Léon Theremin, who patented the device in 1928. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnTLZtZzrWU -
Pianorad- Hugo Gernsback
In 1923 Hugo Gernsback introduced the Staccatone, which was sort of a synthesizer that capitalized on the technology from the vacuum tube, and used oscillators to produce musical notes. Every note required its own oscillator and had a tendency to fade in and out of tune. In 1926 he came out with an improved version of the Staccatone, which he renamed the Pianorad. It had twenty
five oscillators and could cover two octaves. -
The Hammond- Laurens Hammond
The Hammond Organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. Churches bought this organ as a cheaper alternative then a pipe organ. This mechanism uses additive synthesis of waveforms mad by harmonic series made by tone wheels that rotate in front of electromagnetic pickups. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi_gwED-gQw -
Melodium - Harald Bode
Harald Bode’s second instrument, previewed in 1938 was a monophonic touch sensitive keyboard instrument, the ‘Melodium’, developed with the assistance of Oskar Vierling, inventor of the ‘Grosstonorgel’. The instrument was used extensively for film music and ‘light music’ during the 1940′s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aKk0E7rOEk -
The Vocoder - Homer Dudley
The Vocoder was created in 1940 by a man named Homer Dudley. In 1936 Homer investigated the possibility of synthesizing human speech electronically. The Vocoder is a speech synthesizer that had two keyboards, buttons to recreate consents, a pedal for oscillator frequency control and a wrist bar to switch vowel sounds on and off. The Vocoder is a method of taking a
reproduction of human speech and allowing it to be transmitted over distances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haF4uB2_Pas -
The Multimonica - Harald Bode
The Hohner Multimonica is one of the first mass-produced electronic analog synthesizers, dating back to 1940. Produced by the German Hohner GmbH, it preceded even the more famous Selmer Clavioline. Actually the instrument is a combo of a fan blown reed organ (lower manual) and a monophonic sawtooth synthesizer (upper manual). Its circuitry was designed by the German engineer Harald Bode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBSS8dQLoL0 -
Musique Concrete - Pierre Schaeffer
Musique concrete or concrete music refers to sounds (objects, discrete sounds) derived from the world and from synthesis brought together into a collage or sound sculpture as a structure to be experienced through listening. The theoretical basis of the style was developed by Pierre Schaeffer, beginning in the early 1940s. This method of music creation has inspired many new forms of experimental music, where the goal is to produce new sounds, not replicate instruments. -
The Free Music Machine - Percy Grainger & Burnett Cross
The Free Music Machine was a machine that controlled the pitch, volume and timbre of eight oscillators.Two large rollers fed four sets of paper rolls over a set of mechanical arms that rolled over the cut contours of the paper and controlled the various aspects of the oscillators. -
Oramics - Daphne Oram
The technique of Oramics was developed by the composer and electronic engineer Daphne Oram in the UK during the early 1960s. It consisted of drawing onto a set of ten sprocketed synchronised strips of 35mm film which covered a series of photo-electric cells that in turn generated an electrical charge to control the frequency, timbre, amplitude and duration of a sound. -
The Wurlitzer Side Man - Rudolph Wurlitzer Company
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company (Wurlitzer) released the first commercially produced drum machine called the Sideman in 1959. It was an "electro-mechanical" drum machine that offered a choice of 12 electronically generated predefined rhythm patterns with variable tempos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLgyQG8Pu8ss -
RCA Mark 2 Synth - Milton Babbitt
The RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer was the first programmable electronic synthesizer and the flagship piece of equipment at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Designed by Herbert Belar and Harry Olson at RCA, it was installed at Columbia University in 1957. The Mark II gave the user more flexibility and had twice the tone oscillators of its predecessor, the Mark I. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl-tv-lQNQU -
Mellotron - Harry Chamberlin
The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England, in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music. The concept of the Chamberlin was itself modeled after the Laff Box invented by engineer Charlie Douglass in order to insert prerecorded laughs into TV and radio programs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrXtmKGkSa4 -
Synket - Jon Eaton
The appearance of high-quality, low-cost silicon transistors in the early 1960s enabled electronic instrument designers to incorporate all the basic synthesizer features in relatively small, convenient instruments. The Synket, built by the Italian engineer Paul Ketoff in 1962, was designed for live performance of experimental music. It had three small, closely spaced, touch-sensitive keyboards, each of which controlled a single tone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf0ckA5zxP0 -
Moog - Bob Moog
The Moog company pioneered the commercial manufacture of modular voltage-controlled analog synthesizer systems in the mid 1960s. The technological development that led to the creation of the Moog synthesizer was the invention of the transistor, which enabled researchers like Moog to build electronic music systems that were considerably smaller, cheaper and far more reliable than earlier vacuum tube-based systems. -
EMS Synth - David Cockerell
With the development of this synth, EMS went into direct competition with Moog. This system was mounted in a free-standing console cabinet and it used the same technology as the VCS3, being in essencethree VCS3 units combined. It wasdriven by twelve VCOs and featured a built-in oscilliscope, two 60 x 60 patchbays, two joystick controllers, dual five-octave velocity-sensitive keyboard controllers and a 3-track, 256-step digital
sequencer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-IkmSxxUK0 -
Synclavier - JJ Appleton
The Synclavier was an early digital synthesizer (uses FM synthesis), polyphonic digital sampling system, and music workshop developed at Dartmouth College, and produced by New England Digital Corporation, out of Norwich Vermont. It was first prototyped in 1973 (as the Dartmouth Digital Synth.) and came to fruition in 1978 as the Synclavier 1. The real success, however, was the Synclavier 2, which introduced many new features to the industry unseen before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWipCvQ -
TR 808 - Mr. Nakamura, Mr. Matsuoka
The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer was one of the first programable drum machines. The Roland TR-808 was produced between 1980 and 1983. It was originally intended to help studio musicians record demos. It used analog synthesis to create its sounds, which didn’t sound like a real drum kit at all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_coVK7QgjE -
Yamaha DX7 - Yamaha Corporation
One of the most popular digital synths ever was the DX7 from Yamaha, released in 1983. It featured a whole new type of synthesis called FM (Frequency Modulation). Its parameters are available for tweaking, many of which seemed counter-intuitive and unfamiliar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3rrjQtQe5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3rrjQtQe5A