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102-426: The ondes Martenot ( / ˈ oʊ n d m ɑːr t ə ˈ n oʊ / OHND mar-tə- NOH ; French: [ɔ̃d maʁtəno] , "Martenot waves") or ondes musicales ("musical waves") is an early electronic musical instrument . It is played with a keyboard or by moving a ring along a wire, creating "wavering" sounds similar to a theremin . A player of the ondes Martenot is called an ondist . The ondes Martenot

204-549: A light pen . The Synclavier from New England Digital was a similar system. Jon Appleton (with Jones and Alonso) invented the Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer, later to become the New England Digital Corp's Synclavier. The Kurzweil K250 , first produced in 1983, was also a successful polyphonic digital music synthesizer, noted for its ability to reproduce several instruments synchronously and having

306-449: A music controller ( input device ) and a music synthesizer , respectively, with the two devices communicating through a musical performance description language such as MIDI or Open Sound Control . The solid state nature of electronic keyboards also offers differing "feel" and "response", offering a novel experience in playing relative to operating a mechanically linked piano keyboard. All electronic musical instruments can be viewed as

408-470: A paper tape sequencer punched with holes to control pitch sources and filters, similar to a mechanical player piano but capable of generating a wide variety of sounds. The vacuum tube system had to be patched to create timbres. In the 1960s synthesizers were still usually confined to studios due to their size. They were usually modular in design, their stand-alone signal sources and processors connected with patch cords or by other means and controlled by

510-475: A speaker cone , producing a metallic timbre. It was used by the first ondes Martenot quartets in 1932. Another, the Palme speaker, has a resonance chamber laced with strings tuned to all 12 semitones of an octave ; when a note is played in tune, it resonates a particular string, producing chiming tones. It was first presented alongside the sixth version of the ondes Martenot in 1950. According to The Guardian ,

612-621: A 35 mm film strip; it was used for a number of years at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop . This workshop was also responsible for the theme to the TV series Doctor Who a piece, largely created by Delia Derbyshire , that more than any other ensured the popularity of electronic music in the UK. In 1897 Thaddeus Cahill patented an instrument called the Telharmonium (or Teleharmonium, also known as

714-482: A better mechanical improvement to the legacy instrument In 2011 Sound on Sound wrote that original ondes Martenot models were "all but impossible to obtain or afford, and unless you can stump up 12,000 Euros for one of Jean‑Loup Dierstein's new reproduction instruments, the dream of owning a real Ondes is likely to remain such". In 2012, the Canadian company Therevox began selling a synthesizer with an interface based on

816-559: A common controlling device. Harald Bode , Don Buchla , Hugh Le Caine , Raymond Scott and Paul Ketoff were among the first to build such instruments, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Buchla later produced a commercial modular synthesizer, the Buchla Music Easel . Robert Moog , who had been a student of Peter Mauzey and one of the RCA Mark II engineers, created a synthesizer that could reasonably be used by musicians, designing

918-581: A cross between an organ and a theremin. Martenot first demonstrated the ondes Martenot on April 20, 1928, performing Dimitrios Levidis 's Poème symphonique at the Paris Opera . He embarked on a number of performance tours to promote it, beginning in Europe before going to New York. In 1930, he performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra , after which he embarked on a world tour. In 1937, the ondes Martenot

1020-521: A group of musicians and music merchants met to standardize an interface by which new instruments could communicate control instructions with other instruments and the prevalent microcomputer. This standard was dubbed MIDI ( Musical Instrument Digital Interface ). A paper was authored by Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits and proposed to the Audio Engineering Society in 1981. Then, in August 1983,

1122-510: A highly active and interdisciplinary field of research. Specialized conferences, such as the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression , have organized to report cutting-edge work, as well as to provide a showcase for artists who perform or create music with new electronic music instruments, controllers, and synthesizers. In musicology, electronic musical instruments are known as electrophones. Electrophones are

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1224-498: A microprocessor as a controller, was the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 introduced in late 1977. For the first time, musicians had a practical polyphonic synthesizer that could save all knob settings in computer memory and recall them at the touch of a button. The Prophet-5's design paradigm became a new standard, slowly pushing out more complex and recondite modular designs. In 1935, another significant development

1326-460: A mouthpiece. The sound processing is done on a separate computer. The AlphaSphere is a spherical instrument that consists of 48 tactile pads that respond to pressure as well as touch. Custom software allows the pads to be indefinitely programmed individually or by groups in terms of function, note, and pressure parameter among many other settings. The primary concept of the AlphaSphere is to increase

1428-413: A new model was being manufactured. The ondes Martenot is unique among electronic musical instruments in its methods of control. The ondes Martenot can be played with a metal ring worn on the right index finger. Sliding the ring along a wire produces "theremin-like" tones, generated by oscillator circuits using vacuum tubes , or transistors in the seventh model. The third model, unveiled in 1929, had

1530-437: A non-functioning simulacrum of a keyboard below the wire to indicate pitch. This model also had a "black fingerguard" on a wire which could be used instead of the ring. It was held between the right thumb and index finger, which was played standing at a distance from the instrument. When played in this way, the drawer is removed from the instrument and placed on a bench next to the player. Maurice Martenot's pedagogical manual for

1632-466: A powder which transfers electric currents, which Martenot would mix in different quantities according to musicians' specifications; the precise proportions are unknown. Attempts to construct new ondes Martenot models using Martenot's original specifications have had variable results. In 2000, Jonny Greenwood of the English rock band Radiohead commissioned the synthesiser company Analogue Systems to develop

1734-412: A process of chance short-circuiting, creating experimental electronic instruments, exploring sonic elements mainly of timbre and with less regard to pitch or rhythm, and influenced by John Cage ’s aleatoric music concept. Keyboard instrument A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard , a row of levers that are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are

1836-403: A repeating loop of adjustable length, set to any tempo, and new loops of sound can be layered on top of existing ones. This lends itself to electronic dance-music but is more limited for controlled sequences of notes, as the pad on a regular Kaossilator is featureless. The Eigenharp is a large instrument resembling a bassoon , which can be interacted with through big buttons, a drum sequencer and

1938-495: A replica of the ondes Martenot, as he was nervous about damaging his instrument on tour. The replica, called the French Connection, imitates the ondes Martenot's control mechanism, but does not generate sound; instead, it controls an external oscillator . A version called "Ondéa" was also created in the 2000s by David Kean of Audities Studios. It features not only the core principal ondes Martenot, but also midi, cv control and

2040-543: A separate triggering signal. This standardization allowed synthesizers from different manufacturers to operate simultaneously. Pitch control was usually performed either with an organ-style keyboard or a music sequencer producing a timed series of control voltages. During the late 1960s hundreds of popular recordings used Moog synthesizers. Other early commercial synthesizer manufacturers included ARP , who also started with modular synthesizers before producing all-in-one instruments, and British firm EMS . In 1970, Moog designed

2142-443: A set of parameters. Xenakis used graph paper and a ruler to aid in calculating the velocity trajectories of glissando for his orchestral composition Metastasis (1953–54), but later turned to the use of computers to compose pieces like ST/4 for string quartet and ST/48 for orchestra (both 1962). The impact of computers continued in 1956. Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Issacson composed Illiac Suite for string quartet ,

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2244-445: A simple loudspeaker device into later models, which consisted of a diaphragm vibrating in a magnetic field. A significant invention, which later had a profound effect on electronic music, was the audion in 1906. This was the first thermionic valve, or vacuum tube and which led to the generation and amplification of electrical signals, radio broadcasting, and electronic computation, among other things. Other early synthesizers included

2346-421: A sound source. The first electric synthesizer was invented in 1876 by Elisha Gray . The "Musical Telegraph" was a chance by-product of his telephone technology when Gray discovered that he could control sound from a self-vibrating electromagnetic circuit and so invented a basic oscillator . The Musical Telegraph used steel reeds oscillated by electromagnets and transmitted over a telephone line. Gray also built

2448-598: A subset of audio signal processing applications. Simple electronic musical instruments are sometimes called sound effects ; the border between sound effects and actual musical instruments is often unclear. In the 21st century, electronic musical instruments are now widely used in most styles of music. In popular music styles such as electronic dance music , almost all of the instrument sounds used in recordings are electronic instruments (e.g., bass synth , synthesizer , drum machine ). Development of new electronic musical instruments, controllers, and synthesizers continues to be

2550-402: A switch to transpose the pitch by one octave, and a switch to activate a filter. The drawer of the seventh model also includes six transposition buttons, which change the pitch by different intervals. These can be combined to immediately raise the pitch by up to a minor ninth. Martenot produced four speakers, called diffuseurs , for the instrument. The Métallique features a gong instead of

2652-535: A time. Popular monophonic synthesizers include the Moog Minimoog . A few, such as the Moog Sonic Six, ARP Odyssey and EML 101, could produce two different pitches at a time when two keys were pressed. Polyphony (multiple simultaneous tones, which enables chords ) was only obtainable with electronic organ designs at first. Popular electronic keyboards combining organ circuits with synthesizer processing included

2754-405: A velocity-sensitive keyboard. An important new development was the advent of computers for the purpose of composing music, as opposed to manipulating or creating sounds. Iannis Xenakis began what is called musique stochastique, or stochastic music , which is a method of composing that employs mathematical probability systems. Different probability algorithms were used to create a piece under

2856-419: A whole hand. Almost every keyboard until the fifteenth century had seven naturals to each octave. The clavicymbalum , clavichord , and the harpsichord appeared during the fourteenth century—the clavichord probably being earlier. The harpsichord and clavichord were both common until the widespread adoption of the piano in the eighteenth century, after which their popularity decreased. The first template for

2958-558: Is played with a keyboard or by moving a ring along a wire, creating "wavering" sounds similar to a theremin . It was invented in 1928 by the French cellist Maurice Martenot , who was inspired by the accidental overlaps of tones between military radio oscillators, and wanted to create an instrument with the expressiveness of the cello . The French composer Olivier Messiaen used the ondes Martenot in pieces such as his 1949 symphony Turangalîla-Symphonie , and his sister-in-law Jeanne Loriod

3060-451: Is probably the most musical of all electric instruments ... Martenot was not only interested in sounds. He wanted to use electricity to increase and control the expression, the musicality. Everything is made by the musician in real time, including the control of the vibrato, the intensity, and the attack. It is an important step in our electronic instrument lineage." According to music journalist Alex Ross , fewer than 100 people have mastered

3162-467: Is significant, since this is perhaps the most significant distinction between the modern synthesizer and other electronic instruments. The most commonly used electronic instruments are synthesizers , so-called because they artificially generate sound using a variety of techniques. All early circuit-based synthesis involved the use of analogue circuitry, particularly voltage controlled amplifiers, oscillators and filters. An important technological development

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3264-440: Is the musical keyboard , which functions similarly to the keyboard on an acoustic piano where the keys are each linked mechanically to swinging string hammers - whereas with an electronic keyboard, the keyboard interface is linked to a synth module , computer or other electronic or digital sound generator, which then creates a sound. However, it is increasingly common to separate user interface and sound-generating functions into

3366-787: Is used in a performance of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time in an episode from the third season of the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle , where a musician plays the ondes Martenot to inmates on Rikers Island . The British composer Barry Gray studied the instrument with Martenot in Paris, and used it in his soundtracks for 1960s films including Dr Who and the Daleks , and Doppelgänger , as well as his scores for Gerry Anderson's TV series, such as Fireball XL5. One of Gray's instruments (a valve model 6 from 1969)

3468-522: The Denis d'or keyboard, dating from 1753, followed shortly by the clavecin électrique by the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste de Laborde in 1761. The Denis d'or consisted of a keyboard instrument of over 700 strings, electrified temporarily to enhance sonic qualities. The clavecin électrique was a keyboard instrument with plectra (picks) activated electrically. However, neither instrument used electricity as

3570-608: The GS-1 and GS-2 , which were costly and heavy. There followed a pair of smaller, preset versions, the CE20 and CE25 Combo Ensembles, targeted primarily at the home organ market and featuring four-octave keyboards. Yamaha's third generation of digital synthesizers was a commercial success; it consisted of the DX7 and DX9 (1983). Both models were compact, reasonably priced, and dependent on custom digital integrated circuits to produce FM tonalities. The DX7

3672-896: The Minimoog , a non-modular synthesizer with a built-in keyboard. The analogue circuits were interconnected with switches in a simplified arrangement called "normalization." Though less flexible than a modular design, normalization made the instrument more portable and easier to use. The Minimoog sold 12,000 units. Further standardized the design of subsequent synthesizers with its integrated keyboard, pitch and modulation wheels and VCO->VCF->VCA signal flow. It has become celebrated for its "fat" sound—and its tuning problems. Miniaturized solid-state components allowed synthesizers to become self-contained, portable instruments that soon appeared in live performance and quickly became widely used in popular music and electronic art music. Many early analog synthesizers were monophonic, producing only one tone at

3774-593: The Telharmonium (1897), the Theremin (1919), Jörg Mager's Spharophon (1924) and Partiturophone, Taubmann's similar Electronde (1933), Maurice Martenot 's ondes Martenot ("Martenot waves", 1928), Trautwein's Trautonium (1930). The Mellertion (1933) used a non-standard scale, Bertrand's Dynaphone could produce octaves and perfect fifths, while the Emicon was an American, keyboard-controlled instrument constructed in 1930 and

3876-611: The organ trio (typically Hammond organ, drums, and a third instrument, either saxophone or guitar). The first commercially manufactured synthesizer was the Novachord , built by the Hammond Organ Company from 1938 to 1942, which offered 72-note polyphony using 12 oscillators driving monostable -based divide-down circuits, basic envelope control and resonant low-pass filters . The instrument featured 163 vacuum tubes and weighed 500 pounds. The instrument's use of envelope control

3978-474: The piano , organ , and various electronic keyboards , including synthesizers and digital pianos . Other keyboard instruments include celestas , which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons , which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings. Today, the term keyboard often refers to keyboard-style synthesizers and arrangers as well as work-stations. These keyboards typically work by translating

4080-753: The theremin parts of his Ecuatorial with ondes Martenot. According to the New York Times , the ondes' most celebrated performer was the French musician Jeanne Loriod (1928–2001), who studied under Martenot at the Paris Conservatory . She performed internationally in more than 500 works, created 85 works for a sextet of ondes she formed in 1974, and wrote a three-volume book on the instrument, Technique de l'Onde Electronique Type Martenot . A British pupil of Jeanne Loriod, John Morton of Darlington (1931-2014), performed his own ondes instrument in works by Messiaen, Milhaud, Honegger and Bartok, amongst others, at

4182-419: The theremin . It was invented in 1928 by the French cellist Maurice Martenot . Martenot had been a radio operator during World War I , and developed the ondes Martenot in an attempt to replicate the accidental overlaps of tones between military radio oscillators. He hoped to bring the musical expressivity of the cello to his new instrument. According to The Guardian , the ondes Martenot visually resembles

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4284-475: The 1932 French animated film The Idea (French: 'L'Idée' ) by Austro-Hungarian filmmaker Berthold Bartosch , believed to be the first use of electronic music in film. In 1936 Adolphe Borchard used it in Sacha Guitry 's Le roman d'un tricheur , played by Martenot's sister, Ginette . It was used by composer Brian Easdale in the ballet music for The Red Shoes . French composer Maurice Jarre introduced

4386-481: The 1950s Bayreuth productions of Parsifal . In 1942, Richard Strauss used it for the bell- and gong-part in the Dresden première of his Japanese Festival Music . This new class of instruments, microtonal by nature, was only adopted slowly by composers at first, but by the early 1930s there was a burst of new works incorporating these and other electronic instruments. In 1929 Laurens Hammond established his company for

4488-406: The 1950s in the context of computer music , including computer- played music (software sequencer), computer- composed music ( music synthesis ), and computer sound generation ( sound synthesis ). The first digital synthesizers were academic experiments in sound synthesis using digital computers. FM synthesis was developed for this purpose; as a way of generating complex sounds digitally with

4590-569: The 1950s. The Mark II Music Synthesizer , housed at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City . Designed by Herbert Belar and Harry Olson at RCA, with contributions from Vladimir Ussachevsky and Peter Mauzey , it was installed at Columbia University in 1957. Consisting of a room-sized array of interconnected sound synthesis components, it was only capable of producing music by programming, using

4692-426: The 2009 Richard Hawley album Truelove's Gutter and the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories . In 2020, the French composer Christine Ott released Chimères (pour Ondes Martenot) , an avant-garde album using only the ondes Martenot. The ondes Martenot has featured in many films, particularly science fiction and horror films . In 1934 Arthur Honegger used the ondes Martenot in his soundtrack for

4794-650: The ARP Omni and Moog's Polymoog and Opus 3. By 1976 affordable polyphonic synthesizers began to appear, such as the Yamaha CS-50, CS-60 and CS-80 , the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 and the Oberheim Four-Voice. These remained complex, heavy and relatively costly. The recording of settings in digital memory allowed storage and recall of sounds. The first practical polyphonic synth, and the first to use

4896-532: The Dynamaphone). Using tonewheels to generate musical sounds as electrical signals by additive synthesis , it was capable of producing any combination of notes and overtones, at any dynamic level. This technology was later used to design the Hammond organ . Between 1901 and 1910 Cahill had three progressively larger and more complex versions made, the first weighing seven tons, the last in excess of 200 tons. Portability

4998-849: The Folies-Bergère. Thomas Adès 's opera The Exterminating Angel makes extensive use of the Ondes Martenot, which Adès says "could be considered the voice of the exterminating angel". The Guardian described Jonny Greenwood of the English rock band Radiohead as a "champion" of the ondes Martenot. He first used it on Radiohead's 2000 album Kid A , and it appears in Radiohead songs including " The National Anthem ", " How to Disappear Completely " and "Where I End and You Begin". Radiohead have performed versions of their songs "How to Disappear Completely" and "Weird Fishes / Arpeggi" using several ondes Martenots. On their 2001 album Amnesiac , they used

5100-463: The French composer Olivier Messiaen . Messiaen first used it in Fête des belles eaux , for six ondes, and went on to use it in several more works, including Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine and Saint François d'Assise . For his Turangalîla-Symphonie , Messiaen used it to create "shimmering, swooping musical effects". This symphony featured the ondes Martenot and piano as soloists against

5202-555: The German Hellertion combined four instruments to produce chords. Three Russian instruments also appeared, Oubouhof's Croix Sonore (1934), Ivor Darreg 's microtonal 'Electronic Keyboard Oboe' (1937) and the ANS synthesizer , constructed by the Russian scientist Evgeny Murzin from 1937 to 1958. Only two models of this latter were built and the only surviving example is currently stored at

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5304-552: The Lomonosov University in Moscow . It has been used in many Russian movies—like Solaris —to produce unusual, "cosmic" sounds. Hugh Le Caine , John Hanert, Raymond Scott , composer Percy Grainger (with Burnett Cross), and others built a variety of automated electronic-music controllers during the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1959 Daphne Oram produced a novel method of synthesis, her " Oramics " technique, driven by drawings on

5406-707: The MIDI Specification 1.0 was finalized. The advent of MIDI technology allows a single keystroke, control wheel motion, pedal movement, or command from a microcomputer to activate every device in the studio remotely and in synchrony, with each device responding according to conditions predetermined by the composer. MIDI instruments and software made powerful control of sophisticated instruments easily affordable by many studios and individuals. Acoustic sounds became reintegrated into studios via sampling and sampled-ROM-based instruments. The increasing power and decreasing cost of sound-generating electronics (and especially of

5508-588: The Royal Albert Hall and elsewhere in the 1970s, as well as on television and radio. The English composer Hugh Davies estimated that more than 1,000 works had been composed for the ondes. Jeanne Loriod estimated that there were 15 concertos and 300 pieces of chamber music. The instrument was also popular in French theatres such as the Comédie-Française, the Théâtre National Populaire and

5610-544: The backdrop of a large orchestra. It is widely renowned as a masterpiece, and its fame associated the ondes Martenot with Messiaen. Messiaen's widow, Yvonne Loriod , arranged and edited four unpublished Feuillets inédits for ondes Martenot and piano which were published in 2001. Other composers who used the instrument include Arthur Honegger , Claude Vivier , Darius Milhaud , Edgard Varèse , Marcel Landowski , Charles Koechlin , Florent Schmitt , Matyas Seiber , and Jacques Ibert . Honegger's most notable work including

5712-417: The circuits while he was at Columbia-Princeton. The Moog synthesizer was first displayed at the Audio Engineering Society convention in 1964. It required experience to set up sounds but was smaller and more intuitive than what had come before, less like a machine and more like a musical instrument. Moog established standards for control interfacing, using a logarithmic 1-volt-per-octave for pitch control and

5814-424: The control method. Present-day ethnomusicologists , such as Margaret Kartomi and Terry Ellingson, suggest that, in keeping with the spirit of the original Hornbostel Sachs classification scheme, if one categorizes instruments by what first produces the initial sound in the instrument, that only subcategory 53 should remain in the electrophones category. Thus, it has been more recently proposed, for example, that

5916-528: The cubes, a variety of music and sound software can be operated. AudioCubes have applications in sound design, music production, DJing and live performance. The Kaossilator and Kaossilator Pro are compact instruments where the position of a finger on the touch pad controls two note-characteristics; usually the pitch is changed with a left-right motion and the tonal property, filter or other parameter changes with an up-down motion. The touch pad can be set to different musical scales and keys. The instrument can record

6018-463: The drawer. On the Seventh model, a dial at the top of the drawer adjusts the balance between white noise and the other waveforms. A second dial adjusts the balance between the three speakers. A switch chooses between the keyboard and ribbon. Further adjustments can be made using controls in the body of the instrument. These include several dials for tuning the pitch, a dial for adjusting the overall volume,

6120-445: The early 1960s. During the 1940s–1960s, Raymond Scott , an American composer of electronic music, invented various kind of music sequencers for his electric compositions. Step sequencers played rigid patterns of notes using a grid of (usually) 16 buttons, or steps, each step being 1/16 of a measure . These patterns of notes were then chained together to form longer compositions. Software sequencers were continuously utilized since

6222-549: The fifth category of musical instrument under the Hornbostel-Sachs system. Musicologists typically only classify music as electrophones if the sound is initially produced by electricity, excluding electronically controlled acoustic instruments such as pipe organs and amplified instruments such as electric guitars . The category was added to the Hornbostel-Sachs musical instrument classification system by Sachs in 1940, in his 1940 book The History of Musical Instruments ;

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6324-781: The first complete work of computer-assisted composition using algorithmic composition. In 1957, Max Mathews at Bell Lab wrote MUSIC-N series, a first computer program family for generating digital audio waveforms through direct synthesis. Then Barry Vercoe wrote MUSIC 11 based on MUSIC IV-BF , a next-generation music synthesis program (later evolving into csound , which is still widely used). In mid 80s, Miller Puckette at IRCAM developed graphic signal-processing software for 4X called Max (after Max Mathews), and later ported it to Macintosh (with Dave Zicarelli extending it for Opcode ) for real-time MIDI control, bringing algorithmic composition availability to most composers with modest computer programming background. In 1980,

6426-517: The first polyphonic digital sampler , was the harbinger of sample-based synthesizers. Designed in 1978 by Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie and based on a dual microprocessor computer designed by Tony Furse in Sydney, Australia, the Fairlight CMI gave musicians the ability to modify volume, attack, decay, and use special effects like vibrato. Sample waveforms could be displayed on-screen and modified using

6528-677: The guitar-like SynthAxe , the BodySynth, the Buchla Thunder , the Continuum Fingerboard , the Roland Octapad , various isomorphic keyboards including the Thummer, and Kaossilator Pro , and kits like I-CubeX . The Reactable is a round translucent table with a backlit interactive display. By placing and manipulating blocks called tangibles on the table surface, while interacting with

6630-417: The instrument in her film Evolution (2015) as it "brings a certain melancholy, almost a human voice, and it instantly creates a particular atmosphere". Other film scores that use the ondes Martenot include A Passage to India , Amelie , Bodysong , There Will Be Blood ( 2007 ), Hugo ( 2011 ) and Manta Ray . The ondes Martenot is the subject of the 2013 Quebec documentary Wavemakers . It

6732-452: The keys, a feature adapted in the 1970s by some Yamaha GX-1 synthesisers. Martenot was uninterested in mass-producing the ondes Martenot, which may have contributed to its decline in popularity following initial interest. Jean-Louis Martenot, Maurice Martenot's son, created new ondes Martenot models. In 2009, the Guardian reported that the last ondes Martenot was manufactured in 1988, but that

6834-615: The late 1970s and early 1980s, do-it-yourself designs were published in hobby electronics magazines (such the Formant modular synth, a DIY clone of the Moog system, published by Elektor ) and kits were supplied by companies such as Paia in the US, and Maplin Electronics in the UK. In 1966, Reed Ghazala discovered and began to teach math " circuit bending "—the application of the creative short circuit,

6936-416: The left hand. Volume is controlled with a touch sensitive glass "lozenge". Early models can produce only a few waveforms . Later models can simultaneously generate sine , peak-limited triangle , square , pulse , and full-wave rectified sine waves, in addition to pink noise , all controlled by switches in the drawer. The square wave and full-wave rectified sine wave can be further adjusted by sliders in

7038-487: The level of expression available to electronic musicians, by allowing for the playing style of a musical instrument. Chiptune , chipmusic, or chip music is music written in sound formats where many of the sound textures are synthesized or sequenced in real time by a computer or video game console sound chip , sometimes including sample-based synthesis and low bit sample playback. Many chip music devices featured synthesizers in tandem with low rate sample playback. During

7140-439: The manufacture of electronic instruments. He went on to produce the Hammond organ , which was based on the principles of the Telharmonium , along with other developments including early reverberation units. The Hammond organ is an electromechanical instrument, as it used both mechanical elements and electronic parts. A Hammond organ used spinning metal tonewheels to produce different sounds. A magnetic pickup similar in design to

7242-447: The modern piano was introduced in 1698 in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori as the gravicèmbalo con piano e forte ("harpsichord with soft and loud"), also shortened to pianoforte , as it allowed the pianist to control the dynamics by adjusting the force with which each key was struck. In its current form, the piano is a product of further developments made since the late nineteenth century and

7344-405: The ondes Martenot "can be as soothing and moving as a string quartet , but nerve-jangling when gleefully abused". Greenwood described it as "a very accurate theremin that you have far more control of ... When it's played well, you can really emulate the voice." The New York Times described its sound as a "haunting wail". The ondes Martenot is used in many classical compositions, most notably by

7446-451: The ondes Martenot pitch ring and intensity key. In 2017, the Japanese company Asaden manufactured 100 Ondomo instruments, a portable version of the ondes Martenot. Sources Electronic musical instrument An electronic instrument might include a user interface for controlling its sound, often by adjusting the pitch , frequency , or duration of each note . A common user interface

7548-462: The ondes Martenot through Bennet, and used it in scores for films including Heavy Metal , Ghostbusters , The Black Cauldron , Legal Eagles , The Good Son , and My Left Foot . Composer Danny Elfman used the instrument in the soundtrack to the comedy science fiction film Mars Attacks! : he had originally intended to use a theremin, but was unable to find a musician who could play one. Director Lucille Hadžihalilović decided to use

7650-533: The ondes Martenot to American cinema in his score for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Composer Harry Lubin created cues for The Loretta Young Show , One Step Beyond and The Outer Limits featured the instrument, as did the first-season Lost in Space (1965) theme by John Williams . The English composer Richard Rodney Bennett used it for scores for films including Billion Dollar Brain ( 1967 ) and Secret Ceremony ( 1968 ). Elmer Bernstein learned about

7752-433: The ondes Martenot was his dramatic oratorio, Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher in 1935, in which the ondes Martenot's unique sonority was used to augment the string section. Darius Milhaud , who also enjoyed the unusual nature of the ondes Martenot, used it several times in the 1930s for incidental music. Edgard Varèse did not use the ondes Martenot often, but it did appear in the premiere of Amériques in Paris; he also replaced

7854-480: The ondes Martenot, written in 1931, offers instruction on both methods of playing. Later versions added a real functioning keyboard ; the keys produce vibrato when moved from side to side. This was introduced in the 1930s with the 84-key fourth version of the instrument. Subsequent versions had 72 keys. Combined with a switch that transposes the pitch by one octave, these instruments have a range from C 1 to C 8 . A drawer allows manipulation of volume and timbre by

7956-546: The ondes Martenot. In 1997, Mark Singer wrote for The Wire that it would likely remain obscure: "The fact is that any instrument with no institutional grounding of second- and third-raters, no spectral army of amateurs, will wither and vanish: how can it not? Specialist virtuosos may arrive to tackle the one-off novelty ... but there's no meaningful level of entry at the ground floor, and, what's worse, no fallback possibility of rank careerism if things don't turn out." The ondes Martenot's electronics are fragile, and it includes

8058-566: The ondes martenot palm speaker to add a "halo of hazy reverberance" to Thom Yorke's vocals on the song "You and Whose Army?". In 2011, Greenwood composed a piece for two ondes Martenots, Smear . The ondist Thomas Bloch toured in Tom Waits and Robert Wilson 's show The Black Rider (2004–06) and in Damon Albarn 's opera " Monkey: Journey to the West " (2007–2013). Bloch performed ondes Martenot on

8160-704: The original 1914 version of the system did not include it. Sachs divided electrophones into three subcategories: The last category included instruments such as theremins or synthesizers , which he called radioelectric instruments. Francis William Galpin provided such a group in his own classification system, which is closer to Mahillon than Sachs-Hornbostel. For example, in Galpin's 1937 book A Textbook of European Musical Instruments , he lists electrophones with three second-level divisions for sound generation ("by oscillation", "electro-magnetic", and "electro-static"), as well as third-level and fourth-level categories based on

8262-478: The part was in fact performed by a singer. In 2001, the New York Times described the ondes, along with other early electronic instruments such as the theremin, teleharmonium , trautonium , and orgatron , as part of a "futuristic electric music movement that never went remotely as far as its pioneers dreamed ... proponents of the new wired music delighted in making previously unimaginable noises". The French classical musician Thomas Bloch said: "The ondes martenot

8364-456: The performer plays the instrument, and not on how the sound is produced. Categories of keyboard instruments include the following families (of which this is only a partial list): The earliest known keyboard instrument was the Ancient Greek hydraulis , a type of pipe organ invented in the third century BC. The keys were likely balanced and could be played with a light touch, as is clear from

8466-449: The personal computer), combined with the standardization of the MIDI and Open Sound Control musical performance description languages, has facilitated the separation of musical instruments into music controllers and music synthesizers. By far the most common musical controller is the musical keyboard . Other controllers include the radiodrum , Akai's EWI and Yamaha's WX wind controllers,

8568-531: The physical act of pressing keys into electrical signals that produce sound. Under the fingers of a sensitive performer, the keyboard may also be used to control dynamics , phrasing , shading, articulation , and other elements of expression—depending on the design and inherent capabilities of the instrument. Modern keyboards, especially digital ones, can simulate a wide range of sounds beyond traditional piano tones, thanks to advanced sound synthesis techniques and digital sampling technology. Another important use of

8670-455: The pickups in an electric guitar is used to transmit the pitches in the tonewheels to an amplifier and speaker enclosure. While the Hammond organ was designed to be a lower-cost alternative to a pipe organ for church music, musicians soon discovered that the Hammond was an excellent instrument for blues and jazz ; indeed, an entire genre of music developed built around this instrument, known as

8772-402: The pipe organ (even if it uses electric key action to control solenoid valves ) remain in the aerophones category, and that the electric guitar remain in the chordophones category, and so on. In the 18th-century, musicians and composers adapted a number of acoustic instruments to exploit the novelty of electricity. Thus, in the broadest sense, the first electrified musical instrument was

8874-442: The reference in a Latin poem by Claudian (late 4th century), who says magna levi detrudens murmura tactu . . . intonet, that is "let him thunder forth as he presses out mighty roarings with a light touch" ( Paneg. Manlio Theodoro, 320–22). From its invention until the fourteenth century, the organ remained the only keyboard instrument. Often, the organ did not feature a keyboard at all, but rather buttons or large levers operated by

8976-469: The smallest number of computational operations per sound sample. In 1983 Yamaha introduced the first stand-alone digital synthesizer, the DX-7 . It used frequency modulation synthesis (FM synthesis), first developed by John Chowning at Stanford University during the late sixties. Chowning exclusively licensed his FM synthesis patent to Yamaha in 1975. Yamaha subsequently released their first FM synthesizers,

9078-439: The success of FM synthesis Yamaha signed a contract with Stanford University in 1989 to develop digital waveguide synthesis , leading to the first commercial physical modeling synthesizer , Yamaha's VL-1, in 1994. The DX-7 was affordable enough for amateurs and young bands to buy, unlike the costly synthesizers of previous generations, which were mainly used by top professionals. The Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument),

9180-595: The tape recorder as an essential element: "electronically produced sounds recorded on tape and arranged by the composer to form a musical composition". It was also indispensable to Musique concrète . Tape also gave rise to the first, analogue, sample-playback keyboards, the Chamberlin and its more famous successor the Mellotron , an electro-mechanical, polyphonic keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in

9282-432: The visual display via finger gestures, a virtual modular synthesizer is operated, creating music or sound effects. AudioCubes are autonomous wireless cubes powered by an internal computer system and rechargeable battery. They have internal RGB lighting, and are capable of detecting each other's location, orientation and distance. The cubes can also detect distances to the user's hands and fingers. Through interaction with

9384-447: The word keyboard is in historical musicology, where it means an instrument whose identity cannot be firmly established. Particularly in the 18th century, the harpsichord , the clavichord , and the early piano competed, and the same piece might be played on more than one. Hence, in a phrase such as "Mozart excelled as a keyboard player", the word keyboard is typically all-inclusive. The term keyboard classifies instruments based on how

9486-494: Was a celebrated player of the instrument. It appears in numerous film and television soundtracks, particularly science fiction and horror films . It has also been used by contemporary acts such as Daft Punk , Damon Albarn and the Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood . The ondes Martenot (French for "Martenot waves") is one of the earliest electronic instruments , patented in the same year as another early electronic instrument,

9588-416: Was a celebrated player. It appears in numerous film and television soundtracks, particularly science fiction and horror films . Contemporary users of the ondes Martenot include Tom Waits , Daft Punk and the Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood . The Trautonium was invented in 1928. It was based on the subharmonic scale, and the resulting sounds were often used to emulate bell or gong sounds, as in

9690-564: Was displayed at the Exposition Internationale de Paris with concerts and demonstrations in an ensemble setting with up to twelve ondists performing together at a time. Beginning in 1947, the ondes Martenot was taught at the Paris Conservatory, with Martenot as the first teacher. Units were manufactured to order. Over the following years, Martenot produced several new models, introducing the ability to produce vibrato by moving

9792-460: Was inherited and restored by film composer François Evans who used it in Edgar Wright 's first feature film: A Fistful of Fingers , and occasionally records with this instrument in his soundtracks. Evans studied ondes Martenot under Pascale Rousse-Lacordaire, pupil of Maurice Martenot and Jeanne Loriod. The ondes Martenot is sometimes claimed to have been used in the original Star Trek theme ;

9894-450: Was invented in 1928 by the French inventor Maurice Martenot . Martenot was inspired by the accidental overlaps of tones between military radio oscillators, and wanted to create an instrument with the expressiveness of the cello . The ondes Martenot is used in more than 100 orchestral compositions. The French composer Olivier Messiaen used it in pieces such as his 1949 symphony Turangalîla-Symphonie , and his sister-in-law Jeanne Loriod

9996-506: Was made in Germany. Allgemeine Elektricitäts Gesellschaft (AEG) demonstrated the first commercially produced magnetic tape recorder , called the Magnetophon . Audio tape , which had the advantage of being fairly light as well as having good audio fidelity, ultimately replaced the bulkier wire recorders. The term " electronic music " (which first came into use during the 1930s) came to include

10098-466: Was managed only by rail and with the use of thirty boxcars. By 1912, public interest had waned, and Cahill's enterprise was bankrupt. Another development, which aroused the interest of many composers, occurred in 1919–1920. In Leningrad, Leon Theremin built and demonstrated his Etherophone, which was later renamed the Theremin . This led to the first compositions for electronic instruments, as opposed to noisemakers and re-purposed machines. The Theremin

10200-584: Was notable for being the first musical instrument played without touching it. In 1929, Joseph Schillinger composed First Airphonic Suite for Theremin and Orchestra , premièred with the Cleveland Orchestra with Leon Theremin as soloist. The next year Henry Cowell commissioned Theremin to create the first electronic rhythm machine, called the Rhythmicon . Cowell wrote some compositions for it, which he and Schillinger premiered in 1932. The ondes Martenot

10302-400: Was the first mass market all-digital synthesizer. It became indispensable to many music artists of the 1980s, and demand soon exceeded supply. The DX7 sold over 200,000 units within three years. The DX series was not easy to program but offered a detailed, percussive sound that led to the demise of the electro-mechanical Rhodes piano , which was heavier and larger than a DX synth. Following

10404-579: Was the invention of the Clavivox synthesizer in 1956 by Raymond Scott with subassembly by Robert Moog . French composer and engineer Edgard Varèse created a variety of compositions using electronic horns , whistles, and tape. Most notably, he wrote Poème électronique for the Philips pavilion at the Brussels World Fair in 1958. RCA produced experimental devices to synthesize voice and music in

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