Electronic musical instrument

An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces its sounds using electronics. In contrast, the term electric instrument is used to mean instruments whose sound is produced mechanically, and only amplified electronically - for example an electric guitar. Usually the instrument will have some way of controlling the sound, such as by adjusting the pitch, frequency, or duration of each note.

Early electronic musical instruments

In the broadest sense, the very first electrified musical instrument was the Denis d´or dating from 1753. It was followed by the Clavecin électrique by the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste de Laborde in 1761.

Related Topics:
Denis d´or - 1753 - Clavecin électrique - 1761

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The first purely electronic musical instrument was the Telharmonium, built by Thaddeus Cahill in 1906. Employing electric generators and tonewheels to produce notes, it had a length of 60ft and a weight of 200 tons; because of a lack of suitable loudspeakers at that time, the music was distributed over the telephone network.

Related Topics:
Telharmonium - Thaddeus Cahill - 1906

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One of the many instruments constructed in the following decades was the Theremin, invented by Leon Theremin in 1917, which used a vacuum tube oscillator to make sounds that depended on the interactions of the user with an RF field. This was followed in 1928 by the Ondes Martenot which had a keyboard as well as several auxiliary controllers.

Related Topics:
Theremin - Leon Theremin - Ondes Martenot

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The sound of the Ondes Martenot is used extensively in the Turangalîla-Symphonie and other works by Olivier Messiaen. However, these were not true synthesizers in the modern sense, as they were not configurable to produce a range of complex sounds by additive or subtractive synthesis, instead generating single pure tones with controllable pitch, amplitude and vibrato.

Related Topics:
Turangalîla-Symphonie - Olivier Messiaen - Pitch - Amplitude - Vibrato

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Ca. 1929 Friedrich Trautwein invented the Trautonium in Berlin. It was played with a resistorwire which has to be pressed against a metal plate. Oskar Sala was one of the first players and continued development until his death in 2002. Paul Hindemith wrote some compositions for it.

Related Topics:
Friedrich Trautwein - Trautonium - Oskar Sala - Paul Hindemith

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These early electronic instruments produced only pure tones and were frequently used to make avant garde music. In April 1935, Laurens Hammond introduced the Hammond tonewheel organ, which generated complex tones using an electro-mechanical principle derived from the design of the Telharmonium. Later Hammonds used the Leslie speaker to achieve special modulation effects, and the resulting Hammond organ sound is still regarded as the benchmark for the "electric organ" sound. This sound can be simulated by many modern synthesizers and digital samplers.

Related Topics:
Avant garde music - 1935 - Hammond tonewheel organ - Telharmonium - Leslie speaker

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