Electronic instruments.

Instruments that incorporate electronic circuitry as an integral part of the sound-generating system. This article also discusses instruments that are properly classed as ‘electric’ or ‘electroacoustic’. There are three reasons for this. First, historically and technically the development of electronic instruments resulted from experiments, often only partly successful, in the application of electrical technology to the production or amplification of acoustic sound; in many areas electronic instruments have superseded their electric predecessors, and they have also opened up their own, entirely new possibilities for composition and performance. Second, all electric instruments require electronic amplification, so that there is some justification for considering them alongside instruments that are fully electronic. Third, common usage dictates ‘electronic instruments’ rather than ‘electric (or electroacoustic) instruments’ as the generic term for all instruments in which vibrations are amplified and heard as sound through a loudspeaker, whether the sound-generating system is electroacoustic or electronic.

The total quantity of electronic instruments built in the 70 years since the first models were manufactured already numbers many millions, and the day is not far off when they will outnumber all other instruments made throughout human history (especially if all the digital watches, pocket calculators, home computers, mobile telephones and electronic games machines that can play melodies or produce other sounds are taken into account). Well over 500 patents for electronic instruments (in some instances several for a single instrument) were granted in Britain, France, Germany and the USA up to 1950 alone; statistics since that date would show a considerable acceleration. Electronic instruments are now used in all forms of contemporary Western music by performers and composers of all tastes and styles. Following the spread of electronic organs in the late 1940s and the 1950s to many parts of the world where electricity supplies were newly installed and often barely adequate, the electric guitar became similarly widespread in the 1960s and 70s. By the beginning of the 1980s the synthesizer was starting to be used in areas such as India and West Africa and to be heard in concerts given by rock musicians visiting China.

I. Terminology and techniques

II. Early applications of electricity (to 1895)

III. 1895–1945

IV. After 1945

HUGH DAVIES

Electronic instruments

I. Terminology and techniques

1. Terms and names.

2. Electroacoustic instruments.

3. Electromechanical instruments.

4. Electronic instruments.

5. Peripheral equipment.

Electronic instruments, §I: Terminology and techniques

1. Terms and names.

To the layman the terms ‘electric’ and ‘electronic’ are often not clearly distinguishable; since both electric and electronic devices clearly function by means of electricity, one is apt to use the words interchangeably or with only an imprecise notion of where the distinction between them lies. Technically, electronic devices form a subset of all electric devices, being those, broadly speaking, that incorporate thermionic valves or semiconductors. In common usage, however, ‘electric’ is normally applied not to the whole range of electrically powered devices, but simply to those that are not electronic.

In discussing musical instruments it is useful to make a similar distinction between ‘electric’ and ‘electronic’ instruments: this article does so on the basis of the method of sound generation. The term ‘electric’ is used of two types of instruments: electroacoustic instruments, which produce sounds, albeit often virtually inaudible, by acoustic methods, and incorporate built-in microphones, pickups or transducers by means of which these vibrations are amplified; and electromechanical instruments, in which the mechanism itself produces no sound but creates a regular fluctuation in an electrical circuit which can be converted into an audio signal. The term ‘electronic’ is used of instruments in which the sound is generated by means of electronic oscillators or digital circuitry.

It is not always easy to maintain this useful distinction between electric and electronic instruments. As explained in the introduction, convenience and common usage dictate that this article be headed ‘Electronic instruments’ though it might more properly be called ‘Electric and electronic instruments’, or even (using the term in its comprehensive sense) ‘Electric instruments’. In this dictionary, for example, the terms ‘electric piano’ and ‘electric organ’ are used for all electric keyboard instruments that produce piano- or organ-like sounds, while ‘electronic piano’ and ‘electronic organ’ describe their fully electronic equivalents.

This terminological confusion has its roots in the naming and describing of instruments during the period between the two world wars when electronic technology was first developing. The clear-cut differentiations that can now be made retrospectively were not at all clear at the time. Up to about 1930 ‘electric organ’ meant a pipe organ with electric action, and ‘electric piano’ an electrically powered player piano (the terms are still occasionally used in this sense). Around 1930 several music journals carried regular articles on ‘mechanical’ music, which dealt not with clockwork music machines but with all the recently introduced electrically-powered means of producing, storing and diffusing sound and music: radio, gramophone, the sound film and electric and electronic instruments. In the 1930s some of the more frequently found descriptive terms for such instruments were ‘electrotonic’, ‘electromagnetic’, ‘electrogenic’, ‘radio-electric’ and ‘ether-wave’. Common to both the interwar and post-war periods are the terms ‘electronic’, ‘electric(al)’, ‘electroacoustic’, ‘electrophonic’, ‘synthetic’, ‘electron music’ and ‘electromusic’. Today ‘electroacoustic’ and ‘electronic’ are the most widely used terms for the large area of music generated or modified by electric and electronic instruments and associated equipment. They have taken some 50 years to crystallize out of all the previous usages and are still not universally accepted. (See also Electrophone.)

The naming of electric and electronic instruments presents its own peculiar difficulties. The use of the name of an existing musical instrument may be regarded as thoroughly inappropriate by those who see little resemblance to it in the newly invented, electrified version: protracted disputes took place over the name ‘electronic organ’, for example. Shortly after the introduction of the Hammond organ in 1935, the company had to defend itself against the Federal Trade Commission in the USA for the right to use the name ‘organ’; the case ran for two years, between 1936 and 1938. A similar struggle took place in West Germany from 1959 to 1969 between Ahlborn Orgel and the Bund Deutscher Orgelbaumeister, during which the Gesellschaft der Orgelfreunde published a collection of essays (1964) proposing the new word ‘Elektrium’ for all electronic organs instead of Ahlborn’s ‘Elektronenorgel’.

When choosing a new name, it is often hard to decide whether to emphasize or avoid drawing attention to such a partial relationship. The electric or electronic versions of the guitar, piano and organ are all played in much the same way as their traditional counterparts, and in many cases the resulting sound is similar to or even intended to mimic that of the earlier instrument. The naming of new instruments that do not show such a straightforward connection with an acoustic predecessor has, by and large, proceeded according to one of the following principles: the incorporation of all or part of the name of the inventor(s) or manufacturer; the use of a musical suffix such as ‘-phon(e)’, ‘-ton(e)’ or ‘-chord’; the inclusion of an electrical or ‘scientific’ term or affix, such as ‘radio-’, ‘syn-’, ‘electro-’, ‘wave’, ‘-tron’ or ‘-ium’; or the adoption of the name of a traditional instrument to which the new invention bears little or no resemblance in sound or appearance (Audion piano, clavecin électrique and Electronic sackbut).

Electronic instruments, §I: Terminology and techniques

2. Electroacoustic instruments.

Today amplified instruments are commonplace in all kinds of music: apart from the symphony orchestra, there are few instrumental ensembles playing music composed or arranged in the last few years that do not feature at least one such instrument. They may be ordinary acoustic instruments played in front of air microphones or with contact pickups attached to them (these are not regarded as true electroacoustic instruments under the classification proposed here), or they may be specially designed electric instruments with built-in pickups (or occasionally microphones).

Electroacoustic instruments mostly involve keyboards or strings and normally resemble standard acoustic instruments to a greater or lesser extent. Their conventional vibratory mechanisms such as strings, free reeds, bells, plates or rods are, however, not only essential parts of the electrical circuits designed to make their vibrations audible over a loudspeaker, but in some cases – where the microphones or pickups are electrostatic – are actually integrated into the circuits and carry a voltage. Furthermore, timbre control is often obtained by the positioning of several pickups at different points along the vibratory mechanism (at its nodes, for example), and the performer can select various combinations of these. (Electronic modification is often applied to the signal before it is amplified and passed through a loudspeaker; see §5 below.) The sound sources normally have their acoustic radiation reduced: electric pianos lack soundboards (which, incidentally, considerably increases the length of time for which the strings vibrate), and reeds are enclosed.

There are three basic subdivisions of the electroacoustic category: electromagnetic, electrostatic and photoelectric. A further subdivision, piezoelectric, may be added, though piezoelectric crystal pickups were seldom incorporated into true electroacoustic instruments before the 1960s (their principal application is in amplified acoustic instruments; see §(iv) below). The photoelectric principle occurs even more rarely: in the mid-1930s Richard H. Ranger constructed an instrument in which air-blown free reeds affected beams of light that reached photoelectric cells, and a comparable system was adopted around 1986 for providing digital MIDI information about the movement of piano hammers and keys, as in Yamaha’s Disklavier. The other two methods also involve the amplification of a vibratory mechanism by means of pickups that are not in direct contact with it. A pickup is a form of transducer, that is, a device that converts physical energy (the vibrations of the mechanism) into electrical energy which can be passed as a regularly varying current to an amplifier. Electromagnetic pickups are best known in the form in which they occur on most electric guitars (a row of six cylindrical pole-pieces). They consist essentially of a permanent magnet wound with a continuous length of fine wire. The magnetic field around the magnet is intersected by the coil and the pickup is so placed that the vibratory mechanism of the instrument (which must be of a material that responds to magnetism) is situated within it. When the vibratory mechanism is excited the magnetic field is altered in shape and small pulses of electrical energy are generated in the coil. An electrostatic pickup usually consists of a rectangular bar or plate which functions as one electrode or plate of a variable capacitor or condenser whose other plate consists of the vibratory mechanism. To a musician unfamiliar with electrical circuitry there may be no readily perceptible difference between these two types of pickup. The distance of a pickup from the vibratory mechanism is typically no more than about 1 cm. The earliest application of the electromagnetic pickup to a musical instrument appears to have been in the ‘musical telegraph’ of 1874 (see §II, 3, below), while electrostatic pickups (which require a power supply) do not seem to have been introduced until the 1920s.

(i) String instruments.

(ii) Reed instruments.

(iii) Other vibratory mechanisms.

(iv) Air microphones and contact pickups.

Electronic instruments, §I, 2: Terminology and techniques: Electroacoustic instruments

(i) String instruments.

Electric versions have been made of all three types of string instrument: struck (piano), plucked (guitar, harpsichord) and bowed (violin family).

(a) Struck strings.

The principal type of electric instrument that utilizes struck strings is the Electric piano. Its strings, particularly those for the lower notes, are shorter, thinner and under less tension than in an acoustic piano, since acoustic diffusion is not required. The use of pickups to transmit the vibrations of the strings to the amplifier means that no soundboard is needed. In some cases the hammer mechanism is simpler and the hammers strike the strings with less force than in the acoustic instrument. Both grand (usually reduced in size) and upright electric pianos have been made.

Electromagnetic pianos that employ struck strings include the Neo-Bechstein-Flügel (1931), Hiller’s Radioklavier (introduced in Hamburg in 1931), the Lautsprecherklavier of Beier and von Dräger (mid-1930s) and the Multipiano (built at NHK Tokyo in 1967).

Electromagnetic forms of the Sostenente piano include the elektrophonisches Klavier (1885–1913), the Variachord (1937), and the Crea-Tone (1930), in which the normal hammer mechanism is replaced by electromagnetic excitation of the strings; other instruments that function in the same way include those invented from the 1880s onwards by Boyle, Singer and others (see §II, 3, below), as does the E-Bow electric guitar accessory (c1977).

Electrostatic pianos include Vierling’s Elektrochord (1932), the Everett Pianotron (c1933), Miessner’s Electronic Piano (1930–31) and several instruments based on his patent that were marketed after 1935, the Dynatone, Krakauer Electone, Minipiano, Storytone and a similar piano marketed in Canada by Bernhardt. Electrostatic clavichords include the Clavinet (c1960).

Struck strings amplified electrostatically were the basis of the ‘chromatic electronic timpani’ made by Benjamin F. Miessner in the mid-1930s, which was played with drumsticks. A similar instrument, also with a range of a chromatic octave, is the Timbalec (timbales électroniques) developed in the early 1960s by Guy Siwinski for André Monici’s Orchestre Electronique Monici in Orleans; its pickups were probably electromagnetic.

Piezoelectric crystal pickups were used to amplify nearly all electric pianos marketed from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, including the uprights manufactured by Aeolian, Gretsch and Helpinstill, and the baby grands by Crumar, Helpinstill, Kawai and Yamaha.

(b) Plucked strings.

The Electric guitar is the most familiar of electric plucked string instruments. The history of its technical development is chiefly that of the invention of an efficient magnetic pickup. Crude pickups were used by Lloyd Loar as early as 1923 and within a few years guitarists were experimenting with amplification by means of air microphones (Eddie Durham, 1929) and acoustic gramophone needles (Les Paul and Alvino Rey, c1930); special guitar microphones were devised by Loar (manufactured by Acousti-Lectric in the mid-1930s) and Miessner (made by Amperite in 1928), and the Horace Rowe-DeArmond guitar pickup was manufactured in 1931. The first electric guitars to be marketed (1931) used electromagnetic pickups of the simplest sort; at the end of the decade Epiphone replaced the single large rectangular magnet with separate small magnets (or pole-pieces), one for each string, mounted on a base and, as before, surrounded by a single coil. (In the early 1980s Yamaha produced an electric guitar that reverted to the single bar magnetic pickup.) A large number of electric guitars now use the ‘humbucking’ pickup, invented in 1955 by Seth Lover: this uses two coils instead of one, wired so that current flows through them consecutively. Not only does the twin-coil pickup eliminate interference, it also affects the sound of the instrument by decreasing the response to higher frequencies.

Electric guitars are principally of two types, the hollow-bodied (‘semi-electric’) in which the soundboard and resonating chamber are similar to those of the acoustic instrument, and the solid-bodied in which the body transmits no vibration from the strings. Almost all models of both types carry one or more knobs on the body, by means of which volume and timbre can be controlled, and many have a vibrato lever (‘tremolo arm’) attached at the bridge or tailpiece. Sound-processing devices, usually in the form of pedals, are often used (see §5 below). Electric Hawaiian guitars have also been constructed: they are usually mounted on legs and have up to four necks, knee-levers and several pedals (‘pedal steel guitars’).

Other electric plucked strings include a ‘complete set’ built by A.E. Allen and V.A. Pfeil in Orange, New Jersey, around 1934, mandolins (manufactured by the National Dobro Corporation, Fender and Gibson), banjos, harps, such as those built in the early 1980s by Merlin Maddock in South Wales (about 1 metre high and weighing about 4–5 kg), and sitārs (in the USA). A harp-like instrument (Rahmenharfe), the strings of which may be bowed, rubbed and struck as well as plucked, has been constructed by Kagel, and Dieter Trüstedt has made a series of electromagnetically amplified long zithers. Electric harpsichords form a distinct group and include one designed in 1936 by Hanns Neupert and Friedrich Trautwein, the Thienhaus-Cembalo (probably electromagnetic), the Cembaphon of Harald Bode which used electrostatic pickups, electromagnetically amplified instruments made by Baldwin in the early 1960s and Neupert from 1966, and Ivor Darreg’s Megapsalterion or Amplifying Clavichord.

(c) Bowed strings.

Electric instruments based on the violin family are either solid-bodied or, more commonly, ‘skeletal’ instruments consisting of little more than a fingerboard (fig.1). Precedents for the latter are found in walking-stick violins and the Stroh violin. Solid-bodied electric instruments, especially cellos and double basses, are normally heavier than the acoustic versions. Amplification is almost invariably by means of one or more sets of electromagnetic pickups (with steel strings), or piezoelectric crystal contact pickups. Table 1 lists electroacoustic bowed string instruments constructed in the 1920s and 30s, information on a number of which is incomplete.

Since World War II exploration in this area has been less widespread, partly because the improved quality of amplification systems and special pickups has meant that acoustic instruments can now be very effectively electrified. Electric violins have been manufactured by Fender, Zeta Music Systems (with four or five strings, also violas), Yamaha and several other companies. Around 1972 Max Mathews developed an electric violin with a separate pickup for each string. Electric cellos have been manufactured by Yamaha (two models) and constructed by Donald Buchla (1979) and by the cellists Ernst Reijseger (from 1969, using electromagnetic and piezoelectric crystal pickups, and including a solid skeletal model) and David Darling (eight-string solid cello, c1980), for Jeffrey Krieger and for Philip Sheppard (with five strings; 1998). Solid-bodied electric double basses have been manufactured by companies such as Fender (1951) and Zeta and were built by Motoharu Yoshizawa and in France (early 1980s) for Joëlle Léandre and others. The Gizmotron (originally Gizmo) and Bass Gizmotron, devised around 1971 by electric guitarists Kevin Godley and Lol Creme and improved by John McConnell, are attachments respectively for the electric guitar and electric bass guitar with small hurdy-gurdy-like wheels to bow the strings. Electric bowed strings have found many applications in popular music: they were used by the Electric Light Orchestra, for example, and the jazz-rock soloists Jean-Luc Ponty and Michal Urbaniak both originally played a violectra, tuned one octave lower than the violin, and subsequently a five-string electric violin (extending down to c). Lakshminarayana Shankar performs on a specially-built two-necked ten-string electric violin, and Eberhard Weber on a six-string electric double bass.

Electronic instruments, §I, 2: Terminology and techniques: Electroacoustic instruments

(ii) Reed instruments.

In this group, which are almost all keyboard instruments, steel or steel-tipped tuned reeds (usually free reeds), enclosed in sound-proof chambers, are amplified electromagnetically or electrostatically. One or more pickups are positioned close to the reed, one of them typically at the free end; where there are several, different timbres can be produced. Other elements that contribute to timbral variety, in electric as in acoustic free-reed instruments, include the thickness, width, weight and profile of the reed, and the degree (if any) of twist at its tip. The reeds are usually set in motion by compression (blowing) or by suction, but unlike those in acoustic free-reed systems they are often maintained in vibration for as long as the instrument is switched on, to avoid any delay in ‘speaking’, particularly with the reeds for lower pitches; in some electric pianos the reeds are plucked, or struck by small hammers.

Electromagnetic pianos that employ free reeds include Lloyd Loar’s Clavier (1934), the Pianophon (1954) and later models of the Pianet; organs of this type include some Farfisa models. Another instrument that functions in a similar way is the Guitaret (early 1960s). Instruments in which free reeds are activated by electromagnets include the Musical Telegraph (1874–7) and the Canto (c1927).

Electrostatic pianos include earlier models of the Pianet (1962), the Selmer Pianotron (1938) and the electric pianos manufactured by Wurlitzer from 1954 (designed by Miessner) and from 1968 (Harald Bode); organs of this type include the Orgatron (based on Miessner’s electric harmonium) and its derivative the early Wurlitzer organ, an early model of the Minshall organ, the Radareed organ, an instrument made by the television pioneer John Logie Baird (1927) in which reeds were placed inside organ pipes, the Mutatone of Constant Martin and the hybrid Mannborg organ. Another instrument that functions in the same way is the Hohner Cembalet (1958).

Electronic instruments, §I, 2: Terminology and techniques: Electroacoustic instruments

(iii) Other vibratory mechanisms.

A number of electroacoustic instruments use vibrating devices other than strings and reeds. Electrically driven tuning-fork oscillators generated sound in the RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer (1951–2) and the short-lived Rogertone (USA, ?1950s). Struck rods were amplified electrostatically in the Pre-Piano of Harold Rhodes and electromagnetically in its successor, the Rhodes electric piano. Electromagnetic pickups are used to amplify a variety of vibrating materials in instruments built by Mario Bertoncini, Hugh Davies, members of the ensemble Sonde, Max Eastley, Dieter Trüstedt, Alvin Lucier, and Peter Appleton, and specified in works by John Cage. Keyed percussion has also been amplified: in 1931 the bass notes of a five-octave marimba, incorporating a two-octave vibraphone, were amplified, and in the 1930s electric glockenspiels and vibraphones were developed; in the 1960s a special pickup was produced by the Ludwig Drum Co. for use with the vibraphone, and the Deagan company marketed its Electra-Vibe. Many electric carillons constructed since the early 1930s are based on bells, tubular bells, reeds, plates, bars, rods or springs that are played mechanically or from a keyboard and are amplified electromagnetically or electrostatically (in the USA one company installed more than 5000 electric carillons up to the mid-1960s). Starting in 1930, Miessner experimented with electrifying various wind instruments, including the clarinet, saxophone and mouth organ, and in 1939 Buddy Wagner formed an amplified wind ensemble. The orgue radiosynthétique, designed by Abbé Pujet in France in 1934, was an electroacoustic pipe organ, the pipes of which were enclosed so that their sounds could be heard only by means of the microphones and loudspeakers that were part of the instrument.

Electronic instruments, §I, 2: Terminology and techniques: Electroacoustic instruments

(iv) Air microphones and contact pickups.

Air microphones are transducers that pick up vibrations from the air and convert them into electrical current; contact microphones (pickups) are attached to some part of the vibratory mechanism and pick up vibrations directly from it. There is normally no fundamental electrical difference between the various types of microphone and pickup. The latter may be electromagnetic, electrostatic or piezoelectric. Attempts to develop the piezoelectric air microphone (which exploits the effect first observed in 1883 by Pierre and Jacques Curie) were first made around 1920, but it was not until 1931 that C.B. Sawyer devised the first successful version. Piezoelectric transducers exploit the property of certain crystals and ceramic materials that produce a voltage when a mechanical stress is applied to them; the physical vibration of the body of an instrument can apply such a stress, which is converted by the transducer into electrical oscillations. (The effect is also applied in high-stability crystal-controlled oscillators.)

Before the introduction of electric guitars, pianos and other instruments with integral pickups, several methods of amplifying acoustic instruments, and particularly the piano, were tried: Richard Eisenmann (from 1885) and F.C. Hammond (1924) developed special contact microphones for the piano, and several others were devised in the late 1920s and early 1930s, including the Radiano piano microphone of Fred W. Roehm and Frank W. Adsit (1926). Since World War II high-quality piezoelectric crystal contact pickups, including ranges that cater for virtually all instruments, have been marketed by many companies: among the best-known are the Barcus-Berry range made in Long Beach, California, from the early 1970s; the FRAP (‘Flat Response Audio Pickup’) made in the USA since 1969 by Arnie Lazarus; the C-Ducer designed by John Ribet, Francis Townsend and André Walton, and made by C-Tape Developments of Alton, Hampshire, since 1980; and those made for individual instruments, such as the Helpinstill piano contact microphone produced by Charlie Helpinstill in Houston, Texas, from the early 1970s.

Contact pickups and microphones and air microphones have been very widely used in the last 40 years to amplify acoustic instruments. Contact microphones continue to be essential, for example, with certain recent commercial instruments that are basically acoustic but also provide the possibility of being linked to electronic devices or computers. The only applications of air microphones in electric instruments seem to have been in the orgue radiosynthétique, and later similar systems for amplifying pipe organs (see §IV, 3(ii)), and in some electric carillons; the Thienhaus-Cembalo may also have used them. Piezoelectric crystal contact pickups have been used in some electric pianos and electric bowed string instruments (see §(i) a and c above) and in many of the Electronic percussion instruments based on drums or drum-pads developed since the late 1970s; they have also been incorporated into newly invented instruments by composers, performers and sound sculptors, including John Cage, Mario Bertoncini, Hugh Davies (in the Shozyg family), members of the group Sonde, Chris Brown, Tom Nunn, Luigi Ceccarelli, Richard Lerman, Leif Brush (amplifying minute sounds from nature), Johannes Bergmark and Takis (in the Electromagnetic musical series of sound sculptures) (see also §IV, 6(i)). Similar use has been made of strain-gauges and enclosed ‘contact’ magnetic pickups such as stethoscope microphones.

Electronic instruments, §I: Terminology and techniques

3. Electromechanical instruments.

Like electroacoustic instruments, those based on electromechanical systems may be electromagnetic, electrostatic or photoelectric. In this group, however, the photoelectric principle is of far greater importance than in the electroacoustic group.

(i) Tone-wheels.

The tone-wheel is almost invariably the basis of the electromechanical systems of sound generation found in electronic organs and other keyboard instruments from the 1890s to the 1960s; today, as with all other methods that involve moving parts, it has been superseded by fully digital instruments. Such systems are powered by a synchronous electric motor, an induction motor whose speed is controlled by the frequency of the electrical supply (50 Hz in Europe, 60 Hz in North America) and is therefore very stable. The motor drives one or more shafts on which a series of discs or cylinders, usually made of metal, glass or plastic, is mounted. Each disc or cylinder carries a ‘pattern’, representing a waveform, repeated regularly an integral number of times; in cylinders and discs of one type this pattern is outlined on the rim, in the form of teeth or a more complex profile; in the other type of disc the pattern is engraved as a ring of repeated shapes or a continuous wavy line on the face. Several different waveforms may be represented on a cylinder (where they appear as bands of teeth, spaced at different intervals in each band) or on the second type of disc (where they are arranged concentrically); multiple waveforms on a single disc or cylinder allow it to produce several timbres. When the discs or cylinders are rotated, the electromagnetic, electrostatic or photoelectric systems of which they form part cause regular fluctuations, corresponding to the waveform patterns, in an electrical circuit. (The system in its entirety is the equivalent of an electronic oscillator.) The electrical signals thus produced are amplified and heard as sound through a loudspeaker. The speed at which a disc or cylinder is rotated, multiplied by the number of repetitions of the waveform represented on its face or rim, produces a frequency of the same number of cycles per second; the shape of the waveform on the face or of the profile on the rim produces an analogue variation in the signal, which ultimately determines the timbre of the note that is heard. The mechanism functions continuously while the instrument is switched on.

Tone-wheels have varied in size from the massive cylinders some 46 cm in diameter of the Telharmonium, to the 5'' (12·7 cm) electrostatic discs in the Compton Electrone (later reduced to half of this) and the 1⅞'' (4·7 cm) electromagnetic discs of the Hammond organ (fig.2). Normally an instrument contains either a single wheel for each pitch or 12 composite discs or cylinders that each produce all the octave registers of one pitch class. In a few cases each disc carries the waveforms for all the 12 pitches of a single octave; however, the irrational ratios that exist between the frequencies of many of the pitches mean that not all of the waveforms can be inscribed on the disc an integral number of times, and where an incomplete waveform occurs an audible click may result. One of several solutions to this problem was devised for the Hardy-Goldthwaite organ, in which the incomplete waveforms were divided into small sections and distributed evenly round the disc between the complete cycles; other such instruments produce pitches that are not perfectly in tune but whose waveforms fit exactly on to the disc.

There are several methods of producing variations in timbre: by incorporating filter circuits into the signal-processing stage; by adding duplicate sets of discs or cylinders that carry different waveforms (replacement discs of this sort were available for the Welte Lichtton-Orgel and the Mattel Optigan); by adding different waveforms on the faces of the existing discs, or (as in the Mastersonic) placing differently profiled electromagnets around the circumference of each toothed tone-wheel; or by ‘borrowing’ harmonics, at appropriately reduced strength, from other pitches (a process known as ‘additive synthesis’). A number of procedures have been devised for creating the waveforms that determine timbre: they range from trial and error and the reproduction of sinusoidal outlines, to the use of photographic impressions derived from the stops of famous pipe organs (this method is especially suited to photoelectric instruments, and may be seen as a forerunner of the ‘sampling’ techniques prevalent in recent digital instruments).

A different type of tone-wheel is found in some early photoelectric instruments in which the regular interruption of a beam of light is produced not by a waveform pattern but by a ring of holes or slits; the principle is similar to that of the siren or an old-fashioned lighthouse.

Electromagnetic tone-wheel instruments include the Choralcelo, Ivan Eremeeff’s Gnome, the Hammond organ, Magneton, Mastersonic, Béthenod’s piano électrique, Rangertone organ, Telharmonium, Robb’s Wave organ, an untitled organ built by Karl Ochs around 1909, an organ constructed by Oskar Vierling in 1928 and G.V. Dowding’s Valvonium (? late 1940s).

Electrostatic tone-wheel instruments include the Dereux organ, Electrone, Makin organ, Midgley-Walker organ, an instrument demonstrated by Harvey Fletcher in 1946, and the Harmoníphon manufactured in Spain in the mid-1960s.

Photoelectric instruments that use tone-wheels or perforated discs include the ANS, Cellulophone, Hardy-Goldthwaite organ, the organ developed by Charles-Emile Hugoniot, the Lichtton-Orgel, Photona, Polytone, Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones, Rhythmicon, Superpiano (and its predecessor, the Thiring piano), the ‘universal recorder’ for the Syntronic organ, the Optigan and Vako Orchestron (described under Drawn sound), Hendrik Johannes Van der Bijl’s photoelectric organ (1916), an unfinished organ by G.T. Winch (1933), the Prismatone (mid-1940s), organs manufactured briefly in the 1950s by Baldwin and around 1960 by Kimball, the Organova (c1950), an organ manufactured around the mid-1950s by the Société Française Electro-Musicale, one designed by Melville Clark and demonstrated in 1959 and Jacques Dudon’s recent Lumiphones.

(The term ‘tone-wheel’ is sometimes confusingly applied to the ‘performance wheels’ (for small adjustments in pitch and modulation) introduced on the Minimoog and now found on many keyboard synthesizers.)

(ii) Photoelectric film instruments.

Photoelectric tone-wheel instruments form a special category of all Drawn sound instruments. The basic technique of drawn sound is the graphic marking on film of shapes that represent sounds; the film is then passed between a light source and a photoelectric cell. This principle has been used in a number of instruments and composition machines, including the Clavivox, the fourth Cross-Grainger free music machine, Oramics, the Singing Keyboard, the Syntronic organ, the Variafon and a system patented in 1940 by James A. Koehl; related systems have been used by Norman McLaren, in the ANS, the ‘Bildabtaster’ unit used with the Siemens Synthesizer, and in the light-screen devised for performances by Michel Waisvisz.

A photoelectric system is also used in the Saraga-Generator, but here it is controlled not by film but by the movements of the performer’s hand between the light source and the photoelectric cell.

(iii) Other types.

Attempts have been made since sound recording was first developed to produce electromechanical instruments based on previously recorded sounds. In 1920 K. Fiala experimented with magnetized steel discs, as did Charles-Emile Hugoniot at about the same time, magnetized steel wire formed the basis of several attempts up to 1950, including that of Graydon F. Illsey, and gramophone records were used from at least 1931. More effective results were achieved with instruments using optical film soundtrack (see §(ii) above) but few of these systems had more than a brief success. It was not until the advent after World War II of magnetic tape, with its greater fidelity, that such an approach became feasible; sounds pre-recorded on magnetic tape form the basis of the Chamberlin, Mellotron and Birotron. Today electromechanical systems of this sort have been overtaken by digital samplers that store and play back musical and other sounds recorded through a microphone.

An electromechanical system is also used in a group of composition machines in which oscillators are controlled by punched paper tape: the Electronic Music Box, RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer, Siemens Synthesizer, and a ‘synthesizer’ developed by Armand Givelet and Edouard Coupleux. Another composition machine, the Hanert Electrical Orchestra, uses a drawn sound technique – the marking of cards with electrically conductive material which is then ‘read’ by brushes carried by a moving unit.

Electronic instruments, §I: Terminology and techniques

4. Electronic instruments.

This category consists of those instruments whose sounds are generated by means of electronic components such as analogue oscillators and noise generators, or, more recently, from digital synthesis or the resynthesis of sampled sounds. An oscillator is a device that, like the mechanisms of electroacoustic and electromechanical instruments, produces regular fluctuations in an electrical circuit; in this case, however, the fluctuations are not produced by means of moving components, but by purely electronic means. In some instruments each of a set of oscillators is tuned to a fixed frequency, but in others the frequency of the oscillator or oscillators may be continuously varied over a wide range. An analogue oscillator typically generates a sine, sawtooth, square or pulse waveshape; each of these has a different harmonic content. Among the types of oscillator of importance in musical instruments are the beat-frequency oscillator (BFO), which produces sine waves of frequencies within the range audible by the human ear as the difference between the frequencies of two VHF oscillators, one of fixed and the other of variable frequency; and the voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO; see Voltage control and Synthesizer).

A noise generator (white noise) is a device that produces a signal that varies randomly and aperiodically, covering the complete audio spectrum; the output consequently has no clearly identifiable pitch and can be used to create percussive sounds; it is often filtered to create narrower bands of sound.

The following discussion concentrates on instruments that produce sounds of fixed pitch; many of the considerations that apply to these instruments apply equally to the generation and control of sounds that have no fixed pitch.

(i) Monophonic instruments.

The instruments that belong to this category are, chiefly, space-controlled, dial- and fingerboard-operated instruments, keyboards and many analogue synthesizers. A monophonic electronic instrument is one in which only a single pitch can be generated at any one time. (On keyboard and fingerboard instruments, where it is possible to depress more than one key or position at a time, it is usually the highest that gives rise to a signal.) A monophonic instrument requires only one oscillator, though occasionally two or more are used, normally to reinforce one another at the same frequency and so produce a richer tone or a ‘chorus’ effect. The highest pitch on a monophonic instrument normally has the frequency generated by the oscillator; lower frequencies (and therefore pitches) may be produced by the introduction of greater resistance or capacitance into the circuit. A monophonic keyboard produces discrete steps within the range of the oscillator, each key introducing a fixed value of resistance or capacitance into the circuit so that it generates a fixed pitch. In space-controlled and dial-operated instruments the controlling mechanism introduces a continuously variable resistance or capacitance, so that only glissandos and sustained pitches are possible (though an on/off switch and usually a volume control allow the glissandos between pitches to be interrupted in such a way as to reduce the portamento quality and even to obtain staccatos). Fingerboard instruments have a wire, ribbon or band that allows both discrete pitches and glissandos to be executed (see Fingerboard, (ii)).

Two types of timbre control are employed in monophonic instruments. In those that are based on a beat-frequency oscillator a distinctive timbre may be achieved by means of additional circuitry that ‘distorts’ the original sine wave to create a different overtone content; the theremin and ondes martenot both create their unusual timbres in this way. In other types of instrument different timbres are obtained by ‘subtractive synthesis’ – the filtering of overtones.

(ii) Partially polyphonic instruments.

Many analogue and digital synthesizers have keyboards that can produce more than one note at a time, but have an upper limit on the number (up to the early 1980s usually two, four, eight or 16, subsequently 32, then 64, and now 128) that will sound simultaneously. These and a few similar earlier instruments are classified as partially polyphonic, in the same way as, for example, a violin or a guitar.

A system of this sort was first introduced by Harald Bode in the Warbo Formant-Orgel (1937), which used four oscillators. All partially polyphonic electronic instruments make use of a system of ‘assignment’, derived ultimately from that already described for monophonic keyboards: in Bode’s instrument the oscillators were ‘assigned’ to the four highest keys depressed at any one time (‘high-note priority’); Bode’s system also allowed each voice to have its own timbre. In the first partially polyphonic synthesizers, produced in the mid-1970s, an alternative method of assignment became available – that of first- or last-note priority; with digital circuitry further sophistication became possible, such as a system in which the ‘earliest apart from lowest or highest’ note is rejected.

A different approach to the creation of a partially polyphonic instrument was the use of multiple monophonic keyboards (as in the later instruments of Jörg Mager) or fingerboards (the Hellertion), or the equivalent – a ‘split’ keyboard. This last (which is used in some harmoniums as well as in electronic instruments) is a keyboard divided into two (not usually physically) at a certain point: each section constitutes an independent monophonic keyboard which controls its own oscillator and is capable of creating its own timbres. Bode was probably the first designer to use the split keyboard in an electronic instrument, the Melochord (1947); in a later, two-manual version (1953) the keys of one manual could be used to control the timbre of notes produced by the other, a feature later found in some synthesizers.

All the instruments described so far in this section are extensions of the monophonic principle, using oscillators of variable frequencies. By contrast there are some small organs that are based on the principle of the fully polyphonic instrument, but, for economic reasons, have restricted capabilities. In this type of system the pitches are produced by division of the fixed frequencies of a set of oscillators (see §(iii) below); but instead of the 12 oscillators (one for each note of the chromatic octave) used in a fully polyphonic instrument of this type, only six or four are used, so that pairs or groups of three semitones must ‘share’ each oscillator (as on ‘fretted’ clavichords). This places a limitation on the chord configurations that can be played, though for most purposes such instruments are more versatile than any other type of partially polyphonic keyboards. Digital keyboard instruments often permit more simultaneously sounding notes than the player has fingers, sometimes even more than there are keys on the keyboard (e.g. 12, 16, 24, 32, 48, 64 or 128), but this is necessary for accuracy in certain contexts, such as rapid glissandos or clusters, where a large number of notes may continue to sound together after they have been played.

(iii) Fully polyphonic instruments.

This group includes some electronic pianos and organs, string synthesizers, and digital and analogue synthesizers that can produce any number of notes within the range simultaneously. A few fully polyphonic instruments, mostly organs, use a separate oscillator for every key on the keyboard, but this is less common (because it is more expensive) than the use of a set of 12 oscillators with frequency dividers, or of one or more master oscillators with two stages of frequency division. In the former system the 12 oscillators generate the frequencies of the 12 pitch classes of the octave in a high octave (sometimes the highest octave of the instrument’s range, sometimes the octave above that – see the discussion of timbre below). Sets of frequency dividers (one for each octave of the instrument’s range) produce the pitches for the lower octaves: the frequency of the highest C, for example, is divided by a succession of frequency dividers, each producing a C one octave lower than the preceding one. Up to the 1950s there were considerable problems with the stability of electronic oscillators, which were greatly reduced by having only 12 oscillators for the whole instrument since all pitches derived from each oscillator would remain perfectly in tune. (A related but much less common system of generating many pitches from oscillators of fixed frequency is by means of frequency multiplication, using oscillators tuned to low frequencies.) During the 1970s technological developments permitted an efficient and stable variant of the single oscillator to be used to generate sounds in fully polyphonic instruments. The principle is very similar to that of many monophonic electronic keyboard instruments, but sophisticated circuitry allows any number of notes to be sounded at one time. The frequency of a VHF crystal-controlled oscillator (with a frequency of, for example, between 1 and 4 MHz) is divided to create the 12 pitches in the highest octave required; these frequencies are then divided successively to produce the pitches of all the lower octaves.

Timbres are most often created in electronic instruments by subtractive synthesis, that is, filtering. The process of frequency division normally results in a square wave, which is variously filtered to give different timbres. If the frequencies of the oscillators are themselves used to produce the highest octave of the instrument’s range, the waveshapes generated by the oscillators must also be modified to give a homogeneous timbre throughout the range. In some instruments this is avoided by tuning the oscillators to the octave above the highest required by the instrument and producing all the pitches by means of frequency division. One drawback of using only 12 or fewer oscillators is that all the pitches derived by frequency division from a single oscillator are in phase with one another, so that changes in registration (produced by introducing a different filter) may sound too ‘clean’; further, this system does nothing to counteract the regularity of the beats that occur between the notes of a chord, whereas on a pipe organ the different ranks of pipes have more complex phase relationships. For these reasons some instruments use more than one master oscillator; a different solution was contrived in early models of the Allen organ, which incorporated a ‘random motion effect generator’ to break up the perfect phasing resulting from frequency division.

(iv) Classification.

Monophonic electronic instruments controlled other than by keyboards include the space-controlled croix sonore, Electronde, elektronische Zaubergeige, Ethonium, Ondes martenot (earliest version), Saraga-Generator, Sfaerofon, Theremin, instruments of the theremin type built by G. Leithäuser (Berlin, 1932), Robert A. Moog, Ivor Darreg, Charles Mattox, Jorge Antunes, Herbert Jercher and many versions that were designed and marketed in the last three decades of the 20th century, and the Terpsitone of Lev Termen; the dial-operated Dynaphone, Ondium Péchadre and Sphärophon (original version); the fingerboard-operated Ėkvodin, Ėmiriton, fil chantant, Hellertion, Ondes martenot, Oscillion, Sonar, Termen’s fingerboard theremin, the Trautonium, probably the Violena, and a later version of the Shumofon, as well as some synthesizers and the Kaleidophon; the Vocoder speech synthesizer and the Sonovox voice-operated sound modification device; and an electronic percussion unit, the Side-man. Wind controllers for synthesizers include the Electronic Valve Instrument, Lyricon and Variophon, and are used in the Tromborad (1927) and the Electra Melodica (see Melodica), and with instruments made by Crumar and Yamaha.

Monophonic electronic keyboard instruments include some models of Casio’s early Casiotone, the Clavivox, Emicon, Mager’s Kaleidophon, Termen’s keyboard theremin, the Melochord, Melodium, Shumofon, Singing arc, Staccatone, Stylophone, Subharchord, Tubon, Voder and some Yamaha instruments, as well as later versions of the Dynaphone, Ėkvodin, Ėmiriton and Ondes martenot, many synthesizers (see below) and some synthesizer controllers, and instruments of the piano attachment type – the Clavioline, Hohner Electronium, Multimonica, Ondioline, Solovox, Thyratone and Univox.

Partially polyphonic electronic instruments include the keyboard-controlled Casiotone (most models, usually eight voices), Heliophon (two manuals, up to six voices), a later version of the Melochord (two manuals), the Partiturophon (four and five manuals, including pedals), the later versions of the Sphärophon (three and four manuals including pedals), the Warbo Formant-Orgel (one manual, four-voice polyphonic) and some ‘biphonic’ instruments from the former USSR; the fingerboard-operated elektronische Monochord (two fingerboards), Hellertion (later versions of which had two to six fingerboards) and Mixtur-Trautonium (two fingerboards); the dial-operated Wobble organ (four monophonic control units); the RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer (one or two monophonic units); and some syntheizers.

Fully polyphonic electronic organs include the Ahlborn organ, Allen organ, AWB organ, Baldwin organ, Basilika, Bradford Computing organ, Compton-Edwards organ, Conn organ, Coupleux-Givelet organ, Yamaha Electone, Elka organ, Gulbransen organ, recent models of the Hammond organ, Ionica, Johannus organ, KdF-Grosston-Orgel, Kinsman organ, Kristadin, Livingston-Burge organ, Lowrey organ, Miller organ, Minshall organ, Norwich organ, Novachord, Organo, Philicorda, Piano-mate, Polychord III, Riegg organ, Rodgers organ, Saville organ, Schober organ, Seeburg organ, Thomas organ, Tournier organ, Tuttivox, Vermona, Vierling organ, Vox (Continental and Jaguar organs), Wyvern organ, Yunost', and instruments made by Copeman Hart, Crumar (the Toccata organ), Estey, Farfisa (recent models), Kawai, Kimball, Korg, Lipp, Roland, Voce and Wurlitzer (recent models). See §IV, 3(iii); see also Electronic organ.

Other fully polyphonic instruments include the Audion piano, Béthenod’s ‘piano-harp’, Pianorad, Rhythmicon, Scalatron, electronic accordions such as Farfisa’s Cordovox and Transicord, and the Excelsior Digisyzer, types of string synthesizer, electronic pianos and several microtonal keyboard instruments (see Microtonal instruments, §4(ii)).

Synthesizers range from monophonic (heterophonic) to fully polyphonic instruments. Since a monophonic synthesizer can often produce far more complex sounds than a fully polyphonic electronic keyboard instrument of any other type, the classification into monophonic and partially and fully polyphonic is of less importance. Individual synthesizers, related composition machines and electronic percussion instruments include the following models and manufacturers: Akai, Alesis, AlphaSyntauri, ARP, Buchla, Casio, Cheetah, Chroma, Clavia Nord, Composertron, Con Brio, Crumar, Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer, Dimi, DMX-1000, Doepfer, ElectroComp, Electronic Music Box, Electronic Sackbut, Elka, EMS, E-mu, Emulator, Ensoniq, Fairlight CMI, 4X, GAME, General Development System, Gmebogosse, Hanert Electrical Orchestra, Kawai, the Kit, Korg, Kraakdoos, Kurzweil, LinnDrum, Minimoog, Moog, Oberheim, Odyssey, Omnichord, Oscar, PAIA, Peavey, PPG Wave Computer, Prophet, Putney (VCS-3), Qasar, Quasimidi, Roland, RSF Kobol, Sal-Mar Construction, Serge, Siel, Siemens Synthesizer, Simmons Electronic Drums, Soundchaser, Spacedrum, SSSP, Synare, Synclavier, Syndrum, Synergy, Synket, Synsonics drums, Waldorf, Wasp and Yamaha; see also Electronic percussion and Synthesizer.

Electronic instruments, §I: Terminology and techniques

5. Peripheral equipment.

The discussion of electric and electronic instruments in §§2–4 above has concentrated on the generation of electrical signals and the components of the instruments (keyboards, fingerboards, strings, tone-wheels etc.) used to trigger or control them. In almost all such instruments the electrical signal must be amplified (or increased) before it can be heard as sound over a loudspeaker.

(i) Signal-processing devices and amplifiers.

Many performers, especially in rock and other popular musics, increase the range of possibilities for modifying the signal produced by their instruments by using external devices. Signal-processing devices impose on the signal various types of filtering, distortion, echo (by means of a tape loop or digital delay), phasing, chorus effects, tremolo, reverberation and so on. Most are available in the form of small modular units (often built into pedals) which may be connected in a series according to taste. (The use and effects of such devices with electric guitars are discussed in Electric guitar, §2.)

Amplification is necessary when the electrical signal has insufficient energy itself to drive the moving parts of a loudspeaker; the Amplifier (based on valves, transistors, integrated circuits or microchips) takes electrical energy from an external source (mains or batteries) and uses the signal derived from the instrument to control the delivery of that power to the loudspeaker. The first electronic amplifiers were developed around 1925, but it was some time before they were widely used. During the 1930s a number of small electronic instruments were marketed that were designed to be connected to a domestic radio set and so did not need their own amplification system; detailed instructions for implementing this novel procedure were usually provided. Since World War II powerful, high-fidelity amplifiers (capable of reproducing the input with great precision and at great volume) have been developed; systems of this type, used by rock musicians for example, achieve an output of up to several thousand watts RMS. Amplifiers often incorporate some signal-processing elements, such as filter controls and reverberation; they may also be housed in a single unit (a ‘combination unit’) with loudspeakers.

(ii) Loudspeakers.

A Loudspeaker is a transducer that converts electrical energy into sound-waves and diffuses them (its function is thus the reverse of that of a Microphone or Pickup). The earliest use of a loudspeaker for a musical instrument was the metal wash-basin which acted as both diaphragm and sound projector for Elisha Gray’s electromagnetic ‘musical telegraph’ of 1874. Telephone earpieces, developed in the late 1870s, constituted the first effective loudspeakers and were used by several inventors of musical instruments, including Ernst Lorenz for his patented electrisches Musikinstrument (1884). Similar ‘personal’ loudspeakers were employed in the ‘stereophonic’ transmissions from the Paris Opéra made over landlines installed in 1881 by Clément Ader (called the ‘Théâtrophone’), and the land-line ‘broadcasting’ system initiated by Telefonhírmondó in Budapest in 1893; the (non-electric) listening tubes and horns that were introduced with commercial phonographs and graphophones in 1888 were of the same sort. In the early 1890s larger horns added to telephone receivers, as in Edison’s ‘loudspeaker telephone’, permitted limited public listening. In 1906 the conductor Henry Wood amplified orchestral double basses using Charles Parsons’ Auxetophone, powered by compressed air.

Thaddeus Cahill’s Telharmonium, used in landline transmissions from 1902, supplied a current of a far higher voltage than normal to telephone receivers, to which long cardboard horns were fixed (often concealed in floral decorations) to create greater volume; contemporaneous descriptions report that the sound was as loud and clear as that of an orchestra, but such statements must be accepted with caution in view of the many claims for the fidelity of early sound-generating and recording systems that would now be regarded as untenable. A chance discovery, in November 1906, that a carbon arc-lamp could also act as a loudspeaker (a principle introduced in Duddell’s ‘singing arc’ of 1899) was incorporated as a demonstration into the daily concert; electromagnetically excited piano soundboards were also briefly used.

An exact contemporary of the Telharmonium, the Choralcelo, made use of several unusual loudspeaker units containing bars and plates of wood, metal and glass, and also buggy springs, which were activated electromagnetically to create different timbres. Even more unusual objects were utilized during the 1920s by Jörg Mager, who by 1930 had patented at least ten different designs for loudspeakers made from, among other materials and objects, wood, baking tins, tissue paper, gongs, a silver plate, and (for the 32' bass) a membrane covering the end of a length of iron stovepipe. A much later system that uses different materials to filter signals in a similar way is the ‘instrumental loudspeaker’ invented by David Tudor for Bandoneon! in 1966 and incorporated in his Rainforest series of concert works and sound environments; several members of the group Composers Inside Electronics, founded by Tudor, devised further types of ‘instrumental loudspeaker’, which include a rotating version by Martin Kalve.

Although the electronic amplifier and appropriate loudspeakers were developed in the mid-1920s, the loudspeaker did not achieve its present form until the late 1930s and individual instruments continued to employ unusual methods of diffusion. The earliest theremin (1920) was played over a telephone earpiece with a horn attached. The Pianorad (1926) had a separate loudspeaker diaphragm for each note, all of them mounted on a single large horn (see fig.5 below). Different timbres were produced in the Radiotone (1930), the Rangertone organ (1931) and the Magneton (1933) by a combination of tone controls and several loudspeaker systems (possibly giving different frequency responses), any of which could be selected by operating a switch. Three types of unusual loudspeaker are available with the ondes martenot: in 1930 an ‘echo’ loudspeaker was used; around 1933 the diffuseur métallique was introduced, a brass gong-like plate treated as a diaphragm, and in 1947 the palme, a wooden leaf-shaped unit containing a transducer and carrying on each face 12 sympathetic strings tuned to a chromatic octave (this replaced the echo loudspeaker; for illustration see Ondes martenot); in 1972 a further unit containing stretched coil springs was developed.

The capabilities of loudspeakers for diffusing sound have been variously explored. Around 1949 Constant Martin devised an electronic carillon in which the loudspeakers were mounted inside bell-shaped horns that were swung like bells. Many systems have been devised for rotating some sort of diffuser in front of the transducer in a loudspeaker, as with the rotating paddles of fans in some larger reed organs (such as those made by Estey) dating from the mid-1860s: the Leslie has a curved reflector that can rotate at two speeds, and in some models the loudspeaker itself rotates to produce the same effect (other rotating loudspeakers continue to be marketed). Systems of this sort were used with many electronic organs such as the Allen, Dereux, Electrone, Orgatron and Thomas organs; with others two or more loudspeakers are often provided to counteract the directionality caused by hearing the sound from a single source, which is in marked contrast to the aural impression created by a pipe organ.

Multiple loudspeaker systems have been devised for the diffusion of taped electronic music, of which one of the most substantial was installed in Le Corbusier’s Philips pavilion in the 1958 Brussels World Fair (425 loudspeakers); since the early 1970s several systems have been assembled, such as François Bayle’s Acousmonium, the Gmebaphone and BEAST, in which the sound spectrum is distributed according to register over a group of as many as 50 loudspeakers. For live performance Lowell Cross devised the four-channel Stirrer system of sound distribution (1963–5) and Hans Peter Haller and Stockhausen invented systems that give three-dimensional diffusion – respectively the Halaphon (1971) and the Modul 69A, which was installed in the German pavilion in Osaka during Expo ’70. Multiple loudspeaker systems have also been used in live performances on the Sal-Mar Construction and GAME composition machines (respectively 24 and 100–200 loudspeakers).

Mention should here be made of the phenomenon of acoustic feedback, which can occur in any electronic amplification system. It is caused when a microphone or pickup is close enough to a loudspeaker to pick up vibrations from the latter’s diaphragm, which it then feeds through the system again; at a certain level (controllable with a potentiometer) an obtrusive screech known as ‘howl-round’ results, which, when carefully controlled, yields a range of clear pitches. This effect, normally carefully avoided, has been exploited in rock music (where its use was pioneered by Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend on electric guitar, and by the viola player John Cale in the group Velvet Underground), improvised music (especially by Derek Bailey, to prolong the sound of an electric guitar), and sound poetry (by Henri Chopin); it has also been specified by a number of composers, including John Cage and Alvin Lucier, and has been incorporated in solo percussion performances and sound environments by Max Neuhaus (see §IV, 6(ii) below).

Electronic instruments

II. Early applications of electricity (to 1895)

The use of electricity in the production of sound has naturally been closely linked with advances in electrical technology, primarily during the last two centuries. In a number of instances a particular instrument has been ‘ahead of its time’, before what we would now consider to have been an almost essential element had actually been invented. The first electronic instrument was already in use before the electronic valve was invented, and several existed before electronic amplification. Similarly the first two electrical instruments not only predated the public electricity supply and the storage battery but also the discovery of electromagnetism, being based on electrostatic principles.

1. To 1800.

The principle of static electricity was first discovered around 600 bce by Thales of Miletus, but systematic investigation of the phenomenon of electricity did not take place until the Renaissance. William Gilbert of Colchester initiated a scientific approach to the study of what he called ‘electrics’, which he described in De magnete (1600); the terms ‘electricity’ and ‘magnetism’ were both in use, though they were not linked, by the time Sir Thomas Browne wrote Pseudodoxia epidemica in 1646. Otto von Guericke in Magdeburg constructed the first friction machine for generating static electricity around 1663. The earliest form of capacitor, the Leyden jar, was developed in 1746 in Leyden by Pieter van Musschenbroek from the principle discovered in 1745 independently by his assistant A. Cunaeus and by Ewald J. von Kleist in Pomerania; this permitted the concentration of static electricity produced by von Guericke’s machine and its gradual or instantaneous discharge. This invention made possible the two earliest electric musical instruments, Diviš’s Denis d’or (c1730–62), in which electricity did not form an essential part, and the clavecin électrique invented by Jean-Baptiste de La Borde (1759), in which static electricity was used as part of the basic mechanism of the instrument. The latter was based on an apparently unnamed method used in early electrical laboratories to audibly warn an experimenter of the presence of an electrical charge; it was probably invented by Andreas [Andrew] Gordon in Erfurt in 1741 and was described or demonstrated to Benjamin Franklin in Boston in 1746. An eight-bell instrument based on this principle was developed in about 1747 by Ebenezer Kinnersley, an associate of Franklin in Philadelphia, and the device subsequently received substantial publicity when it was mentioned in Franklin’s publication of his experiments with atmospheric electricity. Nearly 80 years were to elapse before the next sounds were produced by electricity.

2. Experiments with electromagnetism.

Developments in the 19th century began with the invention by Alessandro Volta of the storage battery (voltaic pile, 1799); by the end of the century electrical telegraphy, disc and magnetic recording, the telephone, the first ‘computer’, electric lighting, the earliest AC power supplies and the principles of radio and film had all been developed. Each of these has affected the application of electricity to music. It was not unusual for inventors, particularly those concerned with sound communication, to divide their time between science and music; for example, Charles Wheatstone, a pioneer of electrical telegraphy, also invented the concertina and constructed a speaking machine, using free reeds in both.

Electromagnetism was the chief area of innovation in the 19th century, laying the foundations for electrical technology as we know it today. The discovery in 1820 by Hans Christian Oersted of the relationship between electricity (as it was then understood) and magnetism quickly led to electromagnetic research by Michael Faraday, Sir Humphrey Davy, André-Marie Ampère, François Arago and others. In 1825 William Sturgeon constructed the first electromagnet at Woolwich, and in 1830–31 Faraday in London and Joseph Henry in Albany, New York, produced the first electrical transformers and motors.

One of the next stages in the exploration of electromagnetism was the first electrical production of sound; in the late 1840s this initiated the monitoring of electrical communications, such as electrical telegraphy and Morse code, by means of sound, and the research that led to the development of the telephone. In 1837 Charles Grafton Page, working in Salem, Massachusetts, discovered the basic principle of the electric bell (not itself devised until 1850 by John Mirand) by linking a battery, coil and permanent magnet; audible clicks were produced when the battery was connected or disconnected. Page does not seem to have developed his ‘galvanic music’ much further. In 1838 Charles Delezenne of Lille constructed the first rotating tone-wheel, the toothed circumference of which produced a sustained oscillating electrical current. The following year Neef in Belgium caused a ‘hammer’ on the end of a flat spring to oscillate in an electromagnetic circuit, which also gave a sustained sound. Devices similar to the ‘Neef hammer’ include the better-known ‘Wagner hammer’ developed by Johann Philipp Wagner in Frankfurt in 1837, and one constructed in the same year by A. de la Rive in Geneva.

Further elaborations of these systems were devised by scientists in several countries. In 1856 Pétrina of Prague built an ‘electric harmonica’ for research purposes, based on four differently tuned Wagner hammers operated by keys. In the same year in Bonn Hermann von Helmholtz, experimenting with speech synthesis, introduced a tuning-fork into a circuit based on the Neef hammer; using eight such systems, tuned to the notes of the harmonic series, he could create vowel sounds. An improved model featured an oscillator circuit incorporating an additional tuning-fork to maintain sustained sounds.

3. The ‘musical telegraph’ and related instruments.

The technology of telegraphy and telephony was responsible for much of the next stage of progress. The first electrical ‘telephone’ was constructed by Philipp Reis in Friedrichsdorf, near Frankfurt, in 1860–61, but this was capable only of limited intelligibility since it did not transmit speech but only its outlines. The Reis telephone inspired a number of researchers during the 1860s, though it was not until 1875–6 that the first successful telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell. Keyboards were used in some telegraph systems in the 1860s and in 1871 a Musical Telegraph Company was founded in Rochester, New York. Bell’s chief rival, Elisha Gray, was one of several American inventors who used electromagnetically controlled tuned steel reeds in multiplexed telegraphy; in 1874 he transmitted and received over a single line messages in Morse code, each using a differently tuned pair of reeds. Gray’s first ‘musical telegraph’ used reeds for transmission to a single electromagnetic ‘loudspeaker’; in an improved model (1876; fig.3) the vibrations of steel reeds were both created and picked up, for transmission over a telephone line, by electromagnets. The same principle was used in Thomas Alva Edison’s quadruplex telegraph (two messages in each direction) and Bell’s ‘multiple harmonic telegraph’ (the immediate precursor of the telephone). Bell also proposed (though never constructed) a similar system, called an ‘electric harp’, for use in speech transmission. In 1882 Emile Berliner took out a patent for a tone-wheel for use in telephony and telegraphy. A fact that has rarely been emphasized is that Bell’s telephone (1876) and Edison’s ‘phonograph’ (1877) brought an end to an era in which all communications were digital (though not necessarily binary) – as in semaphore, Amerindian smoke signals, the pinned barrels and perforated cards on which the music for all types of mechanical instrument was stored, the electric telegraph and Morse code – and ushered in the analogue century from which a recent transition into a second digital (or possibly a hybrid) era has taken place.

Experiments were also being pursued in Britain and Europe. In 1878 Lord Rayleigh incorporated a ‘phonic wheel’ (also developed independently by La Cour) in a device for measuring the frequency of a tuning-fork, and in 1888 Ernest Mercadier in France introduced a photoelectric tone-wheel system for multiplex telegraphy. Robert Kirk Boyle of Liverpool developed and patented (1884) a system in which strings mounted on a frame and soundboard were activated by electromagnets; this was the first patent for a specifically musical application of electricity to produce sustained sounds. At the same time Ernst Lorenz of Frankfurt developed a similar system, the elektrisches Musikinstrument (1884, patented 1885). Partly derived from Neef’s work, it paralleled Gray’s use of electromagnets for the production and transmission of vibrations, though the reeds were struck by hammers (similar to the mechanism of some electric pianos); the instrument was also the first to use a telephone earpiece, attached to the soundboard, as a loudspeaker. From around 1885 Richard Eisenmann of Berlin used electromagnets to activate piano strings in his elektrophonisches Klavier (a similar system was patented in 1887 by the American Georg F. Diekmann). Paris Eugene Singer, working in London in 1891, activated piano strings (also free reeds and other vibrating objects) by means of feedback; a series of rotating toothed wheels (one per note), mounted on a single shaft to ensure a constant relationship between them, excited the strings by creating current oscillations at the same frequencies as those to which the strings were tuned, thus using electrical rather than mechanical vibrations in the feedback circuit. Related electromagnetic principles were later applied in the palsiphone électromagnétique (c1890) of Emile Guerre and Henri Martin, the Choralcelo (1908), the ‘electric harp’ Symphonia built into a piano by the Lyrachord Co. in New York (1912), the Pianor of Henri Maître and Henri Martin (Rouen, 1912), the Canto of Marcel Tournier and Gabriel Gaveau (France, c1927) and Simon Cooper’s Crea-Tone of 1930.

4. Electric action.

Another area of exploration during the 19th century concerned the use of electromagnets to simplify the action of pipe organs, pianos and other keyboard instruments. William Wilkinson, an organ builder in Kendal and a friend of Sturgeon’s, briefly experimented with electromagnets in 1826, but the technology had not by then reached a sufficient stage of development for such a system to be practical. From 1852 British patents for electromagnetic actions were granted to Henry John Gauntlett (1852), John Wesley Goundry (1863), Juan Amann (Bilbao, Spain, 1866), Echlin Molyneux (Co. Wicklow, Ireland, 1871), John Charles Ward (1876), Constantin Polienoff (Tagil, near Perm, 1889), Magnetic Piano Co. (New York, 1901), Shonnard Manufacturing and Trading Corp. (New York, 1902), William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson (1903) and Joseph Weber (Brooklyn, 1905). The proposals of Gauntlett (arising from his unrealized project for controlling several organs from a single console at the 1851 Great Exhibition) and Goundry were chiefly for organs. During the early 1850s similar experimental work was carried out in France by Count Théodore du Moncel and Froment; it was put into practice by Stein et Fils of Paris in an unsuccessful organ shown at the Paris Exposition of 1855.

The first successful organs with electric action were the result of the collaboration of Albert Peschard and Charles Spackman Barker, who together obtained a significant patent in France in 1868, based primarily on Peschard’s work in Caen from 1860. Barker built organs at Salon, Bouches-du-Rhône, in 1866 and at St Augustin in Paris in 1868. Also in 1868 he took out a British patent on his action, under licence from which Henry Bryceson built the first organ in Britain with electric action – at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The first American patent for electric action in organs was taken out in 1869 by Hilborne Lewis Roosevelt, who around 1871 also briefly collaborated with Barker in Dublin; he built a demonstration model in 1869 and a commercial instrument in 1876. Also in 1876 Schmoele Bros. of Philadelphia presented an electric action orchestrion, the Electromagnetic Orchestra, at the American Centennial Exposition. Experiments by Eberhard Friedrich Walcker between 1858 and the early 1860s were followed by the construction of the first German organs with electric action by Karl Weigle in 1870 and 1873; but these proved unsuccessful, and no further work was carried out there until the mid-1880s, at the time when electric action began to be adopted by many European and North American organ builders.

Electricity was used to operate player pianos from about 1850, and the basis for many later systems was developed by Matthäus Hipp of Neuchâtel in his ‘electromechanical piano’ of 1867. Electric action was also employed in Dieppe’s cristallophone électrique (1877), which consisted of keyboard-operated crystal bells, and in connection with special timbres on large church organs. Three octaves of eletropneumatically struck brass gongs were added to the ‘celestial organ’ of the Westminster Abbey organ in 1895 (Hill & Son), and similar four-octave sets of gongs were installed as part of the Echo organs at Norwich Cathedral (Norman & Beard, 1899) and Liverpool Cathedral (Willis). A five-octave set was added at St George’s Hall Concert Room in Liverpool (Willis), while in 1908 a set was included in a Hope-Jones organ at St Paul’s Cathedral, Buffalo, New York. Chimes, celesta, glockenspiel and other percussion effects became common, especially in American organs; in 1914 a set of carillon-like struck solid cylindrical chimes, playable either from the organ console or from a special keyboard, was installed at Westminster Abbey. Other examples of more unusual applications of electric action at this period include I.B. Schalkenbach’s Elektrisches Orchester (1893) in which instruments and sound effects were remotely controlled by a single performer from a two-manual console, an electromagnetically operated string quartet (each instrument ‘played’ by two bows) devised by Antonio Pagani in Milan between 1884 and 1898, and (from around 1850) ‘magical’ remote-controlled operation of percussion instruments by conjurors as well as a ‘clapping machine’ concealed behind the audience in Robert-Houdin’s own theatre in Paris. For a performance of his cantata L’impériale during the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1855, Berlioz commissioned a special version of an electric ‘metronome’ invented by Verbruggen, which he had seen in Brussels a few years earlier, to indicate his beat to five sub-conductors; this method was subsequently adopted in some opera houses for offstage choruses.

The subsequent widespread use of electricity to replace mechanical action is beyond the scope of this article (see Organ, §§II, 9 and 10, VI, 4; see also Instrument modifications and extended performing techniques, Sound sculpture, Vibraphone). Similar applications are, of course, found in many electric and electronic instruments.

Electronic instruments

III. 1895–1945

Several principles of great importance to the development of electric and electronic instruments were introduced during the 19th century: the tone-wheel and the use of a single shaft for several such wheels to give accurate tuning, the diffusion through a single ‘loudspeaker’ of differently pitched sounds, Eisenmann’s invention of a contact microphone, and the application of feedback. Experiments based on these and other aspects of electrical technology formed the basis for the development of the first electronic instrument that is still in use, the theremin.

1. To c1930.

2. c1930–39.

3. 1939–45.

Electronic instruments, §III: 1895–1945

1. To c1930.

(i) Early developments.

The first instruments of importance constructed during this period were probably among the largest musical instruments ever built. Between about 1895 and 1900 Thaddeus Cahill made the first model of his Telharmonium in Washington, DC; its sounds were generated by enormous electromagnetic tone-wheels mounted on a set of shafts driven by a single motor. Cahill also constructed special loudspeaker-receivers to which he fed currents of very high voltage to give a substantial level of sound. A second, improved model, built in Holyoke, Massachusetts, was moved to New York in 1906, where daily concerts were given and for a while ‘broadcast’ over landlines. Interference with the telephone network and a lack of subscribers caused the enterprise to fail. A third model of the instrument (1908–11) survived in working order until at least 1916. Its exact contemporary, the Choralcelo, more modest than the Telharmonium but still extremely large and complex, achieved limited commercial production and was still in use in the 1950s; research by Edith Borroff has uncovered two surviving instruments, at least one of which could be restored to working order.

The tone-wheel generator, containing as it does a purely mechanical element, may be seen as a halfway stage between amplified acoustic vibrations and the fully electronic oscillator. The latter was first employed in a musical instrument (in a rather limited form) by the radio pioneer William Du Bois Duddell, as a result of his investigating the high-pitched whistle produced by the electric arc-lamps used at that time for street lighting; Duddell exploited the whistle for musical ends in his ‘singing arc’ (1899), controlling it with a simple audio oscillator. In 1902 Pierre Janet in France developed the principle, expanding the range to eight and a half octaves. Duddell later applied it in radiotelephony and the Dane Valdemar Poulsen exploited it in the Poulsen arc (1903), which was important in the development of long-distance radio transmissions. The concept of modulating light by means of sound also had an influence on the development of the optical film soundtrack in the 1920s.

During the period between the outbreak of World War I and the end of the 1920s electronic instrument research was closely linked to the development of radio (see §(ii) below). The principles of the tone-wheel and amplified vibrations were largely neglected until around 1930 except for a six-octave, electromagnetic tone-wheel organ constructed by K. Ochs in 1909, Van der Bijl’s photoelectric organ (1916) and the work of Charles-Emile Hugoniot around 1920.

(ii) The influence of radio.

The rapid development of radio was made possible by a rush of technical inventions in the first few years of the 20th century. In London in 1904 John Ambrose Fleming introduced his diode thermionic ‘oscillation valve’, which was followed by the triode valve independently developed by Lee de Forest in New York and Robert von Lieben in Vienna in 1906; by 1913 such valves were sufficiently improved to be commercially useful. The first wireless transmission of speech and music, using amplitude modulation, was made from Brant Rock, Massachusetts, in 1906 by the Canadian Reginald Fessenden. De Forest made the first valve amplifier in 1907 and W. Burstyn produced an electronic oscillator in 1911; oscillators and amplifiers using regenerative feedback were made between 1912 and 1915 by de Forest and Edwin H. Armstrong in New York, Irving Langmuir in Schenectady, New York, Frank Ebenezer Miller in the USA, C.S. Franklin and H.J. Round in England and Alexander Meissner of Telefunken in Germany. Broadcasting for military purposes began around 1917 and the following year Dr Frank Conrad set up a private transmission system in Pittsburgh which led to the establishment there of the first permanent radio station (KDKA) in 1920.

The first electronic instrument to exploit the recently improved valve (or vacuum tube) was, appropriately, de Forest’s own Audion piano, a simple keyboard instrument that may not have been completed; de Forest’s related patent of 1915 is of greater interest than the instrument itself, since it proposes the use of a beat-frequency oscillator and the phenomenon of hand capacitance. Radio experimenters had discovered that the frequency of the note produced by a badly adjusted radio receiver during the demodulation process could be altered by passing a hand close to the electromagnetic field inside the receiver (it was also possible to create such a note in a properly adjusted set); even slight changes in the body capacitance were found to be sufficient to create audible variations in the note. This effect was quickly applied to musical instruments, especially by inventors working in France: Armand Givelet, an engineer at the radio laboratory at the Eiffel Tower, the cellist and radio telegraphist Maurice Martenot, and the Russian émigré composer Nicolas Obouhow all experimented with it from around 1917, though it was several years before satisfactory results were achieved. One problem was that when playing a keyboard the performer could not prevent unwanted changes in pitch caused by the movement of his hands in relation to parts of the circuitry (even screening could not entirely eliminate this effect); another was the lack of a proper loudspeaker system until around 1925 when electronic amplification was introduced.

(iii) The theremin.

These difficulties did not, however, deter the Russian radio engineer and cellist Lev Termen, who unveiled his Aetherphon (later renamed ‘theremin’) in 1920. This was based on his capacitative alarm and measurement systems in which a changing whistle was an essential feature; far from attempting to minimize the effect of body capacitance, Termen made the most of it by extending an antenna outside the instrument’s container for the performer to orientate hand and arm movements visually as well as by ear. The theremin proved enormously successful and Termen demonstrated it widely in the USSR and Europe. His European travels took him to Berlin in 1923 and to Germany, Britain and France in 1927. It appears that in 1923 he met Martenot and Djunkowski (who later gave performances in Berlin on an instrument of the theremin type). It also seems probable that the Danish bandleader Jens Warny heard about Termen’s visit to Berlin or was even there at the time, since in the same year he became the first to produce a version of the theremin, called the ‘sfaerofon’. For Martenot, contact with Termen and his instrument would have suggested principles of design that he could exploit. The first model of the ondes martenot (1928) bore little resemblance outwardly to the later version (see §(iv) below): it consisted of two units on small tables, which were controlled by a standing performer who manipulated a string attached to a finger-ring. This method of performance, which is gesturally very close to that of the theremin, was retained as a spectacular alternative to the fingerboard version of the instrument until 1930.

By 1929 three other more or less direct copies of the theremin had been constructed – Obouhow’s croix sonore, the elektronische Zaubergeige and the Electronde; in the early 1930s further versions followed, including the Ethonium and one designed for home use by G. Leithäuser. At least one theremin player, Konstantin I. Koval'sky, was active in the Soviet Union during Termen’s ten years in the USA (1927–38), when Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sokolov composed four solo pieces for the instrument (1929). The theremin was included in a storm scene in Shostakovich’s film score for Odna (‘Alone’, 1930–31) and in Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov’s film music for Komosol: the Patron of Electrification (1932). The principle of the space-controlled theremin has continued to be used.

(iv) Fingerboard- and dial-operated instruments.

In 1922 Termen tried out a fingerboard controller for his theremin (as was only natural for a cellist), though it was not until 1930 in the USA that he finally demonstrated his ‘electric cello’. Other Russians were probably inspired both by this experiment and by Termen’s avoidance of any form of keyboard. Virtually unknown in the West, following an early demonstration of the theremin in 1921, a major supporter of the development of electronic instruments in the Soviet Union was the acoustician Nikolay Aleksandrovich Garbuzov. He directed the State Institute for Music Research (GIMN) in Moscow from 1921 to 1931; in 1931 he worked briefly at the Institute for Scientific Research for Radio and Television (NIIRT), where he collaborated with Saul Grigor'yevich Korsunsky on ‘adapter’ pickups for bowed string instruments, and then from 1932 to his death in 1955 he was the first director of the Laboratory for Musical Acoustics, Institute for Scientific Musical Research at the Moscow Conservatory (NIMI). In 1936 the All-Union Radio Committee commissioned NIMI to undertake research in the field of ‘electromusic’, resulting in the setting up of the Radio Studio for Broadcasting Electromusical Instruments. Electronic instruments from GIMN included the Violena (1927) of V.A. Gurov and V.I. Volïnkin and Andrey Aleksandrovich Volodin’s Ėkvodin (with Koval'sky; early 1930s).

In Leningrad similar researches into both electronic instruments and quartertone music, with a group formed in 1925 by Georgy Mikhaylovich Rimsky-Korsakov, were carried out from 1919 at the Institute for the History of the Arts, directed by the composer and musicologist Boris Vladimirovich Asaf'yev. It appears that Nikolay Stepanovich Anan'yev’s Sonar (c1926) was invented elsewhere, while the Ėmiriton (Andrey Vladimirovich Rimsky-Korsakov and Aleksandr Antipovich Ivanov, with V.P. Dzerzhkovich and V.L. Kreytser; 1932–5, 1944) was developed at the Research Institute of the Musical Instrument Industry and the Research Institute for Theatre and Music. All of these, with the possible exception of the Violena, were fingerboard instruments, though in some cases the fingerboard was later replaced by a conventional keyboard.

In Paris a succession of electronic instruments (including the theremin) were demonstrated between 1927 and 1930, and for a time the city became the principal European centre for developments and innovations in this field. Many of the instruments devised and presented in the late 1920s had keyboards (see §(v) below), but it was the cheaper and simpler monophonic instruments without keyboards that attracted the most attention: the dial-operated Dynaphone (c1927) of René Bertrand, the similar but less significant Ondium Péchadre (1930), the improved version of the croix sonore (1934), and in particular the ondes martenot (1928), the mechanism of which was originally controlled by means of a pull-string, but was soon adapted to a fingerboard. The Dynaphone was demonstrated as far afield as Barcelona, Prague and Budapest, and works involving three and six of the instruments were composed for two early demonstrations in Paris. Thereafter it rapidly dropped out of the public eye, while Martenot’s instrument went from strength to strength.

Another pioneer who used beat-frequency oscillators was Jörg Mager, who constructed several electronic instruments between 1921 and the early 1930s (all of them disappeared or were destroyed in World War II). Mager’s interest in microtonal music had led him to study electronics and radio, and his first instrument, the monophonic Elektrophon (subsequently improved as the Sphärophon; fig.4), was based on the radio ‘howl’ or ‘squeal’; it was operated by a handle in front of a calibrated dial, replaced in 1928 by a keyboard.

(v) Keyboard instruments.

Concurrently with the development of instruments controlled by body capacitance and from fingerboards and dials, more conventional keyboard instruments were built using the new electronic technology. In France Charles-Emile Hugoniot, who had carefully studied Cahill’s French patents, took out a series of patents of his own between 1919 and 1922 for a wide range of sound-generating systems; these and his photoelectric organ of 1921 had some influence, for example on the electromagnetic tone-wheel system used by the radio engineer Joseph Bethénod in his piano électrique (1928), and Pierre Toulon’s photoelectric Cellulophone (c1927). Gabriel Boreau’s novel Radiotone (1930) was a hurdy-gurdy-like monophonic keyboard in which a mechanically bowed string was electroacoustically amplified. In three successive years Armand Givelet and Edouard Coupleux presented a monophonic ‘radioelectric piano’; the first substantial electronic organ, the Coupleux-Givelet organ, which had one oscillator for each note and met with some success as an instrument for use in churches; and the first ‘synthesizer’, controlled by punched paper tape. A monophonic keyboard instrument built by Quinet at the same period attracted little attention.

In the USSR the only such instrument to be made appears to have been Sergey Nikolayevich Rzhevkin’s ‘electronic harmonium’ (1924) which was designed at GIMN for acoustical research and could only sound up to four notes simultaneously.

The South African Hendrik Johannes Van der Bijl, working at Western Electric in New York, produced his pioneering photoelectric organ in 1916; it generated sounds by means of flashes of light reflected off white marks on black paper tape on to a photoelectric cell. In New York Hugo Gernsback employed audio-frequency oscillators in his Staccatone of 1923 and the Pianorad of 1926 (fig.5). An exhibition of simple electronic ‘organs’ was held at King’s College, London, in 1923.

In Germany Mager’s researches led him to replace the dial control of the Kurbelsphärophon by three monophonic keyboards (including a pedal-board) in the Klaviatursphärophon (1928); he then expanded this into his Partiturophon which had four (1930) and later (1931) five monophonic keyboards, including a pedal-board. In 1927 he also produced the less well-documented but more unusual monophonic Kaleidophon. At the short-lived peak of his career he was given the use of a small castle in Darmstadt, to which he moved in 1929 and where he founded the Studiengesellschaft für Elektro-akustische Musik.

Electronic instruments, §III: 1895–1945

2. c1930–39.

(i) Germany.

(ii) Other developments in Europe and the USSR.

(iii) USA.

(iv) Manufacturing.

(v) Dissemination and applications.

Electronic instruments, §III, 2: 1895–1945: c1930–39

(i) Germany.

Beginning shortly before 1930, it was in Germany, and particularly Berlin, that the type of intensive activity previously seen in France continued. Around 1928 two important centres were established, the Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung at the Technische Hochschule and the Rundfunkversuchsstelle at the Staatliche Akademische Hochschule für Musik. The Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, under its director Karl W. Wagner, was wholly or partly responsible for about half of the electronic instruments built in Germany up to the mid-1930s (Wagner himself constructed a machine for synthesizing vowel sounds which influenced the development in the USA of the Vocoder and Voder soon afterwards). An important figure in German developments was Oskar Vierling, who began his studies at the institute in 1928. Having assisted Mager with the Klaviatursphärophon, Vierling later worked in all three areas of sound generation; he designed the electroacoustic Elektrochord and an electric violin and cello, contributed to the construction of the Neo-Bechstein-Flügel, collaborated with the American Winston E. Kock on an oscillator-based organ, and later produced such an organ of his own, the KdF-Grosston-Orgel. Besides Vierling’s work, the original version of the Saraga-Generator and G. Leithäuser’s theremin were also constructed at the institute. Harald Bode was another designer who studied there, though his first electronic instrument, the Warbo Formant-Orgel (1937) was built in Hamburg; this was followed in 1938 by the Melodium, constructed in Berlin with Vierling’s assistance.

The Rundfunkversuchsstelle was less concerned with the development of new instruments: Hindemith and Toch, for example, each composed two works of Grammophonmusik (Toch’s are lost, Hindemith’s were recently rediscovered), a precursor of musique concrète, at the department in 1929–30. One important instrument, the trautonium (1930), was produced there; one of its features was that it had an audio oscillator ‘at pitch’ rather than a beat-frequency oscillator. Its inventor, Friedrich Trautwein, devised its monophonic fingerboard in ignorance of that in the Hellertion, constructed the previous year by two non-Berliners, Bruno Helberger and Peter Lertes. Both instruments were improved and expanded throughout the 1930s. Oskar Sala, who as a student had been one of the first to perform on the trautonium, made two versions of it with two fingerboards, and in 1949–52 derived an instrument of his own, the Mixtur-Trautonium, from Trautwein’s invention. The Hellertion was extended to give four monophonic voices, and Helberger continued to refine his original concept, calling the new version the Heliophon; this in turn occupied him for some time and he built a new model of it as late as 1947.

Other instruments invented in Germany during this fertile period include Hiller’s electroacoustic Radioklavier, demonstrated in Hamburg in 1931, amplified harpsichords such as the Thienhaus-Cembalo, and the photoelectric Lichtton-Orgel, developed in Freiburg by Edwin Welte and constructed by the organ builders Th. Mannborg in Leipzig.

Electronic instruments, §III, 2: 1895–1945: c1930–39

(ii) Other developments in Europe and the USSR.

Although the focus of attention shifted to Berlin during the 1930s, more or less isolated experiments continued elsewhere. In Austria three tone-wheel instruments, the Thiring piano, its successor the Superpiano and the Magneton, were produced, as well as an electric piano, the Variachord. In France, less the centre of developments than before, there were the electroacoustic orgue radiosynthétique, the Mutatone of Constant Martin, Béthenod’s oscillator-based ‘piano-harp’, and the polyphonic Tournier organ, which used beat-frequency oscillators. In Britain Leslie Bourn and A.H. Midgley worked on electrostatic tone-wheel systems for electronic organs, which resulted in the manufacture of the Electrone and the Midgley-Walker organ (the photoelectric Winch organ was not completed); the Selmer company in London marketed the Pianotron, an electric piano based on plucked reeds.

The pioneering work of Termen in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s was matched in the next decade by significant developments in a different direction. The introduction of sound film in the USSR in 1929 led to experiments by Arseny Mikhaylovich Avraamov and Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Sholpo (at first together and later independently) in techniques of Drawn sound. Sholpo went on to develop four models of a photoelectric composition machine, the Variafon, beginning in 1932. Research in these and other areas of electronic and microtonal music was fostered by the general desire for modernization and in particular by the programme of electrification for the whole country set in train by Lenin soon after the Revolution. At NIMI Igor' Simonov devised the NIMI, a monophonic keyboard instrument (c1932), Gurov and Volïnkin the Neoviolena (c1936) and Simonov and A.Ya. Magnushevsky the Kompanola (1938, 1948). Simonov later constructed an electronic harmonium (late 1940s) and the sound-effects Shumofon (c1955).

Electronic instruments, §III, 2: 1895–1945: c1930–39

(iii) USA.

The 1930s were a period of great expansion and experiment in the area of electric and electronic instruments in the United States. Around 1930 the Russian émigré Ivan Eremeeff founded the Society of Electronic Music, and starting in 1932 demonstrated a series of electromagnetic and photoelectric tone-wheel and related instruments, including the Gnome, the Syntronic organ and the Photona. Other American tone-wheel instruments from the early and middle 1930s included the Hardy-Goldthwaite organ, Termen’s Rhythmicon, the Rangertone organ, Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones, Polytone and the Hammond organ, and the similar electromechanical ‘Singing Keyboard’; in Canada Morse Robb developed the Wave organ from 1926.

The second important area of American exploration in the early 1930s was that of electroacoustic instruments. Lloyd Loar, Eremeeff and others experimented with bowed strings (see Table 1 above), and the electric guitar, to whose development Loar had also contributed, began to come into its own. The piano was first electrified in the mid-1920s: in 1926, for example, a shop in Atlantic City displayed a Chickering Ampico player piano in the window, the sounds of which were amplified and transmitted to listeners in the street using an air microphone; various contact microphones were designed specially for use with the piano, including the Radiano (1926). From 1931 Benjamin F. Miessner exercised considerable influence on the further development of a viable electric piano through his Electronic Piano. Other electric keyboard instruments included Loar’s Clavier and two products from the Everett Piano Co., the Pianotron and the Orgatron.

Instruments from this period based on oscillators included several applications by Termen (who lived in New York from 1927 until 1938) of his theremin principle; in 1934 he designed and constructed two theremins with extended frequency range for Varèse’s Ecuatorial. Other inventors produced the monophonic Emicon (designed in Hungary but manufactured in the USA) and fingerboard Oscillion, and the Voice-Chord Organ.

Electronic instruments, §III, 2: 1895–1945: c1930–39

(iv) Manufacturing.

Up to the middle of the 1930s only a few electric and electronic instruments were made commercially. Starting around 1910 at least six examples of the Choralcelo were constructed. In 1929 manufacture of both the ondes martenot and the theremin began – until the 1950s the ondes martenot was built entirely by hand and therefore in small numbers, and up to 500 theremins were sold by its makers, RCA. A small number of similar instruments were produced by the Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, and (based on the Electronde) in Britain. Of the 100 trautoniums made, all but the dozen (or 50 according to one source) that were sold or given away are said to have been destroyed. The Emicon was also manufactured, but it is not known in what numbers. The various models of electric piano seem to have had no greater commercial success: ‘limited quantities’ (possibly 100) of the Neo-Bechstein-Flügel were produced and unknown numbers of the Elektrochord, the British and American Pianotrons, Miessner’s Electronic Piano and its derivatives the Electone, Dynatone, Minipiano, Bernhardt Electronic Piano and Storytone. The first electric bowed or plucked string instrument to achieve high sales was the solid-bodied electric guitar, which was not marketed until the end of the 1940s. World War II adversely affected all such manufacturing enterprises.

Paradoxically it was the largest, most complex and most expensive instrument, the electronic organ, that was the first to succeed; this was partly because it was often cheaper for a church to install an electronic organ than to repair or replace a pipe organ, and also because small churches could afford an electric instrument to replace a reed organ or piano when a pipe organ was beyond their means. The first electric organ to be marketed on a large scale was the reed-based Orgatron (1934); it was followed in 1935 and rapidly eclipsed by Laurens Hammond’s mass-produced tone-wheel Hammond organ, sales of which had reached 50 a month by the end of that year and a total of 5000 after three years (of which some 1750 were bought by churches). In Canada Robb’s Wave organ, by contrast, was unsuccessful, only about 20 being produced. The British Electrone was developed only cautiously: Compton began by adding solo Electrone sections to cinema and theatre organs, launching the first complete instrument in 1938, only to be interrupted a year later by the start of World War II; some 80 were in existence in early 1940.

In 1939–40 Hammond began to manufacture oscillator-based instruments, starting with the first piano attachment – the monophonic Solovox – and the organ-like Novachord (perhaps the first electronic instrument to apply the principle of 12 oscillators with frequency division). Manufacture of the Allen organ began, initially on a modest scale, in 1939.

Electronic instruments, §III, 2: 1895–1945: c1930–39

(v) Dissemination and applications.

The progress of electric and electronic instruments towards general acceptance in the 1930s can be traced in the records of concerts and demonstrations involving ensembles of such instruments; they were often used in arrangements of familiar popular and light classical works, though quite a number of compositions were written specially for them. The demonstrations of the Dynaphone in Paris in 1928 included Honegger’s ballet music Roses de métal for three Dynaphones and piano. Later in the same year New York heard the first of three major presentations of the theremin: on that occasion four theremins were played with orchestra; in the Carnegie Hall in 1930, 14 theremins and a fingerboard theremin were accompanied by piano and harp; and in the same hall in 1932, 16 theremins (including both fingerboard and keyboard versions) were presented as the Theremin Electrical Symphony, as well as Termen’s Rhythmicon, Terpsitone and ‘keyboard electronic timpani’. In 1930 the conductor Stokowski added a fingerboard theremin (or ‘electric cello’) to the Philadelphia Orchestra to reinforce the double basses at the lower octave, later replacing it first with a specially built model and then with an ondes martenot. Stokowski’s interest in all new applications of electricity to music, including early stereophonic recording, continued throughout his life. In the early 1930s he worked closely with Ivan Eremeeff at the Philadelphia radio station WCAU, but their project for an electronic orchestra of around 35 performers (all or most playing Eremeeff’s Syntronic organ) seems to have fallen through because of Stokowski’s disagreements with the orchestra’s management. Another similar project of his was for a combined acoustical and electronic orchestra (150 acoustic and 24 electronic instruments) for San Francisco’s 1939 Golden Gate exhibition. In 1957, by which time he was conductor of the Houston SO, he returned to the idea of reinforcing the double basses, using a 32' ‘electronic tone generator’ specially built by the Allen Organ Co.

Also in the USA, in 1935–7, Percy Grainger wrote his Free Music no.1 for four theremins and no.2 for six (neither work seems to have been performed). Ives added an optional theremin part to his Fourth Symphony, probably around 1930, and Copland used the instrument in his opera The Second Hurricane (1936); Ives also helped to finance the construction of Termen’s Rhythmicon. Over 75 concert works have featured the theremin; one-third of this total consists of American works written up to 1950 (composiitions written since 1984 for and by Lydia Kavina, Termen’s great-niece, comprise another third). In 1938 Johanna Beyer wrote Music of the Spheres for three unspecified monophonic electronic instruments. In the following year at the New York World’s Fair, Ferde Grofé conducted the Novachord Orchestra (four Novachords and one Hammond organ) in some 40 numbers arranged by him. Also in 1939 the Novachord was included in Tom Adrian Cracraft’s All Electronic Orchestra, together with instruments constructed by Miessner (or based on his patents) – the Krakauer Electone, four electric violins, electric cello, electric double bass, electric guitar, electric bass guitar and ‘chromatic electronic timpani’; the conductor was provided with a small mixing console for balancing the individual loudness levels, and a pedal for controlling the volume of the whole ensemble. A surprising early advocate of the electronic organ was Kurt Weill. He included the Hammond organ and (from 1939) the Novachord (sometimes as solo instruments) in several of his later works, beginning with the 1935 London première of A Kingdom for a Cow and his first American musical Johnny Johnson (1936). Both the Hammond organ and Novachord featured in Railroads on Parade (1938–9) composed for the New York World’s Fair, and the Novachord was used in incidental music for two comedies in 1939 and 1940. An unidentified electric piano was also included in his music for Fritz Lang’s film You and Me (1937–8). Other composers included the Novachord in film music, up to the late 1960s.

In Germany, the centre of activity and exploration during the early 1930s, Hindemith composed a seven-movement trio for trautonium, Des kleinen Elektromusikers Lieblinge, to be performed at the instrument’s launch in 1930, a concerto for trautonium and strings the following year and a four-voice solo, Langsames Stück und Rondo, in 1935; the total repertory for the trautonium and the later Mixtur-Trautonium amounts to approximately 30 concert works (some of which are light music) and a handful of ballets and operas. In 1931 an electrical-music conference was held in Munich, in which Mager, Helberger, Trautwein, Vierling and others participated. At the eighth Funkausstellung in Berlin in 1932 an Elektrisches Orchester was presented, consisting of two theremin-like instruments (at least one by Leithäuser), a trautonium, Hellertion, Neo-Bechstein-Flügel, Elektrochord, Saraga-Generator and Vierling’s Elektro-Geige and Elektro-Cello; a similar ensemble, photographed at the Funkausstellung a year or two later, omitted the second theremin and the Saraga-Generator, and included some new players. The Croatian composer Josip Slavenski wrote his Musik für vier Trautonien und Pauken in 1937, and included electronic instruments in his unfinished Heliophonia. With the rise of Nazism in 1933 official support was mostly restricted to instruments such as the KdF-Grosston-Orgel that could be used effectively at large-scale public events.

In France in 1933 Ravel gave permission for the first movement of his String Quartet to be played by four ondes martenots; four of the instruments were also included in Joseph Canteloube’s opera Vercingétorix (1933) and Honegger’s cantata Les mille et une nuits (1936–7), one of many works commissioned for the 1937 Paris Exposition, which also included Messiaen’s Fête des belles eaux (for six ondes) and Daniel Lesur’s Interludes (for four ondes or horns). The ondes martenot is the electronic instrument for which by far the largest repertory has been composed, including music for the concert hall (nearly 1000 works), films, ballets, the theatre and the music hall; by 1950 Honegger, Milhaud, Jolivet, Koechlin and Messiaen had each incorporated it in several works (including solo pieces with and without piano, a concerto by Jolivet and Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie). Around 1934 a ‘string orchestra’, consisting only of electric violins but covering the full string range, was presented in Paris.

In 1938 Canon Francis Galpin, at the age of 80, gave a lecture to the Musical Association in London entitled ‘The Music of Electricity’, which featured demonstrations on the Neo-Bechstein-Flügel, Electronde, trautonium and Hammond organ. An Electronic Instrument Inventors Symposium was held in Moscow in 1940 which included the theremin, Violena and Ėmiriton and probably the Ėkvodin; and in 1944 several Ėmiritons were played at the Moscow Conservatory.

Another area in which electric and electronic instruments found an application was the provision of radio identification signals and signature tunes. As early as 1924 Dr Endre Magyari invented a mechanically controlled oscillator circuit to give the signal on Radio Budapest; a second model, from 1925, is now in the Postal Museum, Budapest. In New York in the late 1920s Hugo Gernsback devised an ‘electromagnetic glockenspiel’ for the same purpose, and a decade later the Elektrochord was used at the Reichssender in Berlin.

Electronic instruments, §III: 1895–1945

3. 1939–45.

Activities in the 1930s were apparently not too greatly affected by the American Depression in the early part of the decade or the coming to power of the Nazi party in Germany towards the middle of it. But most European work came to a stop with the beginning of the war in 1939, and American developments continued unabated only until the United States entered the conflict in December 1941. However, even in European cities directly affected by the hostilities work continued on a few instruments: in occupied Paris Georges Jenny began to manufacture his Ondioline in 1941, and in 1943 Constant Martin completed a decade’s development of an electronic organ; during the siege of Leningrad (1941–4) Sholpo made improvements to the second model of his Variafon.

The great hiatus that occurred in the work of most composers, musical instrument inventors and manufacturers meant that some instruments were abandoned, destroyed or lost without trace, and others were discontinued. On the other hand certain aspects of electrical technology, in particular magnetic tape recording equipment, advanced more rapidly than would have been the case in peacetime, and prepared the way for major inventions such as the computer, the transistor (1947–8) and the long-playing microgroove gramophone record (1948). The interruption caused by the war, and the accelerated technological growth that it fostered, produced two distinct chronological cycles of development in the application of electronics to music – the first concerned principally with instruments and the second with electronic music as it evolved in specialist studios. In many cases practitioners of electronic music after the war were largely cut off from the inventors of instruments who had been active before 1939, and were ignorant of work carried out only a decade or two earlier.

From the late 1940s electronic music on tape became the main focus of interest to composers; until the arrival of the synthesizer in the mid-1960s only a few electronic instruments were in use, in studios, radio stations and universities: the ondes martenot at RAI Milan and Radio-Genève, the elektronische Monochord and the Melochord at Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, the theremin at the University of Illinois at Urbana, the Elektrochord at the Technical University in Berlin, and the Mixtur-Trautonium in Oskar Sala’s private studio.

Electronic instruments

IV. After 1945

1. General trends.

2. Commercial considerations.

3. The electronic organ.

4. Other instruments.

5. The synthesizer.

6. Newly invented instruments and sound systems.

7. Prospects.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Electronic instruments, §IV: After 1945

1. General trends.

The evolution of electronic instruments since 1945 is in some respects simpler and in others more complex than in the previous 20 years. On the one hand instruments are more easily classifiable, falling mainly into the following groups: electronic and electric organs and pianos, analogue and digital synthesizers, string synthesizers, piano attachments and electronic percussion. On the other, the electronic technology involved has progressed at an ever-increasing speed, bringing with it large-scale mass-production of electronic instruments for the first time, and a continuous stream of new products and new models of established products; this development in the area of musical instruments is, of course, only one manifestation of the electronic revolution that has affected the lifestyle of everyone in the West.

By and large the centres of activity in electronic instruments have changed in the post-war years. The USA recovered more rapidly than Europe from the effects of the war, and quickly established a lead that remained unchallenged until the early 1970s, when Japanese companies rose meteorically to prominence owing to their ability to develop existing ideas and technology to a stage where mass-production techniques could be applied. In western Europe designers have concentrated mainly on smaller and cheaper electronic instruments, such as those introduced by Hohner in West Germany during the 1950s and early 1960s, and by the large number of organ, string synthesizer and synthesizer companies founded in Italy since the 1960s (around 1980 some 200 were operating in the Ancona area). Little of the exploratory spirit shown by early Soviet researchers survived the Stalinist era, and Britain and France have produced comparatively few electronic instruments that have been exported on a substantial scale. Isolated developments of considerable significance have taken place in some countries, including Australia, the Netherlands and Sweden, that were not previously prominent.

The post-war period is characterized largely by two types of instrument, the electronic organ and the synthesizer, which are discussed below (see §§3 and 5). In the last few years each has taken over features from the other, and they have spawned a variety of hybrids such as the so-called string synthesizer, which often incorporated electronic organ, piano and brass sections.

Electronic instruments, §IV: After 1945

2. Commercial considerations.

The manufacture of electronic instruments, in its infancy before the war, has expanded enormously since 1945. The development and production of such instruments has been carried out largely by companies founded specifically for the purpose; some have directed their products at existing markets, whether popular or highly specialized, while others have created a completely new demand which their instruments are intended to meet. Many types of operation have been established, from those occupying vast factory complexes where instruments are mass-produced in their thousands, to small businesses run by one or two skilled designers and builders who make single instruments to order. There have been successes and failures at all levels. Many promising small-scale ventures have collapsed or have needed to be reorganized because those who originally invented the instruments and then set up companies to manufacture them lacked business acumen or the desire to compete with mass-production techniques.

This phenomenon can be illustrated by the development and ultimate fate of several manufacturers of synthesizers from the early 1970s onwards. Paolo Ketoff, one of the pioneers of the synthesizer in the mid-1960s, produced several Synkets, but his one-man operation came to an end in the mid-1970s due to personal injury and an inability to compete with (comparatively) larger companies. ARP Instruments built up a two-fifths share of the American synthesizer market in 1980, but was bankrupt within a year through mismanagement. The Moog company ceased in 1985 and recent attempts to revive it appear have been unsuccessful, while EMS continues, but on a very different basis: after 1977 Robert A. Moog had no connection with the company that he set up, and none of the original directors or designers remains at EMS; Moog is the only figure from the original personnel of either company who is still active in the design and manufacture of similar instruments (though not under his own name). Finally Buchla, which has remained a small-scale company run by its founder and designer Donald Buchla, was associated with CBS for two years around 1970; thereafter the company could not for some time use Buchla’s name for its newer designs.

Many inventors of successful electronic instruments, whose first product was a marketing success, have found it difficult to keep up with rapid developments in electronic technology and often with the competition that their own instrument has created. Not all these electronic wizards have been good businessmen or even good judges of those to whom they could entrust the running of their businesses. Some of the longest-surviving companies, such as Wurlitzer and Yamaha, were already successful in other areas of electronics or musical instruments. Only a few manufacturers have had the good fortune to find a single product that so successfully meets a particular need that they can concentrate exclusively on it, and effectively stifle all competition (the ondes martenot and the Mellotron are examples).

Electronic instruments, §IV: After 1945

3. The electronic organ.

(i) Church organs.

(ii) Hybrid organs.

(iii) Concert, home and entertainment organs.

Electronic instruments, §IV, 3: After 1945: The electronic organ

(i) Church organs.

In many ways the most contentious of all electric and electronic instruments has been the electronic organ. Unlike most other electronic instruments, which have established new areas of application and musical style, the electronic church organ directly rivals the pipe organ and to succeed must emulate the pipe organ’s particular characteristics. Some of those built before 1940 probably would not sound much like organs to modern ears, though contemporary claims for their fidelity to pipe organ sound were high. (The propriety of using the term ‘organ’ for these instruments and the legal battles fought by companies who wished to do so are discussed in §I, 1, above.) The controversy began with the appearance in 1935 of the Hammond organ, the first real threat to the pipe organ. Although the Hammond company did not design their electric organ specifically for church use, many smaller churches bought one, perhaps influenced by the exaggerated claims in early publicity or by the recommendations of esteemed musicians such as Koussevitzky, Stokowski and Toscanini.

The technical considerations involved in creating an acceptable imitation of a pipe organ from an electric or electronic instrument are principally the directionality and the quality of the sound. The source of the sounds coming from a pipe organ differs from that in most other acoustic instruments in being often diffuse and far removed from the player; a medium-sized electronic organ in a church can sound sufficiently authentic with two or three carefully positioned loudspeaker installations (which can even be moved to create different effects). Directionality is more problematic the higher the pitch – the source of a sound being increasingly difficult to detect in the lower ranges. The designers of some organs have taken particular care to deal with this factor: in the Dereux organ, for example, revolving paddles placed in front of a loudspeaker create an effect of diffusion only for the higher notes.

The greatest challenge lies in the electronic mimicking of the special qualities of the pipes themselves, individually and in combination. First steps were made in this direction with the photoelectric tone-wheels of the Lichtton-Orgel and the electrostatic ones of the Compton Electrone, which were based on the waveforms produced by the pipes of existing organs. In recent years circuitry of increasing sophistication has permitted more precise emulation of the characteristics of pipes: micro-second delays can be introduced for lower notes (larger pipes take slightly longer to ‘speak’), and the momentary wind noise that precedes notes when certain stops are used can also be imitated, as in the frequently synthesized ‘chiff’ attack heard in flute stops (resulting from the starting transient of a flue pipe). The principal musical drawback of the electronic organ is that frequencies generated electronically are often perfectly in phase with one another; this is particularly troublesome in instruments that use frequency division to produce many pitches from the frequency of one or a dozen oscillators, but it can also occur even where there is an oscillator for every note, since different timbres are often produced by means of filters. Perfect phasing makes for unauthentic organ sound since it does not occur in pipe organs. Several methods of dealing with it have been developed. Around 1937 Hammond introduced the ‘chorus generator’, a second tone-wheel generator which produces sounds slightly out of tune with those made by the principal generator; the two together create beats which enrich the sound quality. The same result can also be achieved electronically. An innovation similarly aimed at the faithful reproduction of pipe organ timbres was introduced by Conn in about 1980; it consists of an amplification system in which the output from the loudspeakers is channelled through sets of tuned pipes. Other effects that have been produced by means of electronic circuitry include the simulation of the touch of a tracker-action organ, and increasingly authentic reverberation, created digitally.

The first fully electronic organ to be marketed was the Allen organ, produced from 1939. Shortly after the war several other American and European companies followed suit, and the 1950s and 60s saw increasing activity in this area. The introduction of the Digital Computer Organ by Allen in 1971, with its tone cards and card reader, was the first application of digital sampling for the faithful reproduction of pipe organ sound. Most companies that specialize in church organs offer a range of four to six models, the largest of which (three or even four manuals) is usually available in custom-built versions specially designed in collaboration with the organist who will play the finished instrument.

The advantages of an electronic organ for a church that needs to replace a pipe organ are chiefly financial; such an instrument is less expensive and requires less maintenance and tuning than a comparable pipe organ; indeed an electronic organ is impervious to changes in temperature, and is unlikely to need any tuning once it has been installed. It has very few moving parts apart from the keys. It can be transported fairly easily since the circuitry is normally accommodated entirely in the console (an umbilical cable connection to an additional unit in some earlier electronic organs can easily be unplugged), and it takes up much less space than a pipe organ. These advantages, especially the financial ones, have proved to be of great importance in recent years when labour costs are proportionately much higher than formerly and churches are less prosperous.

From a musical point of view, it has been found that the best electronic organs compare favourably with good pipe organs. Not all pipe organs sound well in the churches where they are installed, and little can be done to improve the result; with an electronic organ a degree of compensation can immediately be made by adjusting the reverberation electronically. Larger electronic organs are invaluable for concerts and recordings of works in buildings that have no pipe organ, and as temporary replacements for pipe organs in churches, cathedrals or concert halls during repairs or rebuilding. An electronic organ can, at little extra cost, offer a choice of registrations to suit music from different eras; several instruments are available with some combination of ‘Baroque’, ‘Romantic’, ‘Traditional’ and ‘Classical’ registrations.

Electronic instruments, §IV, 3: After 1945: The electronic organ

(ii) Hybrid organs.

It has sometimes been found advantageous to combine elements of the electronic organ with the pipe organ, often in the form of one electronic section added to an otherwise acoustic instrument. The first hybrids of this sort were small pipe organs to which an electronic bass extension was added; this could offer several 16' and 32' stops without the need for installing very large pipes. The first such separate electronic bass was probably the pedal unit, based on that of the Rangertone organ, that was introduced into the pipe organ at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1933. In the late 1930s the John Compton Co. (in the process of completing the development of their Electrone) produced a similar 32' electronic extension. In 1955 the Allen Organ Co. introduced a 32' ‘electronic tone generator’ based on the pedals of their organ, and two years later a special version of this was built for reinforcing the double basses in Stokowski’s Houston SO.

Also during the 1930s electronic solo voices were first introduced into pipe organs, usually those in use in theatres and cinemas; for example, Radiotone sections, employing an amplified bowed string, were installed in theatre organs in Britain by Hill & Sons and Norman & Beard. Rather later Compton produced a ‘solo cello’ voice, and a section that imitated woodwind and bells, the Melotone; and, as has already been noted, Compton first developed the Electrone organ in the form of individual sections for addition to pipe organs.

Electrical amplification of enclosed groups of pipes was first carried out in 1934 by Abbé Pujet in his orgue radiosynthétique; in the 1950s similar systems of amplification were installed in pipe organs by Frank C. Wichlac of Chicago, Alfred G. Kilgen of Los Angeles, and John Hays Hammond jr of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Since World War II more integral hybrids have been designed for church use. Around 1958 the Kilgen Organ Co. marketed a model in which the electronic sections provided not only the pedals (8' and 16') but also the lowest octave for the 8' stops on the manuals. More recently Walter Leib has devised the elektronische Auxiliaire, a collaboration between Ahlborn Orgel and a builder of pipe organs has resulted in a model that is two-thirds electronic, hybrid organs have been manufactured by Lipp (one manual uses pipes, the other and the pedals are electronic) and the Rodgers Organ Co., and the Allen Organ Co. has made some electronic additions to existing pipe organs.

In any register, but especially in the bass, electronic circuitry saves space and cost when compared with pipes; it also obviates compromises such as the use of a closed 16' pipe instead of a 32' open one. However, the advantages of hybrid instruments are not all on the side of the electronic sections: the problem caused in fully electronic organs by perfect phasing (see §(i) above) is largely overcome by mixing electronic and acoustic sections in a single instrument.

Similar hybrids have been devised in a number of related electronic instruments. During the 1950s the Clavioline was added to street barrel organs manufactured by two Belgian companies, and electronic solo sections were included in accordions (such as the Hohnervox – a combination of the Electronium and an accordion – and Siegfried Mager’s Multimonica), and in harmoniums, including Mager’s Mannborg organ (c1950, with electronic solo section and 16' bass) and the Orcheline (the Netherlands, late 1950s). Since the early 1970s several electronic organs (including models manufactured by Baldwin, Conn, Elka, Farfisa, Kawai, Kimball, Wurlitzer and Yamaha) have included ‘synthesizer’ or ‘solo orchestra’ voices, which are usually monophonic and are sometimes controlled from a separate short manual.

Electronic instruments, §IV, 3: After 1945: The electronic organ

(iii) Concert, home and entertainment organs.

The earliest electronic organs, such as the Hammond, were intended to cater for all the purposes for which an organ might be used. Since the war, however, the different functions of the electronic organ have become increasingly distinct and have led to the development of instruments that bear little resemblance to one another. Electronic organs designed for concert use fall into two categories – those for classical music (similar to and usually interchangeable with church models) and those for light music (which often resemble the earlier cinema and theatre pipe organs). Models of the latter type, many of which include unusual stops and special effects, have been manufactured by Allen, Baldwin, Conn, Farfisa, Gulbransen, Kimball, Lowrey, Rodgers, Wurlitzer and the Haygren Organ Co. of Chicago (the Harp-Organ, 1949). The other important type of electronic organ is the small home or entertainment organ, which usually includes performance aids and special effects to enable inexpert players to create a good impression. The Hammond company was the first to detect the market potential of such instruments and for a long time was the leading manufacturer of home organs; this area continues to be a major concern.

The electronic home organ normally has one or two manuals; where there is a pedal-board it is usually monophonic, with a compass of a single octave and pedals that are parallel instead of radiating outwards, as in a church organ. The typical ‘spinet’ arrangement of most two-manual instruments was introduced by Hammond in 1949: the manuals are shorter than normal (between three and four octaves each) and are offset, normally by one octave, the lower-pitched manual being in front and the higher-pitched behind; occasionally the two manuals are unequal in compass. It was also Hammond who, in the early 1950s, introduced the ‘chord organ’ (though the idea was anticipated in Eremeeff’s Photona of 1935). The chord organ has a single monophonic or polyphonic keyboard with buttons or occasionally additional keys (usually on the left side of the console) each of which, as on an accordion, selects a chord; it enables the player to produce an accompaniment to a melody played on the manual without having to finger complete chords. The principle is similar to that of the piano attachment, the first example of which – the Hammond Solovox – was marketed in 1940; this device is a monophonic keyboard designed for solo playing with the right hand to an accompaniment played on the piano by the left. In fact the first Hammond chord organ (also their first fully electronic organ, apart from the unusual Novachord) used circuits that were partly based on those of the Solovox, and effectively combined the melody and accompaniment elements in a single instrument. It had a three-octave keyboard (like a piano attachment) and 96 chord buttons, offering a choice of eight chords in each key; a chord bar, operated by the palm of the left hand, provided articulation, and two pedals supplied respectively the root and the 5th of the chord selected, two octaves below the note played on the keyboard.

In the 1950s other electronic home and entertainment organs, besides Hammond’s, were produced, including the Combichord, Tuttivox and Polychord III (all designed by Harald Bode), the Gulbransen, Jennings, Lowrey, Minshall, Schober, Thomas and Toccata organs, some models of the Ahlborn, Allen, Baldwin, Conn and Estey organs, the Yamaha Electone, and instruments built by Farfisa, Hohner, Selmer of London and Wurlitzer; in the USSR the Kristadin and Yunost' were marketed. By the mid-1960s Hammond’s domination was being challenged, particularly by the Lowrey and Thomas organs, and in the next two decades many more companies, some newly established, entered the market in the hope of taking a share of the rapidly expanding sales of home organs; they included Bontempi, Casio, Cavendish, Crumar, Elgam, Elka, Eminent, Gem, Godwin, Jen, JVC, Kawai, Kimball, Kinsman, Korg, Marlborough, Philips, Riha, Roland, Seeburg, Siel, Solina, Technics, Viscount, Vox, Welson, Weltmeister and Wersi. Some models, of the Schober and Wersi organs for instance, were marketed in kit form. In the early 1980s Japanese companies such as Casio and Yamaha began to produce miniature electronic instruments (fig.6), which quickly came to account for more than half the total sales of electronic instruments annually. Some two years after these instruments first appeared in Europe, Western manufacturers, such as Baldwin, Bontempi, Lowrey and Wurlitzer, rather belatedly followed suit.

The home organs produced since the 1960s have been aimed increasingly at the beginner and less skilled performer. The beginner is catered for by peripheral guides such as note names printed above the keys, indicator lights above the keys, specially simplified notation for use with a particular company’s instruments, and musical games. Once some degree of facility has been attained, the player can exploit the various devices and features that make possible a polished performance without the need for highly developed keyboard skills: chord buttons, electronic rhythm sections (introduced in the early 1960s), ‘walking bass’ units and alternative types of chordal accompaniment (early 1970s), small memories for automatic replay, microprocessor-controlled arpeggiators (late 1970s), and digital programming and storage of registrations (early 1980s). (Many of these features are also standard in synthesizers and related instruments.) Some organs marketed in the early 1970s incorporated cassette tape recorders so that the player could pre-record an accompaniment; slightly later, solo ‘synthesizer’ sections were included in some instruments.

As electronic circuitry has become more sophisticated it has, paradoxically, required less and less space, until an electronic organ of some versatility can now be quite small and can be easily carried around. The concept of portability has changed considerably over the years: the original Hammond organ, weighing around 80 kg, was considered portable; in the 1950s small dance band or ‘combo’ organs weighed about 35 kg and could be fitted into the boot of a car; today a small organ can weigh as little as 2·5 kg, while a miniature monophonic instrument weighs about 0·5 kg and can be carried in a coat pocket. From the mid-1980s electronic organs were primarily based on digital synthesis, then on different combinations of synthesized and sampled sounds, and more recently entirely on sampled sounds.

Solo performances on electronic organs, especially the Hammond, have been common in jazz, swing and related musics, and are well documented on gramophone record. In rock music, in the mid-1960s, when few performers could afford to buy a Hammond, two of the most popular small electronic organs were those produced by Farfisa and Vox. Memorable recordings include the Animals’ hit House of the Rising Sun, in which a Vox Continental was played by Alan Price, Rick Wright’s performance on a Farfisa in Pink Floyd’s Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, and some of Ray Charles’s slower songs, such as Here we go again, where the mood is set by an unidentified instrument, probably a Hammond. Early in the 1970s successful rock players, such as Rick Wakeman, Vangelis and Patrick Moraz, started to collect keyboards, first placing smaller instruments on top of an acoustic piano or electronic organ and later stacking them on top of one another; each instrument in such a bank of keyboards is treated as if it were a special stop on a vast electronic organ. Some rock musicians have continued to prefer the sound of the ‘classical’ Hammond tone-wheel organs with drawbars. When these were replaced by fully electronic organs, the characteristic (and unavoidable) key-clicks associated with the tone-wheel models were eliminated; recent advances in electronic technology have allowed Hammond (and other companies) to respond to pressure from performers by producing drawbar models in which the key-click is mimicked electronically.

Since the 1970s the electronic organ (again often a Hammond) has been included in a number of works for orchestra or ensemble; Dubravko Detoni (21 compositions) and Berio (more than 16 compositions) have favoured it especially, and Friedrich Cerha, Jacob Druckman, Henze, Kagel, Bernard Rands, Enrique Raxach, Murray Schafer, Armin Schibler and Stockhausen have all specified electronic organ in several works. The Yamaha Electone has been featured in many Japanese compositions since 1960. Solo works for electronic organ have been composed by Roland Kayn (Diffusions, for one to four instruments, 1965), George Cacioppo (Holy Ghost Vacuum, or America Faints, 1966) and Bernard Van der Boogaard (Melancholic Moods, 1980). Several concertos or similar concertante works for electronic organ have been written. Small electronic organs have been used in works by the American minimalist composer-performers Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Steve Reich, who specifies four portable electronic organs, such as the Farfisa Mini-Compact, in his Four Organs and Phase Patterns (both 1970); Riley has also played an Electone tuned in just intonation.

Electronic instruments, §IV: After 1945

4. Other instruments.

(i) Keyboards.

The success of all types of electronic organ is partly due to the existence of a substantial repertory – on the one hand the entire body of music composed for the pipe organ, on the other music specially composed or arranged for rock and other light-music ensembles and published for use with entertainment and home organs. The same factor probably accounts for the popularity of electric and electronic pianos since the 1960s, compared with the electric pianos manufactured during the 1930s, the limited success of which was partly the result of the lack of a suitable repertory. Today rock musicians make considerable use of ‘vintage’ electric pianos, as they do of all types of electric and electronic keyboards, often favouring those developed in the early 1960s, such as the Rhodes, the Hohner Pianet and Clavinet, and the Wurlitzer. Of these only the Clavinet produces sounds by means of struck strings: the Rhodes and the Wurlitzer employ tuned rods, and the remaining instruments all use plucked or struck reeds. Several more recent electric pianos, in which the method of sound production is the same as in an acoustic piano, include upright and grand models produced by Aeolian, Crumar, Gretsch, Helpinstill, Kawai and Yamaha; these all use piezoelectric pickups, and some can be partly folded or dismantled for ease of transport, which has endeared them to touring rock musicians. Electroacoustic methods have also been used as the basis for reed organs (such as the Radareed organ) and electric harpsichords in the postwar period.

Although attempts have been made since the 1950s to develop fully electronic pianos, using the same principles as have been exploited in the electronic organ, the first really successful instruments were not marketed until the early 1970s; the RMI Electra-Piano was followed by models manufactured by Armon, ARP (taken over by Rhodes), Crumar, Elka, Korg, the Kustom division of Baldwin, Multivox, Roland, Vox and Yamaha. In addition to a choice of piano timbres (including acoustic and electric), many of these have stops such as Harpsichord, Clavichord and Vibraphone. Some companies include an electronic piano section in their string synthesizers.

The reliability of the electronic oscillator has led to its use in other types of keyboard instrument as well. A few electric accordions were produced in the 1950s, such as the Elektro-Cantulia (c1953), but these were overshadowed by electronic versions pioneered by Hohner, who produced several models in the 1950s, as well as hybrids such as the Multimonica and the Hohnervox. In the 1960s and 70s Italian companies such as Farfisa (with the Cordovox, Duovox, Syntaccordion, Transicord and Transivox) and Elka (Elkavox and Concorde) followed suit, and a few individual instruments were made by other manufacturers (the Iorio Accorgan and the computerized Digisyzer from Excelsior). Electronic harpsichords have been produced by the Allen Organ Co., Rodgers and Roland.

A number of specialized monophonic bass keyboard instruments have been manufactured. An early example was Hohner’s Bassophon, which the company followed with the 29-note Bass 2; the Weltmeister Basset is similar. Around 1965 Joh. Mustad in Göteborg began to manufacture the Tubon, a 30-note cylindrical keyboard instrument which is slung round the performer’s neck on a strap; it was used for a while by Swedish pop groups.

Oscillator-based keyboard instruments have been used in microtonal tunings and for just intonation, and limited quantities of two specially designed instruments of this sort, the Arcifoon and the Scalatron, have been manufactured. Keyboards have also been used to control electronic sound-effects instruments, such as the Mellotron, Chamberlin and Birotron, which all employ magnetic tape, and the Shumofon, which is based on a noise generator. Some other miscellaneous electric and electronic keyboard instruments, utilized in the United States during the 1960s but now forgotten, include the Band Box, Baritone Electric Vibraharp, Ace Canary, Electric Celeste, ElectriKazoo, Nova-Harp and RMI Rocksichord.

(ii) Bells, chimes and carillons.

Electric bells, chimes and carillons were first devised around 1930 (for the mechanisms used, see §I, 2(iii)). Early examples were electromagnetically activated and were probably unamplified; they included the ‘electromagnetic glockenspiel’ of Hugo Gernsback (late 1920s) and the set of electromagnetic Javanese gongs used by Jörg Mager in 1931 for the ‘elektroakustische Gralsglocken’ in performances of Wagner’s Parsifal at Bayreuth and Cologne. (The Parsifal bells have also been supplied by the trautonium (1950–57; Bayreuth, 1955–7) and the Fairlight CMI (Berlin and Salzburg, 1980), following several acoustic devices such as Bayreuth’s home-made set of long thick piano strings mounted on a resonator and J.C. Deagan’s ‘Parsifal bells’ (? c1900).) In the mid-1930s a set of electric bells called the Electrophone was built for the Dutch composer Daniel Ruyneman. In 1937 an ‘electrophonic carillon’ was manufactured (probably in the USA), Constant Martin built an electronic carillon, and Vierling devised a set of electric bar chimes (c1939); a similar system to the last was constructed at the Oberascher bell-foundry in Munich (1939). Other electric bell sounds produced in the 1930s often employed amplified tubular bells. In 1940 the trautonium was used to imitate bells and gongs in Richard Strauss’s Japanische Festmusik. Trautwein constructed a set of electric bells in 1947.

During the late 1940s electromagnetic keyboard chimes using steel rods and bars were manufactured in the USA by Deagan (a 25-note electric carillon), Schulmerich (which by the mid-1950s was making a five-octave set) and other companies, such as the Meneely Bell Co., Earle J. Beach & Son and Stromberg-Carlson; their example was followed by several organ companies, including Compton in Britain, who added chimes to the Electrone. Deagan and the Maas-Rowe Organ Co. both produced four-octave Organ-Harps, which consisted of amplified struck metal tubes or bars, and tuned rod chimes were used in Allen and Rodgers electronic organs in the 1960s. Since the late 1960s electronic organ chimes have mostly been produced by electronic oscillators or digital synthesis.

In France around 1950 the carillon électromagnétique was made by Chancenotte, and Constant Martin devised an improved version of his carillon (see §I, 5(ii)). In Russia Vasily Trifonovich Mal'tsev, working in Moscow, produced sets of electric bells for use by orchestras and in theatres, while Magnushevsky created an electronic replacement for the carillon of ten bells in the Kremlin’s Spasskaya [Saviour] clock tower (1945), playing two melodies, of which the Internationale was broadcast for many years daily over Radio Moscow. As with other electric instruments, electric carillons are much cheaper than their acoustic counterparts and have accordingly been widely introduced. In the mid-1960s there were only around 80 acoustic carillons in the USA but more than 5000 electric carillons had been installed by a single manufacturer. More recent versions of this group of instruments include the chimes often broadcast over the tannoy system in airports and railway stations to attract the public’s attention; in these the sounds are usually produced by electromagnetically amplified struck rods, which are sometimes bent at a node to produce a particular timbre.

(iii) Repertory.

The repertory for electronic instruments composed since World War II differs greatly from that of the 1930s. The ondes martenot continues to be used extensively, especially in France; Jacques Charpentier composed two concertos for it (1959–60) and Boulez a quartet for four ondes (now withdrawn). Two ondes have been featured in works by Aurel Stroe, whose Arcades (1962) includes, besides an ondes, an Ondioline and an electronic organ. The instrument has also been included in a number of Japanese compositions since the late 1950s. Two ondes martenot ensembles exist, the Sextuor Jeanne Loriod in Paris (six instruments) and the Ensemble d’Ondes de Montréal (four). After enjoying considerable popularity in Hollywood films between 1945 and the early 1950s, the theremin has seldom been called for: parts for it were included in Bohuslav Martinu’s Fantasia (1945), Alfred Schnittke’s oratorio Nagasaki (1958), Lejaren Hiller’s Computer Cantata (1963) and works by Jorge Antunes (late 1960s), Irwin Bazelon (1960) and David Del Tredici (three works between 1969 and 1976). Larry Sitsky’s The Legions of Asmodeus (1975) is scored for four theremins. In the late 1960s the Moog theremin was featured in the Beach Boys’ hit record Good Vibrations and was a significant element in the pop group Lothar and the Hand People. The trautonium and Mixtur-Trautonium have been used by Richard Strauss (Japanische Festmusik, 1940), Orff (Entrata, 1940) and Henze (the ballet Tancredi e Cantilena, 1952) and in works by Harald Genzmer, Werner Egk, Paul Dessau and Oskar Sala. The Subharchord, similar to the Mixtur-Trautonium, was also featured in several East German solo works with orchestra. In the 1950s in West Germany and Austria the trautonium and the Heliophon were substituted for the ondes martenot in performances of Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (the part is not typical of the rather sweet sound of the ondes – it includes imitations of dogs howling, an ass braying, and the sounds of fire and bells). Two Russian works from this period were the Concerto for Ėkvodin by Sergey Vasilenko and Vasily Zolotaryov’s Symphony no.6 ‘Moya rodina’ [My homeland] (1944), which featured an Ėmiriton.

The Solovox was used in arrangements of five of his earlier works by Percy Grainger around 1950–52; the Ondioline occurs in several pieces by Jean-Etienne Marie, and the Clavioline in compositions dating from the 1950s by Toshirō Mayuzumi, Shin-ichi Matsushita and Rodion Shchedrin (the ballet Konyok-gorbunok [The little hunchbacked horse] (1955–6); the Second Suite specifies an Ėkvodin as an alternative). An ensemble consisting of six Claviolines (the Bode version) and one Bode organ was formed in 1954, and in the late 1950s the jazz pianist Sun Ra used both the Clavioline and the Electric Celeste. Around 1950 Hohner established a Studio für elektronische Musik in Trossingen, which encouraged the use of the Electronium in serious and light music by German composers, and in 1954 Wolfgang Jacobi composed a work for four Electroniums and Helmut Degen an Electronium concerto. The instrument also features in works written in the late 1960s and early 70s for his own ensemble by Stockhausen. In the former Soviet Union the Electronic Instruments Ensemble was founded in Moscow by M. Kadomtsev (possibly the Soviet Army’s electric musical instrument ensemble, from 1956), and the Vyacheslav Meshcherin Band was formed in 1957 to play dance music and arrangements of light classical and folk music on Radio Moscow; it included a Clavioline, Pianophon, Hammond organ, Neo-Bechstein-Flügel and (later) a Yunost'. The generation that emerged in the 1950s showed a brief interest in electronic instruments, especially Alfred Schnittke in the oratorio Nagasaki (1958), the unfinished ‘Concerto for electric instruments’ (1960) and the unperformed cosmonaut tribute Poėma o kosmose [Poem about space] (1961), which featured not only the theremin but also two other Russian instruments, the Ėkvodin and Kompanola. No details are available concerning the electronic instruments used in Andrey Mikhaylovich Volkonsky’s 2 Japanese Songs (1958). In the same period Sofiya Asgatovna Gubaydulina included an Ėkvodin, a Kristadin and an electric piano in Four Pieces for electronic ensemble (?1961). Shchedrin’s music for the ballet Anna Karenina (1971) incorporates a Shumofon. In the mid-1960s the Orchestre Electronique Monici in Orleans included the Timbalec (electric timpani).

Electronic instruments have found a role in film scores and soundtracks since the 1930s. In 1930–31 Shostakovich used a theremin in his score for Odna [Alone] and in the next few years the ondes martenot was included in scores by Franz Waxman (Liliom, 1933), Honegger (L’idée, 1934, and Pygmalion, 1938) and Ibert (Golgotha, 1935). Mager used the Partiturophon in his music for Stärker als Paragraphen (1936), and during the 1930s the Neo-Bechstein-Flügel was used in several film scores; in the late 1940s and 1950s the Heliophon was similarly in demand for Austrian films. Mayuzumi included the Clavioline in Street of Shame (1955), and the Mixtur-Trautonium has been the basis not only for many film scores composed since 1953 by Oskar Sala and others, but also for the sound effects created by Remi Gassmann and Sala for Hitchcock’s The Birds (1962).

Hollywood’s initial reluctance to use such novel sounds was only gradually overcome, and to begin with they were exploited mostly in films with sinister or controversial themes. A Novachord and an electric violin feature in Waxman’s score for Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940). The theremin, first used by Max Steiner in King Kong (1933) and by Waxman in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), was incorporated by Robert Emmett Dolan in his score for Lady in the Dark (1944), by Miklós Rózsa in Spellbound, The Lost Weekend (both 1945 – to portray respectively amnesia and drunkenness) and The Red House (1947), and by Roy Webb in The Spiral Staircase (1945). Hanns Eisler introduced the Novachord (together with an electric piano) in White Flood (1943) and Webb used it in Murder, my Sweet (1945), while an electric violin featured in Waxman’s Mr Skeffington (1944). With the growth of science fiction films after 1945, other-worldly, electronic sounds became almost de rigueur: for example, Bernard Herrmann used four theremins and an electronic oscillator in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Louis and Bebe Barron created a full-length electronic soundtrack for the classic Forbidden Planet (1956). During the 1950s the theremin was especially popular in science fiction and horror films.

Taped electronic music (often only short passages) was employed in some 20 films of all kinds from 1950 until the mid-1950s (by, among others, Boulez and Varèse), after which the tally becomes too large to be documented. From the late 1950s Paul Beaver’s electronic music studio in Los Angeles produced electronic music (usually using electronic instruments) in collaboration with many leading Hollywood film composers for films that included some notable box-office successes. The most important development since the 1960s has been the increasing use of the synthesizer in film soundtracks and scores (see §5(v) below).

Electronic instruments, §IV: After 1945

5. The synthesizer.

(i) Forerunners of the synthesizer.

(ii) Analogue synthesizers.

(iii) Digital synthesis.

(iv) Control devices.

(v) Repertory and ensembles.

Electronic instruments, §IV, 5: After 1945: The synthesizer

(i) Forerunners of the synthesizer.

The first electronic instruments that were called synthesizer would not be so described today because they were not intended for, and were nearly all incapable of, live performance; ‘composition machine’ is perhaps a more appropriate term. The two models of the RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer as well as the slightly later Siemens Synthesizer, all developed during the 1950s, are, like a predecessor constructed around 1929 by Edouard Coupleux and Armand Givelet, programmable electronic composition machines; similar systems were used in the Cross-Grainger ‘free music’ machines (1945–61), the Electronic Music Box (1951) and several devices based on the technique of drawn sound, including Yevgeny Murzin’s ANS (the only pre-computer system still in use), Composertron, Raymond Scott’s Electronium, the fourth of Grainger’s ‘free music’ machines, the Hanert Electrical Orchestra, Oramics and the Variafon. In these machines the music (or individual layers of it) is programmed by punching holes in a paper tape, or drawing outlines on film, as in the optical film soundtrack. (Grainger’s third machine used a related but highly individual mechanism based on ‘hill and dale’ channels in a paper roll.) There is always a delay in such systems (though it may be very short) between the composer’s completing the ‘notation’ of the programming and hearing the sound, so that no real-time performance is possible (except where keyboards have been added as an alternative or special control element, as in the ANS and Hanert’s apparatus). Early computer-based systems included the system at the Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm, the SSSP in Toronto and the series of machines at IRCAM that culminated in the 4X; outside IRCAM the principal such system today is Iannis Xenakis’s UPIC (up to 1977) which, by 1987, with more powerful computer processing, was able to function in real time. Many commercial synthesizers have, of course, been used compositionally; the early modular synthesizers were primarily intended for electronic music studios, and with the advent of programmable synthesizers in the late 1970s it became possible for musicians to prepare timbres and to record sequences at their leisure, even though such a possibility has been largely ignored in the field of rock music.

Electronic instruments, §IV, 5: After 1945: The synthesizer

(ii) Analogue synthesizers.

The earliest instrument that resembles a Synthesizer in the form in which it is familiar today is the monophonic ‘electronic sackbut’ built by Hugh Le Caine in Ottawa in the late 1940s (fig.7). Several of its features have become common on commercial synthesizers, including a touch-sensitive keyboard (a feature introduced in electronic instruments as long ago as the first model of the Telharmonium in 1900), a portamento glide strip (resembling the fingerboards introduced in the 1920s), modulation control for vibrato and timbre, and a limited application of Voltage control, the most significant aspect of the synthesizer. In addition a glide between consecutive notes (a feature pioneered in the ondes martenot and later used in the Ondioline) could be produced by a sideways key movement; pitch ‘bending’ is used widely by rock and jazz keyboard performers, and has only rarely been available on electronic keyboard instruments other than the synthesizer.

The next steps were carried out by Harald Bode. The two-manual version of his Melochord (1953) could be linked to separate devices in an electronic music studio such as a reverberation unit, a white-noise generator and a ring modulator (some of which were incorporated in a custom-built version in 1954). After emigrating to the USA, Bode developed a modular sound processor (1959–60) which incorporated voltage-control elements, and this had some influence on Robert A. Moog, who in 1964 invented and began to manufacture the first commercial modular synthesizer. Starting in 1962, Donald Buchla devised a series of voltage-controlled electronic music modules for the San Francisco Tape Music Center; a complete system was installed there in 1963 and the first sales were in 1964. Also in the early 1960s, Paolo Ketoff, working in Rome, constructed the integrated studio Fonosynth (1962), on which the more compact non-modular Synket (1964) was based; this also incorporated elements of voltage control. In all of these instruments interconnections between the modules were achieved by patchcords, as in a telephone switchboard, the ‘spaghetti’ of crossing cords often obscuring the controls on the front panel. Although they were designed for electronic music studios, and mainly contained modules that were familiar to the users of such studios (except for the voltage-control features that become possible when all the modules are specially designed and are electrically standardized), these synthesizers had one or more optional monophonic keyboards and were soon being played in concert performances. In 1968 Korg marketed the first Japanese synthesizer, and in 1969 the Putney (VCS-3) and the first version of Michel Waisvisz’s Kraakdoos appeared; the first ARP synthesizer, which had matrix switches instead of patchcords, was marketed in 1970. In the same year Le Caine developed the Polyphone, the first polyphonic synthesizer.

Voltage-controlled studio synthesizers are still manufactured, with updated modules; Buchla instruments continue to be made, and models were previously marketed under the marques Aries, ElectroComp, E-mu, EMS, Korg, PAIA, Polyfusion, Roland, Serge and Synton; a newcomer is Doepfer. Of these systems, all but the ElectroComp and those from EMS and Korg were fully modular, permitting any combination of modules selected from a substantial range to be configured in any desired permutation; the remaining systems allow no choice or rearrangement, but this restriction makes possible compact methods of patching, such as the 16 by 16 pin matrix-board adopted by EMS for the Putney, which brings together all the available interconnection points in one part of the console. (This also has disadvantages: in larger instruments such as the EMS Synthi 100, with its two 60 by 60 matrix-boards, errors can easily be made; and users have found that plotting functions on a board gives less of a sense of making a connection than does the linking of two points by a patchcord.)

The success of Walter (later known as Wendy) Carlos’s recording Switched-on Bach, which was produced on a Moog in 1968, brought the synthesizer to the attention of many people for the first time, though it was not until its use became widespread in rock music in the late 1970s that the ‘man in the street’ began to have some idea of what the name implied. Many other multi-tracked synthesizer recordings rapidly followed, offering interpretations and arrangements of all styles of music; over 40 recordings using the Moog had been released by the summer of 1970, of which only four contained ‘serious’ original compositions. The instrument was included in at least two jazz groups, and the First Moog Quartet (four synthesizers) was formed in 1969 by Gershon Kingsley. This popular exposure stimulated the formation of new companies and thus competition, which after a modest start became increasingly intense in the late 1970s.

The first new approach in synthesizers was once again inaugurated by Moog, to satisfy requests for an instrument specifically designed for concert performance. The Minimoog (1970) was followed in 1971 by the model 2600 and the Odyssey, both from ARP, which quickly became Moog’s closest rival. Still monophonic (the Odyssey is strictly speaking duophonic), these more portable synthesizers eliminated patchcords and matrix-boards altogether, replacing them by hard-wired, predetermined interconnections and limited changes, obtainable from switches mounted on the front panel. The more restricted options available to the performer in these instruments marked the first step in the move away from the extremely versatile studio instrument towards a keyboard instrument resembling an electronic organ. In the early 1970s other new companies came into existence – at least six in Italy (including Crumar and Davoli) most of which were short-lived, Roland, E-mu, Serge and Oberheim, and several companies that have specialized in small synthesizers designed at least in part for schools, such as the ElectroComp and the PAIA, and the non-commercial Gmebogosse. Serge, Buchla and, to a lesser extent, EMS have remained small companies, primarily concerned with systems that have less appeal for rock musicians; they have therefore avoided most of the compromises and commercial rivalry in which other companies, at the more competitive end of the market, have had to become involved. Synthesizer manufacture in eastern European countries began around 1980, including the Vermona (East Germany, late 1970s) and the Polivoks (USSR, c1982).

With the more commercial approach prevalent from the mid-1970s, most companies were forced to explore new possibilities in order to maintain their position; this meant not only exploiting the latest developments in electronic technology, but also catering for a wide range of musical tastes and requirements with a selection of different instruments. Besides studio and performance synthesizers in several sizes, some manufacturers added electronic or electric pianos, electronic organs and string synthesizers to their range. The string synthesizer (also known as a ‘string ensemble’) is more like an electronic organ than a synthesizer; it has a limited choice of ‘stops’ that may provide brass, piano and organ timbres as well as string sounds. At this time the sequencer (pioneered by Buchla in the mid-1960s) began to be widely used to extend the capabilities of the synthesizer, and some instruments even incorporated one; the sequencer was an early form of programmable ‘memory’ that permitted the automatic repeat of sequences of pitches. The potential of the sequencer was soon exploited in the self-contained electronic percussion unit or electronic drum machine. More specialized, computer-based sequencer instruments include the series of polyphonic digital MicroComposers manufactured by Roland since 1977. (String synthesizers and drum machines are the latest in a line of electronic instruments, including the RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer, the Mellotron and synthesizers in general, to cause difficulties with musicians’ unions, particularly in the USA and Britain.)

Electronic instruments, §IV, 5: After 1945: The synthesizer

(iii) Digital synthesis.

Digital electronics, first introduced around 1970 but not widespread until the late 1970s, brought about something of a revolution in electronic instruments. Electronic instruments now incorporate microprocessors (miniature computers contained on a single ‘chip’) which make possible the storage and playback of sounds and various types of sound processing. The digital synthesizer offered the composer a new and more intuitive method of computer synthesis than had been available to him previously. Computers were first used for synthesis in the mid-1950s, but because computer synthesis requires a knowledge of programming in the user and some understanding of the technicalities of the computing process, few composers found it congenial; moreover the time lag between the programming of a sound and hearing it was regarded by many as a serious drawback. The digital synthesizer, which supplies the computing power necessary for real-time synthesis without requiring an ability to programme, is closer to the concept of an ‘instrument’ held by most composers and has therefore provided a more acceptable and usable resource.

The first digital synthesizers were devised in the early 1970s; they included the Qasar (encouraged and supported by the composer Don Banks, who had played a similar role in the evolution of the Putney), the Dimi and the Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer. The first to be marketed was the Synclavier (1976) and by 1981 a number of others were available, including the PPG Wave Computer, DMX-1000, Fairlight CMI, General Development System, RMI Keyboard Computer KC-II, AlphaSyntauri and Soundchaser. Since each of these systems employed a microcomputer, either separately or integrally, and most had two linked computers to deal with different aspects of the workload, they were the most expensive of all synthesizers, but they were highly versatile and offered the composer the widest range of resources in real-time synthesis; the playback and modification of pre-programmed sounds could be carried out simultaneously with or independently of live performance. The outward appearance of early digital synthesizers differed little from that of a computer since they usually included the standard computer peripherals such as a visual display unit, disc drives and an alphanumeric keyboard. Today virtually all synthesizers are digital, and using computer elements has become second nature to many musicians. Studio systems combine sophisticated hardware and software, as in Symbolic Sound’s Kyma (software) with the Capybara Sound Computation Engine, or, like Opcode’s Max software, rely on external commercial synthesis systems.

Since digital electronic technology is very different from that employed in analogue systems, some of the companies that manufactured the first digital synthesizers were new to the synthesizer market. Casio’s first musical product, the VL-Tone (1981), was basically a pocket calculator with the addition of a simple keyboard. In the same period the existing synthesizer manufacturers began to integrate digital electronics, which make some processes (such as arpeggiation and sequencing) very straightforward, into their new models. One of the first manifestations of the new approach was the trend towards the polyphonic synthesizer, using several oscillators or the frequency division methods familiar from electronic organs (see §I, 4). An early stage (1974–6) was Oberheim’s multiplication of a basic ‘Synthesizer Expander Module’ to form the nucleus of instruments with two, four, six or eight voices (that is, the number of notes that can sound simultaneously); these had a keyboard and an optional sequencer and memory. In 1975 Buchla’s Electric Music Box Series 300 featured digital oscillators. In 1976 Moog produced the first fully polyphonic commercial synthesizer, the Polymoog, using two oscillators with frequency division. The next digital step was that of programmability, introduced in the 12-voice RMI Keyboard Computer KC-I in 1974 and Yamaha’s GX-1 in 1975 (an eight-voice polyphonic synthesizer with three manuals and pedal-board which resembled an electronic organ, and was categorized by Yamaha in its Electone range), the monophonic Oberheim OB-1 and Yamaha’s eight-voice CS80 (1976), and thereafter included in the RMI Keyboard Computer KC-II and the fully polyphonic Korg PS-3200 (1977), the five-voice Prophet 5 and the ARP Quadra (1978), the Oberheim OB-X and EMS Polysynthi (1979), from around 1980 in the Buchla Touché, E-mu’s Audity, Roland’s Jupiter-8, the Korg Polysix, the first Casiotones (hybrids combining elements of the synthesizer and electronic organ; see fig.6), the Prophet 10 (fig.8) and the monophonic Proteus from PAIA, and around 1982–3 in the Synergy, Chroma, Memorymoog, Buchla 400, Aries, Prism, and Yamaha DX series.

The number of polyphonic voices on a synthesizer is partly determined by cost and the area of the market at which it is aimed by the manufacturer, and partly by the sound-generation system; thus the fully polyphonic Polymoog and, to a lesser extent, the Korg PS-3200 inevitably have certain resemblances to an electronic organ, while the ARP Quadra incorporates a string synthesizer. Prior to the introduction of the Musical Instrumental Digital Interface (MIDI) in 1983 there was comparatively little demand for synthesizers to be fully polyphonic, but with the availabitiy not only of increasingly substantial internal memory storage but also of the greater control by external devices that MIDI made possible, a maximum polyphony of a number of equivalent to all or most of a player’s complement of fingers soon becomes insufficient, especially if multiple layers are to sound simultaneously. In a solo performance, for example, even 12- or 16-note polyphony can soon be exceeded if the notes in a rapid passage continue to sound for up to one second in duration. Even on currently available synthesizers and samplers – as well as on digital organs and pianos – the available polyphony is often less than the number of keys on the keyboard (normally 61, apart from the 88 keys on most electronic pianos); typically 16, 32 or 65, only reaching 128 in a handful of models at the very end of the 20th century, as the cost of computer memory continues to fall.

The programs used by these instruments mainly affect timbres (‘sound files’); in some cases only those timbres supplied by the manufacturer can be used, in others the user is free to program a personal selection of sounds. As with a computer, while the synthesizer is switched on, sounds can be stored in and retrieved from its volatile memory (RAM – random access memory), but a permanent storage medium (ROM – read only memory) is required from which sounds can be loaded into RAM. A variety of storage systems have been adopted in different instruments. From 1976 Oberheim synthesizers included a facility for using a standard cassette tape recorder for storage (the same method was used in some Roland models, two Buchla ones, the RSF Polykobol and the Voyetra series), while a digital cassette unit (featured in the first PPG Wave) could be added to one version of the Roland MicroComposer and the Prophet 10. Punched cards like those used with some computers were introduced in the digital Allen organ in 1971, and similar cards were employed in the synthesizer-related ElectroComp Synkey, the RMI Keyboard Computer, two Buchla models, the Variophon wind-controlled synthesizer and the Deputy piano attachment, while a magnetized strip provided the storage medium in three Yamaha synthesizers and one miniature electronic ‘organ’ from the early 1980s. Many digital synthesizers use discs for storage: the 51/4'' (13·3 cm) diameter floppy disc was originally the most common, but hard (Winchester) discs, of the same size but far greater capacity, were used in the McLeyvier and Synclavier; the Fairlight had 8'' (20·3 cm) floppy discs, while the Buchla 400 began the trend for the more recent 3½'' (8·9 cm) microfloppy discs – these are still frequently used in a high density version. Other storage systems have included plug-in cartridges and cards (anticipated in 1971 in the Prestopatch on the Putney), which were originally used in the Synergy, the DX range of Yamaha synthesizers (for both ROM and RAM) and the Elkasong feature in some Elka organs, and cards are still favoured by many companies; recent occasional use of CD-ROMs; and, in the early 1980s, the bar-code reader used briefly in models in the Casiotone range; the plug-in chips that provided the ROM (programmed by the manufacturer) in some synthesizers; and the magnetic bubble memory in Kinetic Sound’s Prism synthesizer. Requirements for ever-greater storage capacity are often met by external devices that are connected via MIDI or the computer SCSI interface.

Around 1980 other aspects of the early digital synthesizer also found their way into partially digital instruments. The computer’s visual display screen has its equivalent in the small liquid-crystal display window. The knobs and switches on synthesizer consoles were often replaced by touch-pads (as in the Moog Source, and some Gulbransen organs), and the functions they control (indicated by labelling) also developed away from those introduced with the analogue instrument. There was a greater emphasis on the building and shaping of timbres, advanced by the invention of the frequency-modulation (FM) oscillator, which, by means of algorithmic structuring, can generate highly complex waveforms; oscillators of this type were used in the Yamaha DX synthesizers (fig.9), offering several ‘operators’ for each note, so that the user can assemble the timbre with great analytical care. Digital synthesis rapidly became sufficiently sophisticated to produce imitations of acoustic instruments, which, to the innocent listener, are indistinguishable from the instruments themselves.

Another possibility offered by digital electronics is the ‘sampling’ of acoustic (or electronic) sounds; any sound of up to a certain duration can be stored digitally, edited or modified, and played back by means of a keyboard or other controller at any pitch location (or many at once if the instrument is polyphonic). In the Allen organ (1971), which pioneered digital sampling in musical instruments, surprisingly authentic reproduction of pipe organ timbres was achieved with only 16 samples per second. This process (the digital equivalent of the tape-playback system in the Mellotron) was the only source of sounds in the Emulator (1981), 360 Systems’ Digital Keyboard (1982) and Movement Computer Systems’ monophonic Mimic (1983), as well as in several electronic percussion units from the early 1980s. It was also an element of the DMX-1000, Fairlight CMI, 4X, PPG Wave 2·2 and Synclavier II. Around 1982 the designers of the Fairlight were able to add a sampling facility for only some extra software programming, and a couple of years later the designers who had set up the new company Ensoniq with the intention of releasing a synthesizer as their first product, realized that their VLSI chip could form the basis of a sampler; thus their first product was the Mirage sampler (1985). Since the early 1980s sampling has increasingly become the predominant sound source in most electronic instruments.

Other synthesizers that were manufactured around 1980, some with a digital element, include the Wasp, several manufactured by Kawai (some under the name Teisco), single models produced by electronic organ companies such as Farfisa (Syntorchestra) and Elka (Synthex), RSF’s Kobol and Polykobol, Synton’s Syrinx and modular system, several marketed as kits by Powertran (including the Transcendent) and Octave-Plateau’s Cat, Kitten and programmable Voyetra series. In the early 1980s many types of analogue synthesizer were controlled by small home computers in link-ups devised by the owners of the equipment or (in a few instances) by manufacturers.

The boom in sales of electronic instruments since the late 1970s, inspired partly by their widespread use in popular (particularly rock) music, also owes a great deal to the introduction of mass-production techniques, principally by Japanese companies. In 1976 Yamaha was the first musical instrument manufacturer to develop its own LSI (large-scale integration) microchips, each equivalent to millions of transistors and other components. From around 1978 many synthesizer manufacturers made use of the range of synthesizer chips designed by Curtis Electro Music. From the late 1980s digital signal processing (DSP) chips have increasingly been used. The only area in 20th century manufacturing in which prices were continually reduced was that of products based on electronic components, beginning with the replacement of valves by more compact transistors and diodes, then of transistors by integrated circuits, and continuing with the ever-increasing capacity that can be included on a single microchip – which will probably slow down when miniaturaization reaches the molecular level. All of these become cheaper year by year (while simultaneously computer memory and speed of operation increases substantially), and have made it inevitable that the sound generation methods and the mechanisms used in earlier electric and electronic instruments, however highly certain instruments are still regarded, can only be recreated with current technology that involves lower costs of labour and materials. By the mid-1980s the cost of designing and manufacturing custom microchips had fallen so substantially that even smaller companies could afford to do this, as with Ensoniq’s VLSI chip. The availability in the early 1980s of a wider variety of microchips resulted in a rapid growth of cheap, portable keyboards, mostly battery-operated, some with narrower and/or shorter keys, but not necessarily toys. Already in 1982 the sales of such instruments totalled around 750,000.

By 1983 the larger Japanese manufacturers were beginning to introduce fully programmable digital synthesizers based on their own specialized microprocessors, with small visual displays and plug-in memory cards or floppy discs. Such production methods have appreciably reduced the cost of synthesizers, and Japanese companies have exploited their proven skill in the design of hardware and their willingness to engage external expertise in software programming when needed. Western manufacturers, by contrast – perhaps in response to the economy-consciousness of the 1980s – began to design hardware to last for a decade and to concentrate on the development and refinement of software.

A notable development in 1982–3 was the great increase in the use of home computers (from the smallest Sinclair to the Apple II – now long surpassed by more powerful machines) to control all types of synthesizers, both analogue and digital, including drum machines. Such an approach is now common among owners and users of synthesizers, at home and in the electronic music studio, many of whom understand the functioning of their instruments and have considerably expanded their capabilities by adding a computer to the system.

The agreement between several Japanese and American synthesizer manufacturers that led to the introduction of the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) in 1983 – and its subsequent expansion as General MIDI (GM) in 1991 – has had far-reaching effects. The possibility of interconnecting instruments and devices from any two or more manufacturers, in a manner that was previously available only between the individual modules in an analogue modular synthesizer (and in a few instances between different devices from the same manufacturer) meant that the arrays of individual keyboard instruments that had recently proliferated in rock music were no longer necessary; most of the instruments could be accessed remotely, without cluttering up the stage, and did not need to have keyboards. Thus companies began to separate the Controller from the synthesis section, marketing the two sections separately: the synthesizer module (as introduced in Oberheim’s synthesizer expander module, now in specialized forms such as synthesizer, digital piano and electronic organ modules and modular samplers), and the master keyboard. The latter has minimal additional MIDI controls, and is based on a weighted (usually wooden) 88-note keyboard with high quality action that gives a similar feel to that of an acoustic piano (rather than the organ keyboards used in most synthesizers), mostly with pressure and velocity (attack and release) sensitivity. Manufacturers of master keyboards include Akai, Casio, Cheetah, Deopfer, Elka, Fatar, Kawai, Korg, Kurzweil, Lync, Novation, Oberheim, Orla, Peavey, Quasimidi, Roland, Samick, Soundscape and Yamaha.

In addition to straightforward synthesizers, the so-called workstation was also introduced in the late 1980s, in which a polyphonic synthesizer is combined with a sequencer (basically a digital recorder) and substantial editing facilities. Multi-instrument keyboards (such as the ‘string synthesizer’ and polyphonic ensemble) were replaced by polyphonic synthesizers.

From the mid-1980s the parallel developments of microcomputers and programmable digital synthesizers (incorporating or linkable to a ‘reader’ of storage media such as floppy discs, plug-in microchips or data cartridges, CDs and CD-ROMs) not only permitted individual performers to create and save their own timbres instead of relying on the ‘library’ supplied by the manufacturer, but also opened up a new market for ‘back bedroom’ development of ‘third-party’ custom voices (‘patches’). ‘Patch librarians’ and ‘voicing software’ were devised for computers that could control the parameters on a synthesizer via MIDI, showing on the screen more detailed numeric or graphic overviews than were possible on the small VDU windows of synthesizers and samplers of all the variable functions relating to a particular parameter or patch; indeed some details were otherwise inaccessible to the user. Such sample editing included substantial possibilities to ‘zoom’ in and out of a sampled sound, to cut, copy and paste selected sections, and to loop or reverse them, in addition to transposition. Musicians are also able to use a MIDI link from a keyboard to a computer so that any improvisation can not only be recorded and replayed but also printed out in conventional notation; performers such as the jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, although rarely if ever playing electronic instruments in public, have built up substantial studios for compositional purposes with expensive synthesizers such as the Synclavier.

Certain aspects of the recent development of digital techniques for modifying sounds have recapitulated those previously experienced with analogue techniques, especially in live electronic music, where some younger composers in the late 1980s unwittingly duplicated with expensive computer systems the comparatively simple analogue transformation techniques that were available in the late 1960s and early 70s. Such parallels have also meant that the terminology adopted for certain digital features has proved to be useful in describing the equivalent analogue ones, as in the case of applying the term ‘sampler’ to earlier analogue instruments. Analogue equipment is designed to function in one particular manner, and anyone with relevant experience can deduce exactly what it can and cannot do. Digital equipment is the opposite, and can be called ‘transparent’: in many cases the hardware (the circuitry and mechanisms) could be used for radically different purposes, which are configured solely by the choice of software (computer program) that is applied.

With analogue electronic musical instruments it was always in the interests of manufacturers to supply the users and especially service engineers with complete circuit diagrams and descriptions of mechanisms; because a skilled engineer could often diagnose and replace a faulty component even without such assistance, a number of books were published from the late 1940s that consisted of abbreviated service manuals, with each chapter devoted to a single recent model from a major manufacturer. Subsequently, since digital instruments are usually based on custom-designed integrated circuit microchips containing the equivalent of thousands of individual electrical components, servicing by non-specialists is largely impossible and prevented by the deliberate unavailability of detailed internal information; as with most digital electronic equipment, with any purely electrical fault the tendency is to replace the offending circuit board rather than try to repair it. Another factor is that manufacturers wish to prevent their specialized designs from being copied by other companies (with minor changes to avoid patent infringements or legal problems), and, conversely, grandiose titles and acronyms sometimes conceal their own plagiarism of other approaches. Thus it is much harder to categorize digital sound-generating approaches other than in general terms, apart from the key aspects of sound synthesis and sound sampling.

In the musical field sales of several thousand instruments indicate a success: only 12,242 Minimoogs were manufactured, and the main Western synthesizers that have exceeded this are E-mu’s Proteus (70,000) and Ensoniq’s Mirage (30,000) and ESQ-1 (50,000); tens of thousands have rarely been achieved outside the major Japanese companies (Casio’s sales include substantial numbers in department stores), and only the sales of the three most successful synthesizers have totalled around a quarter of a million (Korg M1, Roland D-50 and Yamaha DX7, with sales figures similar to those of the Hammond organ model B-3/C-3). By comparison, quantities of less than a thousand were achieved for some instruments that are considered to have been of major significance, many in a medium price range.

Electronic instruments, §IV, 5: After 1945: The synthesizer

(iv) Control devices.

In the preceding discussion little mention has been made of the means by which the sound-generating and -processing devices of synthesizers may be manipulated and controlled, though it will have been clear that many of the instruments referred to in §§(ii) and (iii) have music keyboards. Appropriate synthesizer controllers have been developed for performers who are not keyboard players, of which wind controllers (first proposed by Friedrich Trautwein in 1930, but not realized) are among the most successful. Following considerable interest around 1970 in devices such as octave dividers and multipliers, several wind synthesizer controllers were marketed, such as the Electronic Valve Instrument (EVI; developed from the ‘blow tube trigger generator’), the Lyricon and the Variophon; the EVI was marketed by Akai in 1987 in both its original trumpet-like form and a saxophone-like derivative (known as the Electronic Wind Instrument, or EWI), while Yamaha’s WX series (from 1987) was partly based on the Lyricon. Articulation of notes by means of a breath-operated control is provided in synthesizers and related instruments manufactured by Crumar and Yamaha, and in the Hohner Electra-Melodica. A number of electronic percussion instruments consist of an analogue or digital synthesizer triggered by means of special drums or drumpads. Similar, finger-operated touch-pads, in which the area of contact is itself a controlling element, were used by Hugh Le Caine in his ‘printed circuit key’ (1962) and in the Buchla synthesizer (from the mid-1960s), the Kraakdoos (1969), the Lambdoma (1976–7) of Dieter Trüstedt and the Buchla 400 (1982); more sophisticated touch-sensitive fingerplates, operating in three parameters simultaneously, constitute a controller manufactured in the early 1980s by Robert A. Moog’s Big Briar company and the Touch-Sensitive Drum introduced in 1982 for the SSSP at the University of Toronto. More exotic control devices include the Snark (a tubular controller 1·5 metres long with buttons and switches), the Oestre (a small tubular controller using a laser beam) and the Laser Harp whose ‘strings’ consist of laser beams, all created in the early 1980s by the French synthesist and laser specialist Bernard Szajner; Jean-Michel Jarre has featured a similar instrument in his concerts. Interactive Light’s Dimension Beam (1993) was subsequently taken up by Roland as the D Beam.

Given that most synthesizer users are rock musicians, and that electric guitarists quickly took to the various pedal-operated sound-modification devices introduced in the 1960s, it is surprising that the guitar controller has not been more popular. In the late 1960s Vox marketed the Organ Guitar, a guitar-like instrument operated by the left hand in which contact between the strings and metal inserts in the plastic frets triggered pitches generated by oscillators. In 1977 Hagström developed a similar instrument, the Patch 2000, as a synthesizer controller. David Vorhaus’s Kaleidophon (1974), which resembles an electric bass guitar, has touch-sensitive flat plastic strips instead of strings; fingerboard controllers of this sort have also been used on a few synthesizers. The EMS Synthi Hi-Fli (c1973) consists of a small console containing various modification devices.

The first true guitar synthesizer that was both successful and reliable was introduced by Roland in around 1977. The company has produced several six-voice polyphonic instruments of this type; each consists of a specially designed guitar with switches and knobs mounted on the body (the original model had 15, one of which gives an ‘infinite sustain’) and a small synthesizer unit. The ARP Avatar (1978, an over-ambitious investment in which led to the company’s demise) was monophonic: a special pickup unit was fitted to a normal electric guitar, and the synthesizer was controlled either by the strongest signal received from it or by a single pre-selected string. 360 Systems’ Slave-Driver (1976–8) was a monophonic pitch-to-voltage convertor, designed by Bob Easton (after a prototype from 1972) for interfacing with wind, string or other controllers; it was replaced in 1979 by the polyphonic Spectre guitar synthesizer. Another monophonic controller was marketed as part of the Korg range from around 1980. Zeta Systems have produced guitar synthesizers as well as a violin synthesizer. In the mid-1980s Octave-Plateau produced a MIDI guitar, and two computerized British systems were the SynthAxe (1985) and Stephen Randall’s Stepp DG1 (1986); recent equivalents include the Ilio Digitar and the Starr Ztar.

Lightweight portable keyboard controllers, worn like a guitar, became popular with rock and jazz-rock keyboard performers around 1980, since they enabled the player to walk round the stage. Jan Hammer (who pioneered the use of the Minimoog as a ‘lead’ synthesizer) began around 1975 to play a rather cumbersome four-octave keyboard controller for an Oberheim synthesizer; named the Probe, it was specially designed and constructed by Jeremy Hill. Around 1979 the similar Clavitar was built for George Duke by Wayne Yentis. Other related controllers from around 1980 (with ranges between 32 notes and four octaves) include Performance Music Systems’ Syntar, Electronic Dream Plant’s Keytar and Sequential Circuits’ Remote Prophet. The Moog Liberation, Roland SH-101 and Yamaha CS01 are self-contained small synthesizers (weighing respectively around 6·5 and 4·5 kg) that can be played on the move.

Some pedal controllers, resembling the pedal-board of an electronic organ, have been manufactured; they include the 13- and 18-note versions of the Taurus from Moog, one-octave pedal units from several companies and the two-octave Korg Synthe-Bass. Programmable machines similar to the ‘walking bass’ units on some home electronic organs have been marketed separately, such as the Roland Bass Line.

In recent years there has been considerable development of ‘alternate’ or ‘alternative’ MIDI controllers. These include not only the above-mentioned types that resemble certain traditional instruments but also fingerboards, which continue to be valued (as in Kurzweil’s ExpressionMate, c1999), graphic tablets, arrays of switches, rotary faders, slide faders and photoelectric cells, as well as one-off units devised by or for individual musicians, including the Mathews-Boie Radio Drum, ‘data gloves’ – such as the elaborate strap-on control units of Michel Waisvisz’s De Handen (1983), Tod Machover’s Exos Dexterous Hand Master (c1989), Mark Trayle’s adaptation of the Mattel Powerglove (1990) and Laetita Sonami’s Lady’s Glove (1991) – and ‘space controllers’ involving laser beams, ultrasonic and infra-red beams, video cameras, theremin-like capacitative fields and other types of sensor (see Drawn sound, §3).

Electronic instruments, §IV, 5: After 1945: The synthesizer

(v) Repertory and ensembles.

Although the synthesizer came to prominence through recordings of arrangements of familiar works, the repertory also includes much original music. A number of musicians used the modular Moog live in concerts from the late 1960s, including Richard Teitelbaum, who played it as part of the ensemble Musica Elettronica Viva (which otherwise consisted of acoustic and amplified instruments), Keith Emerson and Paul Bley. Among the early performers on the popular Minimoog were Jan Hammer and Sun Ra, and the Polymoog was later used by Teitelbaum for solo playing. John Eaton specialized in live performance of his compositions for Synket, which include one of the few concerto-like works for solo synthesizer and orchestra, Concert Piece (1966); David Rosenboom and Bley both performed on the modular ARP 2500 and Emerson has used Korg synthesizers. Several musicians have produced multi-tracked gramophone records after the manner of Wendy Carlos, notably Isao Tomita (using a Moog), while Morton Subotnick (on a Buchla) pioneered the concept of electronic compositions designed for disc recording, sections of which were created in real time with the aid of several sequencers. Between 1972 and 1986 Dubravko Detoni included a synthesizer in 22 compositions featuring his ensemble Acezantez, mostly also with an electric organ. Recent synthesizer soloists have included Sergio Barroso and Thomas Lehn, who has continued to play an analogue instrument. Since the 1980s the synthesizer has become almost essential in the atmospheric recordings of ‘New Age’ music.

During the 1980s electronic keyboards, synthesizers and samplers began to appear increasingly regularly in new compositions for symphony orchestra, which often incorporated two such instruments. Composers who have featured electronic keyboards in several works include John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Gavin Bryars, Jonathan Harvey, York Höller, Michaël Lévinas and Michael Torke. Since the mid-1980s Stockhausen has included electronic keyboards in his ‘modern orchestra’ ensemble in many compositions. Samplers have been featured by Luciano Berio, Alexander Goehr, François-Bernard Mâche, Rolf Riehm, Manfred Stahnke, Michael Tippett, Mark-Anthony Turnage and others.

The first of several synthesizer festivals and workshops was held in Bonn in 1974. For several years from 1979 the Ars Electronica festival in Linz featured a competition for performers on synthesizers and related systems, which was won by, among others, Bruno Spoerri (Lyricon, 1979), Nyle Steiner (Electronic Valve Instrument, 1980) and Ivan Tcherepnin (Serge synthesizer with santur, 1982); non-commercial instruments were also entered in this competition.

Many synthesizer ensembles were formed in the 1970s and early 80s. They include Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co., Canadian Electronic Ensemble, Ensemble de Synthétiseurs de Vincennes, New Kitchen Sync., OdB and the New York Biofeedback Quartet. In groups such as Gentle Fire and Intermodulation, and in Stockhausen’s composition Sternklang (1971) synthesizers have been used largely to process instrumental sounds and not as the principal focus. Two synthesizers, two electronic organs and two ondes martenots formed the kernel of the Ensemble d’Instruments Electroniques de l’Itinéraire. More recently (from around 1980) groups have been formed to play digital synthesizers, such as the New Computer Trio (David Behrman, George Lewis and Teitelbaum), Computer-Trio AIR (West Germany) and the First International Computer Orchestra (Linz). In California the members of the Hub pioneered interactive links between their individual computerized systems.

By 1973 the music for about 60% of broadcast commercials in the USA was produced electronically, largely with synthesizers (this application was pioneered by Raymond Scott, Eric Siday and Jean-Jacques Perrey with Gershon Kingsley); in Britain, by contrast, the percentage of television advertisements using synthesized music was still little more than half that figure in 1983. The synthesizer has been increasingly used in film music (in the former Soviet Union and India, for example, as well as the West), and there have been isolated applications of more specialized instruments such as the Electronic Valve Instrument. In 2001 (1968) the voice of the computer Hal, singing as it is disconnected, was based on a demonstration produced with an IBM computer at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey, while the first communication with the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) was made through a five-note phrase played on an ARP synthesizer.

Quite other musical requirements are found in rock music, where the primary elements are high levels both of physical energy and of amplified sound, an often deliberate monotony of rhythm, and simple repetition. Neither musicians nor listeners are concerned about whether the sound of an electronic organ or piano resembles its acoustic equivalent: a desire for a wide range and variety of sound, and, not least, for visual impact, led around 1980 to players’ surrounding themselves on three sides by a dozen or so instruments, stacked four or more high, which usually included an electric or acoustic piano (or both) and a Mellotron or electronic organ, as well as synthesizers, often giving over 60 octaves of keyboards. Multi-keyboard performers in rock and jazz-rock (several of whom have worked with Yes) included Rick Wakeman, Vangelis, Patrick Moraz, Chick Corea, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Klaus Schulze, Jean-Michel Jarre, Joe Zawinul, Larry Fast (under the name Synergy) and George Duke; most of these musicians also produced at least one solo record based on multi-track tape techniques. The advent of MIDI meant that such multi-keyboard setups soon became outmoded, with additional keyboard or modular instruments no longer visible onstage. Other types of synthesizer, besides those with keyboards – for example the wind- and guitar-controlled instruments mentioned in §(iv) – found their chief application in rock music; electronic percussion units (or drum synthesizers), achieved phenomenal success in 1982, not long after they first became widely available, and subsequently formed the basis of many of the styles popular in the 1990s.

The first pop groups to lay particular emphasis on their use of synthesizers (which often made up the entire instrumentarium) began to appear in about 1977; they included the Yellow Magic Orchestra, Human League, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Depeche Mode. A rather different approach was adopted by synthesizer groups such as Tangerine Dream, whose music is drawn out, enveloping and hypnotic, and Kraftwerk, whose performing style was intended to be mechanical, even robot-like. A similar restraint could be seen in the work of Brian Eno, who largely restricted himself to the use of a single instrument, the Putney. With the exception of Sun Ra, Paul Bley and Annette Peacock, jazz musicians came later to the synthesizer.

In the early 1980s the synthesizer began to be known in non-Western countries. It has found its way into the popular music of African countries such as Nigeria, and (as mentioned above) has been employed by the Indian film industry. Touring rock musicians have introduced it into countries where it was not otherwise available – Jean-Michel Jarre, for example, was the first Western musician to perform on synthesizers in China.

Electronic instruments, §IV: After 1945

6. Newly invented instruments and sound systems.

The majority of electronic instruments have been those that electrical engineers have invented and manufacturers have made and marketed. But composers, performers and musical instrument inventors have also devised their own electric and electronic instruments and sound-generating systems; they include (in the earlier period) Mager, Helberger, Martenot, Obukhov and Sala, and, later, inventors who have been primarily musicians (Percy Grainger, Raymond Scott, Nyle Steiner, Michel Waisvisz, Serge Tcherepnin, Salvatore Martirano and William Buxton) or have had substantial musical training or involvement (Hugh Le Caine, Robert A. Moog, Donald Buchla and Thomas Oberheim). In 1975 Gordon Mumma published a wide-ranging survey of these aspects of electronic music. The area of sound-generating systems overlaps to some extent with that of Sound sculpture.

(i) Electroacoustic and electromechanical techniques.

(ii) Acoustic feedback.

(iii) Electronic oscillators.

(iv) Synthesizers and other sound systems.

(v) Miscellaneous equipment.

(vi) Control devices and techniques.

Electronic instruments, §IV, 6: After 1945: Newly invented instruments and sound systems

(i) Electroacoustic and electromechanical techniques.

During the 1930s there was considerable activity in the area of electroacoustic instruments, especially string instruments of every sort. But it was only after World War II that such activities began to include inventions that bore little or no resemblance to conventional instruments. From the late 1940s music on tape (electronic music and musique concrète) produced in a studio became the mainstream of experimental work in creative musical electronics, and it was not until the work of composers such as John Cage (from 1960) and Stockhausen (from 1964) that the subcategory of live electronic music created in ‘real time’ began to be identified. (At some point in the future it is likely that the two will be reversed, with studio-composed recorded music being reserved for certain procedures that will continue to be too time-consuming or require too much computer power for live performance to be practical.) Four areas can be identified, in each of which the majority of work features real time transformation (sometimes only the last of several stages of processing) of sound sources by means of electronic equipment: sounds played on traditional instruments; sounds played on specially modified or constructed acoustic or amplified instruments or other sound sources; electronically-generated sound sources including those of synthesizers, other electronic instruments and acoustic feedback; and sounds from sources external to the performance space, often pre-recorded. This article has so far been primarily concerned with the third of these areas; the present section concentrates on systems developed by composers and improvisers in the fourth area.

In the second area John Cage pioneered the amplification of unusual sound sources in his Cartridge Music (1960; amplified ‘small sounds’), which has been followed by the use of electromagnetic and piezoelectric pickups to amplify acoustic sounds in many contexts. Between 1964 and 1969 Max Neuhaus amplified some of his solo percussion installations; similar applications include Walter de Maria’s sculptural ‘Instrument for La Monte Young’ (1965), in which an aluminium ball is rolled very slowly to and fro inside an amplified aluminium trough, and the Artaudofoon sculptural metal percussion instrument constructed by Frans de Boer-Lichtveld for Peter Schat’s Electrocutie (1966), which contained 40 contact microphones. Besides percussion instruments, Allan Bryant constructed a series of amplified instruments in which sounds are produced by rubber bands, steel springs and strings (1966–7). Similar applications of amplification to invented string instruments have been carried out by Mauricio Kagel in his Rahmenharfe (1969) and by Dieter Trüstedt in the series of ch’in instruments (based on the Chinese qin) and wind harps constructed since 1975. Amplification is used in most of Hugh Davies’s concert instruments (since 1968), the sound installations of Richard Lerman and the Terrain Instruments of Leif Brush (all three have explored sources that are acoustically virtually inaudible), some of the sound sculptures of Takis, and instruments built since the 1970s by Paul Lytton, Godfried-Willem Raes, Tom Nunn, Chris Brown, Mario Bertoncini, the Sonde group, Max Eastley, Peter Appleton, Adam Bohman and many others.

During the 1960s a number of composers began building live-electronic transformation equipment for use with conventional instruments and other acoustic sound sources. Mumma was especially active in this area: his ‘cybersonic consoles’ interact with the musicians in Hornpipe (1967) and other works, and he designed the Sound-Modifier Console that was used in the Pepsi-Cola pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka; he also created works involving telemetry belts with accelerometers (sensitive pickups) and frequency-modulated VHF oscillators.

Although the fourth area of live electronic techniques, that involving sound sources pre-recorded on sound playback equipment, was initially the least common, it has in recent years taken on a similar importance to that of the third area. A number of musicians have devised instruments based on electromechanical sound playback equipment such as the tape recorder, gramophone and compact disc player; these techniques are in some cases related to those of drawn sound, applications of which to musical instruments are detailed in §I, 3(ii), above. A method of composing directly on to magnetic tape without the assistance of a tape recorder was developed in the late 1940s in New York by Abraham A. Frisch who invented special magnetic stencils for the purpose; like McLaren and other film makers, Frisch made a set of magnetic dies to enable him to record a wide range of sounds with great precision, using 35 mm sprocketed magnetic tape subdivided into five parallel tracks. Further creative uses of magnetic tape (the standard 1/4'' width), in which a complete tape recorder is not required, include several applications that involve moving the tape past a fixed tape head, such as the ‘tape bow violin’ of Laurie Anderson and an early instrument built by Michel Waisvisz, in both of which the tape is moved manually. The Lateral Thinking Instrument made by Akio Suzuki consists of lengths of pre-recorded 1/4'' magnetic tape, glued together to form a large rectangle over which tape heads are moved manually; the same principle was developed in MAP₁ and MAP₂ (1967–8) by the American composer Jon Hassell, but here the tape carries additional layers of sound pre-recorded over the tape square in different directions by means of a hand-held recording head.

Gramophone records have been manipulated in related ways: in Cage’s Imaginary Landscape no.1 (1939) and no.3 (1942) 78 r.p.m. shellac discs are subjected to speed changes and the performer lifts and replaces the arm carrying the cartridge so that there are breaks in the sound; subsequent works by Cage that feature multiple turntables are 31/3 (1969) for audience participation and Europeras 3 & 4 (1990), with six machines. From the early 1980s Christian Marclay specialized in performing on a dual ‘disco’ turntable unit, manipulating long-play vinyl discs that were deliberately warped, scratched or assembled as a collage from several different recordings; in 1991 Marclay devised the installation One Hundred Turntables. Other turntable specialists include David Shea, Martin Tétreault, Otomo Yoshihide, Merzbow (Masami Akita), Claus von Bebber, Rik Rue, Erik M, Frank Schulte, Philip Jeck (his Vinyl Requiem, 1993, requires up to 180 1950s record players), Pierre Basatien (Musiques paralloïdres, c1998) and Janek Schaefer (whose variable speed and reversible ‘tri-phonic turntable’ has three arms and pick-ups). Similar techniques were devised from the early 1970s by disc jockeys with two turntables in what became hip hop and rap, including Scratching, in which a distinctive rhythm squeaking and whistling sound is prodcued when records are rotated backwards and forwards by hand (requiring a more flexible and robust stylus mounting). A favourite machine has been the Technics SL-1200 Mk.2 (1978), which features a slide potentiometer for varying the speed; other companies soon followed suit, sometimes in the form of a special disco unit containing twin turntables and a mixer, and since 1994 several equivalent CD machines have been available.

Such manipulations of sound recordings have not been limited to the medium of analogue discs; equivalent treatments are possible with the digital format of the compact disc. Since 1984 Yasunao Tone has ‘prepared’ compact discs by attaching to them thin strips of perforated tape that partially mask the reading of the encoded digits, thus affecting pitch and timbre (Music for 2 CD Players, 1985). Nicholas Collins, David Weinstein, Tim Spelios and Ikue Mori, in the group Impossible Music, have modified the functioning of compact disc players by software control, creating, for example, repeated loops of selected passages. A compact disc player with ‘scratching’ facility has been marketed, and similar features have been included in the 1990s in dance-oriented sampling keyboards from manufacturers such as Casio, Roland and Yamaha.

From the 1980s other musicians whose work was based on pre-recorded materials opted for several analogue cassette tape recorders (in many cases replaced during the early 1990s by digital DAT cassette machines) with a wide range of their own recordings that could be rapidly interchanged (an impossibility in the handful of earlier pieces that were based on material pre-recorded on reel-to-reel tapes). In the mid-1990s it became affordable for musicians to ‘burn’ their own recordings onto compact discs; these have often replaced cassette tapes or other recorded media for the introduction of external sounds into the performance space. Such musicians also often adopted samplers when they became increasingly affordable in the second half of the 1980s, often in combination with other sound processors (sometimes specially constructed or adapted) and/or commercial synthesizers, in some cases under computer control. Musicians who have worked with such combinations of ‘black boxes’ include David Tudor, Ron Kuivila, Richard Teitelbaum, Marek Chołoniewski, Voice Crack (Norbert Möslang and Andy Guhl), Rolf Julius, Michael Prime, Andres Bosshard, members of the Hub, Bob Ostertag, Arcane Device (David Myers), Otomo Yoshihide, Yamatsuke Eye, Sachiko M, Matt Wand, Mats Lindström, Matt Rogalsky, Richard Barrett, Rik Rue, Jérôme Noetinger, Lionel Marchetti, Gert-Jans Prins, and the sound poet Jörg Burkhard. In some cases a specially designed or modified controller is used, mostly with MIDI, as with Michel Waisvisz (De Handen), Nicholas Collins (‘trombone-propelled electronics’, in which the trombone does not sound) and Peter Beyls (Oscar), as well as several musicians who employ ‘space control’ or ‘data gloves’ (see §5(iv) above); similar systems have been used in combination with traditional instruments, among others by Pauline Oliveros (the Expanded Instrument System, with an accordion tuned in just intonation), by Peter Cusack (‘bouzouki-controlled samples’), by Pamela Z (BodySynth controller, primarily for processing her voice) and by several violinists: Jon Rose, Takehisa Kosugi, Philipp Wachsmann, Carlos Zingaro, Phil Durrant and Kaffe Matthews.

Another approach to using existing external sound is the live treatment of broadcast sounds ‘from the air’, for example, sounds captured from radio broadcasts in Collins’s Devil’s Music (1985), by Disinformation (Joe Banks) – often recorded in advance, from a variety of natural and man-made sources such as electrical storms and data transfer broadcasts – and by Scanner (Robin Rimbaud), based on mobile telephone conversations.

Electronic instruments, §IV, 6: After 1945: Newly invented instruments and sound systems

(ii) Acoustic feedback.

The phenomenon of acoustic feedback (described in §I, 5(ii), above) has been widely exploited as a source of sounds and as a means of modifying sounds produced by other sources. A number of composers have devised different methods of altering the pitch of the feedback sound: in Mesías Maiguashca’s A Mouth Piece (1970) microphones are moved around and their relationships with the loudspeaker are modified by means of cardboard tubes and the performers’ mouth cavities, while in Hugh Davies’s Quintet (1967–8) the connections between individual microphones and loudspeakers are permutated. The interaction of feedback and acoustic sound sources has been explored by David Behrman in Wave Train and Players with Circuits (both 1966), in which vibrating objects such as piano strings are used, Max Neuhaus in his realizations for percussion of Cage’s Fontana Mix (from 1965), and Robert Ashley (The Wolfman, 1964) and Maiguashca who have combined feedback with singing. Alvin Lucier has mixed electronically generated sounds with feedback in Bird and Person Dyning (1975), and in David Tudor’s Microphone (1973) a high degree of filtering is applied to feedback sounds. The phenomenon has also been exploited in Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music (1968) by members of Composers Inside Electronics (particularly in the work of John Driscoll) and by Nicholas Collins and Paul Earls.

Electronic instruments, §IV, 6: After 1945: Newly invented instruments and sound systems

(iii) Electronic oscillators.

Considerable use has been made of oscillators in concert performances. To begin with composers and performers utilized oscillators manufactured for non-musical purposes (as test equipment), but later they had them specially made for greater stability or took them from modular synthesizers. In some cases they are employed to produce static pedal points and drones, in others to create glissandos, sometimes very slowly; pulse oscillators generate periodic clicks which can be accelerated to produce sustained pitches. The earliest works to include electronic oscillators manipulated as instruments were the two by Cage mentioned above: in Imaginary Landscape no.1 the discs used have oscillator frequencies recorded on them for test purposes, and in no.3 they are combined with oscillators operated directly. Similar applications were made by Paul Boisselet in several works begun in the mid-1940s and completed between 1949 and 1964 (including Symphonie rouge and Symphonie jaune), and by the Turkish composer Bülent Arel who composed a work for string quartet and electronic oscillator in 1957.

Cage’s close associate David Tudor began to use oscillators in 1964 in Fluorescent Sound, and from the late 1960s he constructed his own oscillator circuits for works such as the first of the ‘Rainforest’ series (1968). Between 1969 and 1977 he collaborated with the composer Lowell Cross and the physicist and sculptor Carson Jeffries on the ‘Video/Laser’ series of performances and sound environments, in which electronic sounds and laser images are controlled by the same circuitry; Cross continued this work with a team at the University of Iowa. Cross was also the designer of the photoelectric control circuitry built into a chessboard for Reunion (1968), in which moves executed on the board in the course of a game between Cage and Marcel Duchamp controlled the sounds of live-electronic and electroacoustic works by Behrman, Cross, Mumma and Tudor.

Alvin Lucier’s work is largely concerned with acoustical phenomena and has frequently involved specially designed electronic oscillators for delineating and exploring specific sound environments; his first work of this kind was Vespers (1968), in which hand-held echolocation devices called Sondols (‘sonar dolphins’) produce short periodic pulses, the speed of which can be altered. The interference patterns formed by two or more sine waves, which set up standing waves, are explored in Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas (1973–4), and similar patterns, caused by the diffractions of sine waves, are the basis of Outlines of Persons and Things (1975) and Crossings (1982–4), in which respectively physical objects and the sounds of an amplified orchestra create the interference; many subsequent works have explored the latter combination with either soloists or ensembles. An ‘electronic bird’ is the principal sound-source in Bird and Person Dyning (1975), a sine wave electromagnetically drives a long metal string in Music on a Long Thin Wire (1977) and two sine waves are combined in the body of a cello in Directions of Sound from the Bridge (1978). Two other works, The Queen of the South (1972), based on the visual (Chladni) patterns produced by different frequencies, and Tyndall Orchestrations (1976), which concentrates on the responses of gas flames to sounds, may use any sound-sources, but are particularly effective when oscillators are employed.

Other composers have made more occasional use of oscillators and of instruments based on them. Stockhausen’s Alphabet (1972) pursues similar applications to those in the last two works by Lucier mentioned above: several oscillators create Chladni patterns, shatter panes of glass and affect gas flames and the movements of fish swimming in a tank of water. Hugh Davies has exploited difference tones between oscillators and other sound sources in Quintet (1967–8) and Mobile with Differences (1973). For Organica I–IV (early 1970s) David Johnson devised a set of hand-held tubes containing small oscillators.

Oscillators have found a number of applications in sound environments built since the 1960s. Systems controlled by photoelectric cells were designed by Toshi Ichiyanagi for Takamatsu City (1964) and a Tokyo department store (1966) using oscillators specially created by Jyunosuke Okuyama, and by James Seawright and Howard Jones for sound sculptures in the mid- to late 1960s. Sustained and pulse oscillators have been incorporated in several environments constructed since 1967 by Max Neuhaus and since 1969 by Michael Brewster, and in open-air installations by Stuart Marshall; similar work has been carried out by Maryanne Amacher and Liz Phillips. From 1966 Takehisa Kosugi explored the fluctuations of audio and radio frequency oscillators and receivers when they are moved by currents of air, and since the early 1980s he has constructed quiet installations of banks of miniature pulse oscillators (‘electronic crickets’) that, especially in the Interspersion series, produce complex patterns of clicks; similar approaches are the installations of Rolf Julius and the electronic ‘frogs’ of Felix Hess. Also in 1966 La Monte Young began work on his environmental Drift Studies for two or more precisely tuned, custom-built sine-wave generators.

Electronic instruments, §IV, 6: After 1945: Newly invented instruments and sound systems

(iv) Synthesizers and other sound systems.

A number of musicians have developed their own specialized electronic sound systems and synthesizers, of which the best-known are the Serge and Waisvisz’s Kraakdoos family. In the mid-1960s the jazz saxophonist Gil Mellé constructed several small electronic instruments, which included the Electar (a simple form of string synthesizer), the Doomsday Machine (electronic cymbal sounds), the Effects Generator and Tome VI (a miniature synthesizer built inside a soprano saxophone), and subsequently (for science fiction film scores) the Percussotron III and the Tubo Continuum (a string instrument 9 metres in length) with a digital modulator. Modular synthesizers were built by Allan Bryant (around 1968) and David Rosenboom, whose Neurona (1969) was briefly manufactured. Self-playing synthesizers and other electronic systems were devised by Stanley Lunetta for sound sculptures and concerts from 1967, and two small synthesizers were constructed by Dieter Trüstedt in 1974 and 1976–7. Two unusual large-scale programmable instruments are Léo Küpper’s GAME and Martirano’s Sal-Mar Construction; in both of these prepared musical sequences are stored for immediate access for further processing in live performance. In 1989–92 Forrest Warthman constructed a unique ‘neural-network synthesizer’ for David Tudor.

During the 1970s musicians began to work with increasingly miniaturized circuitry and microcomputers. Since around 1972 Behrman has developed special modules, some of which are controlled by microcomputers, while Paul de Marinis’s Pygmy Gamelan (1973) produces melodic patterns that are affected by changes in its environment. Microcomputer systems have been an area of particular interest to Californian musicians: the poet and musician Larry Wendt has built small modules for use in his performances and the members of the Microcomputer Network Band (including Jim Horton, John Bischoff and Rich Gold) have invented various devices. A percussion synthesizer was built in 1973–4 by Jim Gordon, and small synthesizers were devised in Australia by Carl Vine and in Belgium by Godfried-Willem Raes. ‘Low-level’ electronic systems have been assembled by Warren Burt and Ron Nagorka. A comparatively recent development is the activity of amateur musicians working at home for their own amusement, who have assembled synthesizers from commercial modules or entirely from basic components.

Electronic instruments, §IV, 6: After 1945: Newly invented instruments and sound systems

(v) Miscellaneous equipment.

Some composers and instrument builders have been inventive in their use of electronic equipment not normally regarded as having musical applications. This approach was encouraged in the USA by the formation in the mid-1960s of Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT), which promoted projects in which creative artists and engineers cooperated on a one-to-one basis. In 1966 EAT presented a series called ‘Nine Evenings: Theatre and Engineering’ in New York, for which Tudor composed Bandoneon! and Cage his Variations VII; Cage’s work uses electronic sounds derived from communications and monitoring equipment such as a radio receiver, a sonar device and a Geiger counter.

Since 1973 several members of the group Composers Inside Electronics have explored somewhat peripheral aspects of electronics and electromechanical systems: Ralph Jones has constructed circuits incorporating old and reject electronic components, and similar explorations have been carried out by Philip Edelstein and Bill Viola.

Electronic instruments, §IV, 6: After 1945: Newly invented instruments and sound systems

(vi) Control devices and techniques.

The traditional relationship between performer and instrument – the physical manipulation by the player of the sound-generating device – has been extended by some composers and inventors who have exploited certain properties of the human body, such as its ability to supply capacitance and resistance in an electrical circuit, and the various functions of the nervous system. The theremin was the earliest instrument to make use of variable body capacitance, which was provided by movements of the performer’s hand in front of the instrument’s antenna; similar tactile control methods are employed in Eremeeff’s Gnome, Hugh Le Caine’s ‘printed circuit key’, the Kraakdoos, and the Sal-Mar Construction. Alpha rhythms (brain-waves), picked up by electrodes attached to the performer’s head, have been used to control acoustic sound sources in Lucier’s Music for Solo Performer (1965) and electronic devices in works by Manford Eaton, Richard Teitelbaum, David Rosenboom, and Pierre Henry in collaboration with Roger Lafosse. Control voltages derived in other ways from the state of the human body have been exploited by Ruth Anderson (Centering, 1979) and Gordon Mumma, and similar voltages taken from plants have been used in works by John Lifton and Jeremy Lord, in the Stereofernic Orchidstra of Ed Barnett, Norman Lederman and Gary Burke, and in Mamoru Fujieda’s Ecological Plantron and Plantron Mind.

Other specially devised control systems have depended on more conventional electronic equipment. Robert A. Moog developed a set of proximity-sensing antennae for use in Cage’s Variations V (1965), and in the mid-1970s Walter Stangl constructed the light-sensitive Moviophon for the K & K Experimentalstudio of Dieter Kaufmann and Gunda König for use in music-theatre works. Various ‘musical stages’, the movements of the performers on which trigger sound-generating equipment, have been constructed; they include Termen’s Terpsitone (1932), the Pedaphonic Dansomat (1967) developed at the University of Hawaii, the Aanraker (1978) made by Michel Waisvisz to control a variant of his Kraakdoos, and the Soundstair (1977) devised by Robert Dezmelyk for Christopher Janney, who has developed this idea in various public spaces, such as a shopping mall, a subway station and an airport. Interruption of light and other beams has been used in a variety of systems, by composers such as Jacques Serrano, Qubais Reed Ghazala, Rolf Gehlhaar and Godfried-Willem Raes (Holosound); some of these are described in Drawn sound.

Ghazala has coined the term ‘circuit-bending’ to indicate electronic instruments that have been created by means of home-made modifications to either existing battery-powered electronic instruments or to other electronic apparatus that is intended to produce sound; in some cases this can be achieved with minimal electronic knowledge. The early electronic experiments of Termen, Martenot and Béthenod, dating from late World War I, were based on the fact that a radio receiver could be made to oscillate when someone’s hand was placed in close proximity to its circuitry. In the 1950s Louis Barron devised self-destructive electronic circuits (as in the soundtrack for Forbidden Planet, 1956, composed in collaboration with Bebe Barron). Other ‘creative mis-wiring’ was an early speciality of Michel Waisvisz (starting with a VCS-3), Godfried-Willem Raes, Robin Whittle and Mats Lindström.

Electronic sound installations, often requiring many loudspeakers, have been devised by Max Neuhaus, Christina Kubisch, Maryanne Amacher, Robin Minard and Sabine Schäfer (TopoPhonien).

Electronic instruments, §IV: After 1945

7. Prospects.

Two of the most significant aspects of the development of electronic technology have been the steady progress towards smaller and more complex components, and the substantial lowering of their prices once each new stage of miniaturization was established. At the end of the 20th century the miniaturization of electronic components had advanceed so far that a circuit equivalent to that of a large electronic organ of the 1930s, with a separate oscillator for each note, could be accommodated on a single very large-scale integration (VLSI) microchip; recent electronic organs, pianos and synthesizers can contain as many such circuits, lined up in rows, as an early electronic instrument had components.

Three approaches that were new to music were introduced and established in (or in association with) electronic music studios in the late 1940s and the 1950s: the use of individual devices for generating, shaping and processing sound signals (leading to the individual devices for generating, shaping and processing sound signals (leading to the synthesizer), the manipulation and storage of sounds on tape (leading to the digital sampling and storage of sounds) and computer synthesis (leading to digital sound synthesis); all three are now integrated in the digital synthesizer, which can replace nearly all the equipment in an electronic music studio. Historical precedent shows that a period of separate evolution of a new element is followed by its increasing fusion with the previous mainstream. This phenomenon previously manifested itself in the mutual influence of synthesizers and earlier electronic instruments based on the established acoustic instrumentarium, such as the electronic organ, electric piano and electric guitar; synthesizer designers, however, lacking an acoustic model to mimic, have not had the same motivation to reach any form of standardization, even within the range of models that are on the market at any one time.

Many of the most recent and likely future developments in electronic instruments can be seen as the ramifications of the end of what can be called the ‘first digital era’ in the late 1870s (see §II), and, following a century of analogue methods of producing and storing sound, the recent beginning of a second digital (or hybrid) era. The only method or recording sound that was available in the first digital era was that employed in mechanical musical instruments, primarily in the form of pinned barrels – a far cry from today’s sophisticated methods made possible by the harnessing of electrical technology. A comparison between the capabilities of analogue sound recording and the subsequent digital methods shows substantial quantitative – especially as applied to samplers – and (at least potentially) qualitative improvements. It is often more effective to control a system indirectly, via an interface from a different framework. Thus although music is primarily analogue in nature, its individual parameters in both synthesis and sampling can be codified in numerical terms, which are more easily handled in a digital format. The digital future of electronic instruments will inevitably reflect computer developments.

Although music has long been seen as being closely related to mathematics, and its various parameters can easily be quantified numerically, the elements that contribute to expressivity and richness of timbre are, on what might be called a ‘microsonic’ level, mathematically highly complex. A solo violinist, for example, playing mezzo forte in a medium register can still be heard clearly against the main body of orchestral strings because the sound of a group of acoustic instruments playing in ‘unison’ has a blurred sheen to it that results from a combination of very slightly different versions of the same pitch, uncoordinated speeds of vibrato, varying dynamic levels and so on; the solo part itself contains similar irregularities in pitch, vibrato and dynamic. No instrumental sound is as ‘perfect’ as its electronic equivalent, and it is difficult to recreate these features accurately by means of electronic circuitry, requiring sophisticated methods of mimicking – in addition to the imperfections mentioned above – almost imperceptibly out-of-tune or even out-of-phase octaves and unisons, and minute delays to lower pitches. Samples of acoustic instruments go some way to remedying this, but few samplers or sample CD-ROMs to date offer sufficient samples to recreate every possible imperfection for every pitch within the range of a single instrument. If such subtleties of musical expression cannot yet be effectively recreated on digital electronic instruments, the failure to do so is temporary, being largely dependent on the amount of computer memory available and its speed of operation.

The analogue era enabled the application of electricity to music and many other areas of everyday use to expand rapidly from what had been achieved previously, and in doing so initiated major changes that profoundly affected the lives of every human being who was alive in the 20th century. An example of its effect on music can be seen in the field of home entertainment, where the cylinder phonograph and the disc gramophone, and especially the advent in the early 1920s of civilian radio broadcasting and electrical amplification, largely superseded domestic music making.

A more direct link with the changeovers between digital and analogue methods can be seen with the player piano. Improvements in its mechanism continued to be made in the early years of the 20th century, but, because as a keyboard instrument it is more digital than analogue in nature, progress petered out around the time that other, less taxing, forms of home entertainment became widely available. Between 1917 and 1930 a number of composers wrote music for player pianos and mechanical organs, but subsequently attention became focused on the newer analogue resources of electronic instruments, hand-drawn film soundtracks and manipulation of gramophone records. Thus it comes as no surprise that in the second digital era, particularly from the mid-1980s, and in parallel with the development of the computer, a variety of sophisticated forms of the player piano have appeared, both for recording music and for playing it back; since in a piano the discrimination of individual pitches is far more straightforward than on monophonic instruments, being a purely mechanical function, designers have been able concentrate on methods of detecting miniscule variations in attack, key pressure, and so on. As far as the involvement of composers has been concerned, several isolated activities prior to the digital innovations of the 1980s are the exceptions that prove the rule: Conlon Nancarrow began to explore hitherto neglected possiblities of the player piano in around 1948, but a revival of interest in the instrument only came about in the 1980s after his music became better known, while the use of the barrel organ by Dutch composers from the late 1960s can be attributed partly to a museum’s interest in generating new repertory for a newly acquired street organ and partly to the sociopolitical ideas that pertained in Holland at that time. The best-known recent form of player piano, Yamaha’s Disklavier, has already attracted a range of composers.

A major difference between analogue and digital methods is that whereas a specialist can examine any item of analogue equipment and deduce everything that it is capable of (short of someone modifying its internal circuitry), all items of digital equipment consist of ‘transparent’ hardware that can be configured, through software programs, into any one of a wide variety of often unrelated simulations of analogue devices (such as mimicking a typewriter in a word-processing program). With electronic instruments, and especially the synthesizer (the major innovation in 20th century instruments), greater flexibility can be achieved, sometimes even providing access to options that the manufacturer decided not make available, when they are linked to separate microcomputers, and, when this link involves MIDI, their functioning can be affected by any changes carried out on an external device (or vice versa).

The rapid growth in digital technology at the end of the 20th century, as exemplified by the introduction of MIDI and the proliferation of ever more powerful microcomputers in all areas of work and recreation has seem some unusual realignments in the types of manufactured electronic musical instruments. Master keyboard controllers have been introduced, keyboardless sound modules have proliferated, synthesizers now often incorporate a sequencer, a sampler or a drum machine (occasionally even a vocoder), and in their basic funtions have partly replaced single-manual electronic organs; analogue tape recorders have largely given way to multi-track sequencers, electric pianos have been replaced by digital pianos with samples of the timbres of earlier electric pianos, and keyboard samplers have consigned the string machines of the 1970s to the scrapheap. More powerful computers and more sophisticated software are beginning to make practicable the software equivalent of earlier devices such as popular analogue synthesizers, and in future much more is likely to be achievable entirely in software.

Outside music, existing categories of electronic equipment have found strange bedfellows. In the early 21st century it is possible to view films on a home computer and to listen to tracks of popular music (in the MP3 music format) on a mobile telephone, in both cases ‘downloaded’ from the internet; some rock groups have begun to issue recordings on the internet rather than on CD, and this also provides opportunities for musicians who lack a recording contract to issue their music publicly. The extraordinarily rapid growth at the very end of the 20th century of the internet (the term is used here not only to cover its meaning as the interlinked global computer network, but also the World Wide Web, consisting of millions of cross-linked web sites, that first became possible with software written in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee, and has potentially brough access to the internet to everyone on the planet) was initially achieved via existing copper-wire telephone cables, designed for use with a much earlier analogue system. These are beginning to be replaced with fibre-optic cables, that are suitable only for digital transmissions, and include two different new systems: Integrated Services Distributed Network (ISDN), which offers a much faster transmission of information over two parallel lines, and Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Loop (ADSL), which is intended to provide a permanent internet connection for subscribers. European telephone tariffs for local calls are being restructured to approach more closely those in North America, where they are unmetered, thus making internet access more affordable. It is impossible to imagine how great the effect of the internet will be on the diffusion of recorded music and, to a lesser extent, the development of new electronic instruments and software.

In the long run it is unlikely that the range of different types of equipment will be reduced, either in music or in other contexts, even if most functions were to be available on stand-alone computers; apart from other considerations, completely independent applications would sometimes require simultaneous access to a single computer. In the near future the existing forms of computer, widespread at the end of the 20th century, which feature an alphanumeric keyboard and a screen (usually a bulky monitor that resembles a television set), are unlikely to become so cheap that an average household would invest in several such machines, which feature elements that are superfluous in certain contexts. A wider variety of more specialized ‘dedicated’ computers will be needed for very different purposes, with differently-sized consoles, screens (which will increasingly be flat liquid crystal displays (LCD), as in today’s portable computers, or more expensive plasma screens), memory capacity and optional features such as controllers; apart from the existing desktop, laptop and palmtop consoles, some forms will be closer to the electronic organizer or Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), the electronic games console or the latest generation of mobile telephones with small screens and sometimes a miniature alphanumeric keyboard. Among other factors, this will be aided by the development of new, more economical chips (as in Transmeta’s Crusoe microprocessor, introduced at the turn of the 21st century as an alternative to chips such as Intel’s Pentium), and simpler and more flexible operating systems (like the somewhat earlier freely available Linux, originally devised by Linus Torvalds, which offers a completely different direction from that of the ever-more complex Windows systems from Microsoft). Speech recognition software, becoming increasingly sophisticated at the end of the 20th century, will become standardized in many situations, and may make the alphanumeric keyboard largely redundant. The range of systems for music, for example, will include composition machines with larger screens to show scores in a double-page spread, while electronic organ enthusiasts will want large instruments with two manuals and a pedal-board, but comparatively simple computerized features (apart from the internal sound generation), such as a drum machine or a sequencer, just as some models in the 1970s incorporated a cassette machine.

From the mid-1980s it became possible for more and more of the functions available in analogue equipment to be executed in software, either on electronic instruments or, via MIDI, on microcomputers. A single page on a computer screen can show far more information about the settings used in various parameters than is possible on an electronic instrument’s own screen, although there are inevitably too many details for most purposes; early software tended to show most of the information in tabular form, sometimes with several dozen numeric values, but without a method of highlighting the most important settings for each particular context. More appropriate graphic forms of presentation, often directly modelled on the layout of the equivalent piece of equipment, have largely resolved this problem.

Flat loudspeakers, an early dream that was first attempted in Quad’s electrostatic loudspeaker in the 1950s, are likely to be perfected in the near future in the form of flat panels; an alternative possibility, at least in certain contexts, is the ability to create audible sound only within a small area at the intersection of two ultrasonic beams, one modulated, the other a carrier. A solution to another old problem, that of the tangle of wires found in most concert set-ups and recording studios, is currently a major area of research; it is more complex than the wireless element of radio broadcasts, walkie-talkies, mobile telephones, the ultra-high frequency transmission used with radio microphones, and the infra-red remote controls for televisions and other domestic equipment. Wireless connectivity for high-speed data transmission, based on Intel’s Bluetooth radio communication standard, will become available early in the 21st century, initially with the most popular digital equipment (computers, mobile telephones, television sets and cameras). Developments are likely in methods of controlling synthesizers: apart from a growing range of unusual and flexible controllers, exploration of direct control by the brain has been carried out in medical research (the idea of such a man-machine interface is a familiar one in science fiction), with an interface fitted to the back of the head (or even by means of an implanted microchip). Features like this and speech communication with machines have been under investigation for over two decades, and in some cases early initiatives were overtaken by technological progress.

The last 20 years of the 20th century have seen research, leading to book publication, on several of the pioneers of electronic music (primarily analogue}, including Thaddeus Cahill, Lev Termen, Maurice Martenot and Hugh Le Caine. Similar researches on the work of Jörg Mager, Friederich Trautwein, Benjamin F. Miessner and Harald Bode are still needed. Although many electric and earlier electronic instruments survive, and some are still in use, until the 1980s there were few systematic attempts to assemble collections of such instruments. The first was that of the privately owned Electronic Arts Foundation in Tampa, Florida, founded in 1972, which closed after a major fire. A more specialized collection was that held by the Hugh Le Caine Project in Toronto. A few electronic instruments are in public collections, such as the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and the Musikinstrumenten-Museum in Berlin. Since the mid-1980s several public and privately-owned museums devoted to electronic instruments have been established, mostly containing over 100 instruments (many second-hand dealers who specialise in this field often have an equivalent quantity of instruments in stock, not all of which are of similar interest); public museums include the Haags Gemeentemuseum, the Museum of Hammond Organs (Peninsula, OH), the New England Synthesizer Museum (Nashua, NH), the EMIS Synthesizer Museum (Bristol), the Museum of Synthesizer Technology (near Bishop’s Stortford), the Audio Playground (Orlando, FL) and Das Keyboardmuseum (Austria). This interest has been shared by many rock musicians, some of whom have accumulated substantial quantities of ‘vintage’ instruments, considerably increasing the secondhand value of the more significant ones. In the long term, however, most of the existing supplies of essential spare parts will be exhausted; an alternative is the availability of the sounds of such instruments as samples on CD-ROMs. This nostalgia is similar to that regarding vinyl gramophone records now that they have been almost entirely superseded by compact discs.

Electronic instruments, §IV: After 1945

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

to 1920

1920 to 1945

1945 to 1965

1965 to 1985

since 1985

For further bibliography see Drawn sound; Electric guitar; Electric piano; Electronic organ and Synthesizer.

Electronic instruments: Bibliography

to 1920

C.G. Page: ‘The Production of Galvanic Music’, American Journal of Science, xxxii (1837), 396–7

E.F. Wartmann: ‘Note sur de nouvelles expériences sur la production de sons musicaux, par M. Delezenne’, Bibliothèque universelle de Genève, xvi (1838), 406–7

R. Pohl: ‘Physikalische und chemische Musik’, Akustische Briefe für Musiker und Musikfreunde: eine populäre Darstellung der Musik als Naturwissenschaft in Beziehung zur Tonkunst (Leipzig, 1853), 111–17

P.H. van der Weyde: ‘On Musical Telegraph Companies’, Scientific American, xxv (1871), 309 only

A.G. Bell: ‘L’histoire du téléphone racontée par son inventeur’, La nature, iv (1878), 337–42; 355–9

T. du Moncel: Le téléphone, le microphone et le phonographe (Paris, 1878; Eng. trans., 1879/R)

G.B. Prescott: The Speaking Telephone, Talking Phonograph and other Novelties (New York, 1878)

R.K. Boyle: Improvements in and Relating to Electro-Magnetic Musical Instruments (British patent, 1884, no.10,511)

E. Lorenz: Electrisches Musikinstrument (German patent, 1885, no.33,507)

R. Eisenmann: Elektromagnetische Mechanik an Flügeln und Pianinos zur Verlängerung einzelner Töne, sowie zur Nachahmung der Klänge anderer Instrumente (German patent, 1886, no.38,814)

A. Peschard: Les premières applications de l’électricité aux grandes orgues (Paris, 1890)

P.E. Singer: Improvements in Musical Instruments Actuated by Electricity (British patent, 1891, no.7308)

‘Das elektrische Orchester des Herrn Schalkenbach’, ZI, xiv (1893–4), 6, 15

F. Fink: Die elektrische Orgeltraktatur (Stuttgart, 1909)

J.W. Hinton: Story of the Electric Organ (London, 1909)

T. Karrass: Geschichte der Telegrafie (Brunswick, 1909)

Electronic instruments: Bibliography

1920 to 1945

J.A. Fleming: Fifty Years of Electricity (London, 1921)

F. Halle: ‘GIMN’, Musikblätter des Anbruch, no.7 (1925), 182–4

L.-E. Gratia: ‘Les instruments de musique du XX siècle: la musique des ondes éthérées’, Le ménestrel, xc (1928), 501–3

N. Dufourcq: ‘Précisions historiques sur l’orgue électrique en France, au Canada, et aux Etats-Unis’, ReM, x/10 (1929), 41–51

Lt.-Col. Jullien: ‘Applications du courant électrique, des oscillations radioélectriques et des phénomènes photoélectriques à la réalisation d’instruments de musique’, Conférences d’actualités scientifiques et industrielles (Paris, 1929), 141–88; repr. in La vie technique et industrielle, x (1929–30), 1011–16, 1093–7

R. Whitworth: The Electric Organ: a Historical Introduction and a Comprehensive Description of Modern Usage of Electricity in Organ Building (London, 1930, 3/1948/R)

R. Raven-Hart: ‘Recent European Developments in Electronic Musical Instruments’, Electronics, iii/7 (1931), 18

J. Schillinger: ‘Electricity, a Musical Liberator’, Modern Music, viii/3 (1931), 26–31

A. Coeuroy: ‘L’orchestre éthéré’, ReM, no.131 (1932), 161–5

R. Raven-Hart: ‘The Development of Electrical Music’, The Nineteenth Century and After, cxi (1932), 603–11

O. Vierling: ‘Elektrische Musik’, Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift, liii (1932), 155–9

P. Lertes: Elektrische Musik: eine gemeinverständliche Darstellung ihrer Grundlagen, des heutigen Standes der Technik und ihre Zukunftsmöglichkeiten (Dresden and Leipzig, 1933)

L. Moholy-Nagy: ‘Új filmkísérletek’ [New Film Experiments], Korunk, viii/3 (1933), 231–7; repr. in K. Passuth: Moholy-Nagy (Budapest, 1982); Eng. trans. (London, 1985), 319–23

F. Scheminzky: Die Welt des Schalles (Graz, 1935, 2/1943)

H. Matzke: ‘Eine Rundgang durch die Entwicklung der Elektromusik’, ZI, lvi (1936), 175–7

B.F. Miessner: ‘Electronic Music and Instruments: a Survey’, Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, xxiv (1936), 1427–63

R. Raven-Hart: ‘Electronic Music’, Discovery, xvii (1936), 222–5

R. Raven-Hart: ‘Recent Developments in Electrical Music’, The Nineteenth Century and After, cxx (1936), 202–15

J.M. Barbour: ‘Music and Electricity’, PAMS 1937, 3–10

C. Chávez: Toward a New Music: Music and Electricity, trans. H. Weinstock (New York, 1937/R)

F.W. Galpin: A Textbook of European Musical Instruments: their Origin, History and Character (London, 1937, 3/1956/R), 30, 36, 245–51

F.W. Galpin: ‘The Music of Electricity: a Sketch of its Origin and Development’, PMA, lxiv (1937–8/R), 71–83

G. Pasqualini: L’elettroacustica applicata alla liuteria (Rome, 1938)

E.G. Richardson: ‘The Production and Analysis of Tone by Electrical Means’, PMA, lxvi (1939–40), 53–68

A.J. Givelet: ‘Instruments de musique électronique et évolution de l’orgue sans tuyaux’, Bulletin de la Société française des électriciens, 5th ser., x (1940), 447–61

L.E.C. Hughes: ‘Electronic Music’, Nature, cxlv (1940), 170–74

G.T. Winch and A.M. Midgley: ‘Electronic Musical Instruments and the Development of the Pipeless Organ’, Journal of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, lxxxvi (1940), 517–47

J. Schillinger: The Schillinger System of Musical Composition: a Scientific Technique of Composing Music, ii, ed. L. Dowling and A. Shaw (New York, 1941, 4/1946/R), 1544–54

Electronic instruments: Bibliography

1945 to 1965

J. Courtnay, ed.: Theatre Organ World (London, 1946), 149

J. Castellan: ‘Les grandes orgues et l’électricité’, Science et vie, lxxi (1947), 115–26

S.K. Lewer: Electronic Musical Instruments (London, 1948)

P.D. Peery: Chimes and Electronic Carillons: Modern Tower Bells (New York, 1948)

A. Douglas: The Electronic Musical Instrument Manual: a Guide to Theory and Design (London, 1949, 6/1976)

W. Meyer-Eppler: Elektrische Klangerzeugung: elektronische Musik und synthetische Sprache (Bonn, 1949)

Y. Langer: ‘Bibliographie sommaire de la musique mécanisée’, Polyphonie, no.6 (1949–50), 144–9

‘Elektrofoner’, Sohlmans musiklexikon, ed. G. Morin (Stockholm, 1950), ii, 22–7

R.H. Dorf: ‘Electronics and Music’, Radio-Electronics, xxi–xxiii (1950–52) [series of 27 articles]; rev. as Electronic Musical Instruments (Mineola, NY, 1954, 3/1968)

C. Martin: La musique électronique: de l’instrument de musique le plus simple aux orgues électroniques (Paris, 1950)

Electronic Musical Instruments: a Bibliography (London, 1952)

W.L. Sumner: The Organ: its Evolution, Principles of Construction and Use (London, 1952, enlarged 4/1973), 338–48

E. Schenck: Jörg Mager: den deutschen Pionier der Elektromusikforschung zum Gedächtnis (Darmstadt, 1952)

R.L. Eby: Electronic Organs: a Complete Catalogue, Textbook, and Manual (Wheaton, IL, 1953)

E.G. Richardson: ‘Electrophonic Musical Instruments’, Technical Aspects of Sound, i (Amsterdam, 1953/R), 515–29

E.G. Richardson: Sound: a Physical Text-Book (London, 5/1953/R), 249–50, 339–44

IZ, viii/7 (1954) [special issue]

W. Meyer-Eppler: ‘Zur Terminologie der elektronischen Musik’, Technische Hausmitteilungen des Nordwestdeutschen Rundfunks, vi (1954), 5–7

F. Winckel: ‘Elektrische Musikinstrumente’, MGG

IZ ix/7 (1955) [special issue]

G. Jenny: ‘Initiation à la lutherie électronique’, Toute la radio (1955), 289, 397, 455; (1956), 23, 67

W. Meyer-Eppler, ed.: Musik–Raumgestaltung–Elektroakustik (Mainz, 1955)

P. Scholes: ‘Electric Musical Instruments’, The Oxford Companion to Music (London, 9/1955), 321–6

F. Winckel, ed.: Klangstruktur der Musik (Berlin, 1955)

H. Le Caine: ‘Electronic Music’, Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, xliv (1956), 457–78

W. Meyer-Eppler: ‘“Leichte” Musik und Elektrotechnik in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart’, Gravesaner Blätter, nos.2–3 (1956), 74–8

F.K. Prieberg: Musik des technischen Zeitalters (Zürich and Freiburg, 1956)

A. Douglas: ‘Recent Developments in Electrical Music Production’, PRMA, lxxxiii (1956–7), 65–74

D. Rogal'-Levitsky: Sovremennïy orkestr, iv (Moscow, 1956), 261–71

A. Douglas: The Electrical Production of Music (London, 1957)

S.G. Korsunsky and I.D. Simonov: Ėlektronno-muzïkal'nïye instrumentï (Moscow and Leningrad, 1957)

A. Douglas: ‘The Electrical Production of Music’, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, vi/3 (1958), 146–53

V.K. Solomin: Konstruirovaniye ėlektromuzïkal'nïkh instrumentov (Moscow, 1958)

R. Svoboda and Z. Vitamvás: Elektrofonické hudební nástroje [Electric musical instruments] (Prague, 1958)

W.H. Barnes: The Contemporary American Organ: its Evolution, Design and Construction (Glen Rock, NJ, 7/1959), 134–47

P. Zimin: ‘Vnimaniye ėlektroinstrumentam’ [Notes on electronic instruments], SovM, xxiii/10 (1959), 137–40

J. Leyda: Kino: a History of the Russian and Soviet Film (London, 1960, 3/1983), 277–300

H. Meijer jr and W. Heggie: Elektronische muziekinstrumenten in theorie en praktijk: elektronische muziek en haar toepassingen (Bussum, 1960), 142–3, 155–8

A.A. Moles: Les musiques expérimentales: revue d’une tendance importante de la musique contemporaine (Paris, 1960), 25–8, 61–90

F.K. Prieberg: Musica ex machina: über das Verhältnis von Musik und Technik (Berlin and Frankfurt, 1960)

H. Bode: ‘European Electronic Music Instrument Design’, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, ix (1961), 267–9, 304

‘Ėlektricheskiye muzïkal'nïye instrumentï’, SovM, xxv/2 (1961), p.203–4

G. Anfilov: Fizika i muzïka (Moscow, 1962, 2/1964); Eng. trans. as Physics and Music (Moscow, 1966), 138–66, 187–224

N.H. Crowhurst: Electronic Musical Instrument Handbook (Indianapolis, IN, 1962)

P. Dunsheath: A History of Electrical Engineering (London, 1962/R)

W. Adelung, ed.: Das Elektrium (Berlin, 1964)

O. Luening: ‘Some Random Remarks about Electronic Music’, JMT, viii (1964), 89–98; rev. as ‘An Unfinished History of Electronic Music’, Music Educators Journal, lv/3 (1968), 43–9, 135–42, 145; rev. as ‘Origins’, The Development and Practice of Electronic Music, ed. J.H. Appleton and R.C. Perera (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1975), 1–21

Electronic instruments: Bibliography

1965 to 1985

R. Bierl: Elementare technische Akustik der elektronischen Musikinstrumente (Frankfurt, 1965)

F.K. Prieberg: Musik in der Sowjetunion (Cologne, 1965), 352–9

N.H. Crowhurst: ABC’s of Electronic Organs (Indianapolis, IN, 1966, 2/1968)

‘Ėlektricheskiye muzïkal'nïye instrumentï’, Ėntsiklopedicheskiy muzïkal'nïy slovar', ed. B.S. Shteynpress and I.M. Yampol'sky (Moscow, 2/1966), 598–9

I.D. Simonov: Novoye v ėlektromuzïkal'nïkh instrumentakh (Moscow, 1966)

L.M. Cross: A Bibliography of Electronic Music (Toronto, 1967)

Electronic Music Review (1967–8)

A. Horváth: Muzsikáló szerkezetek története (Budapest, 1967), 267–9, 274–81

E. Sivowitch: ‘Musical Broadcasting in the Nineteenth Century’, Audio, li/6 (1967), 19–23

N.H. Crowhurst: ‘Electronic Organs’, Audio, lii/9–liii/5 (1968–9) [series of 9 articles]; rev. in Electronic Organs, ii and iii (Indianapolis, IN, 1969 and 75)

H. Davies: Répertoire international des musiques électroacoustiques/International Electronic Music Catalog (Cambridge, MA, 1968); orig. pubd as Electronic Music Review, nos.2–3 (1967) [special double issue]

G. Mumma: ‘The Magnetic Stencils of A.H. Frisch’, Electronic Music Review, no.5 (1968), 10–14

E. Zacharias: Elektronische Musikinstrumente (Trossingen, 1968)

Electronic Music Reports (1969–71) [continued as Interface]

R. Donington: The Instruments of Music (London, 3/1970), 49–52, 61–8, 166–73

A.A. Volodin: Êlektronnïye muzikal'niye instrumenti (Moscow, 1970)

J. Blades and A. Brees: ‘Bell’, Encyclopaedia Britannica (14/1971), iii, 444–5

N.H. Crowhurst: Electronic Musical Instruments (Blue Ridge Summit, PA, 1971, 2/1975)

M.L. Eaton: ‘Bio-Music’, Source, no.9 (1971), 28–36; repr. as booklet (Barton, VT, 1974)

S. Goslich: Musik im Rundfunk (Tutzing, 1971), 170–83

G. Tintori: Gli strumenti musicali, ii (Turin, 1971), 910–14

V.I. Voloshin and L.I. Fedorchuk: Ėlektro-muzïkal'nïye instrumentï (Moscow, 1971)

F. Weiland: ‘Three Audio Visual Projects’/‘Drei Audio-Visuelle Projekte’, Sonorum speculum, no.48 (1971), 27–39

Interface (1972–)

T.L. Rhea: The Evolution of Electronic Musical Instruments in the United States (diss., George Peabody College, 1972); partly rev. in ‘Electronic Perspectives’, Contemporary Keyboard, iii/1–vii/6 (1977–81) [series of articles]; repr. in The Art of Electronic Music, ed. T. Darter and G. Armbruster (New York, 1984), 4–63

H. Russcol: The Liberation of Sound: an Introduction to Electronic Music (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1972/R), 66–73

A. Strange: Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques, and Controls (Dubuque, IA, 1972, 2/1983)

R.M. Youngson: ‘Bibliography of Electronic Music’, Studio Sound, xiv/5 (1972), 45–9

A. Douglas: Electronic Music Production (London, 1973, 2/1982)

H. Eimert and H.U. Humpert: Das Lexikon der elektronischen Musik (Regensburg, 1973)

B.V. Portnoy: Kontsertnïy kompleks ėlektro-muzïkal'nïkh instrumentov (Moscow, 1973)

Contemporary Keyboard (1975–) [continued as Keyboard]

G. Engel: Elektromechanische und vollelektronische Musikinstrumente (Berlin, 1975)

F. Juster: Orgues électroniques ultra-modernes (Paris, 1975)

G. Mumma: ‘Live Electronic Music’, The Development and Practice of Electronic Music, ed. J.H. Appleton and R.C. Perera (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1975), 286–335

W.M. Stroh: Zur Soziologie der elektronischen Musik (Berg am Irchel, Zürich, 1975), 46–77

F.C. Weiland: Electronic Music: Musical Aspects of the Electronic Medium (Utrecht, 1975, 2/1980)

Polyphony (1976–) [continued as Electronic Musician]

Synapse (?1976–9)

H.A. Deutsch: Synthesis: an Introduction to the History, Theory and Practice of Electronic Music (Port Washington, NY, 1976, 2/1985) [incl. disc]

J.W. van Hilten: ‘De wordingsgeschiedenis van de telefoon’, PTT-Bedrijf, xx (1976), 160–76

S. Marshall: ‘Alvin Lucier’s Music of Signs in Space’, Studio International, cxcii (1976), 284–90

T. Rhea: ‘Electronic Keyboard Music, Preserving its History: the Story of the Electronic Arts Foundation’, Contemporary Keyboard, ii (1976)

D. Ernst: The Evolution of Electronic Music (New York, 1977), xxii–xl

H.S. Howe jr: ‘Electronic Music and Microcomputers’, PNM, xvi/1 (1977), 70–84; repr. in Interface, vii (1978), 57–68; rev. as ‘Microcomputers and Electronic Music’ in Breaking the Sound Barrier: a Critical Anthology of the New Music, ed. G. Battcock (New York, 1981), 174–90

D. Raaijmakers: ‘Audio-Kinetic Art and Electronics: Three Projects by Dutch Composers’, Key Notes, no.8 (1978), 36–42

B. Truax, ed.: Handbook for Acoustic Ecology (Vancouver, 1978)

H. Davies: ‘A History of Recorded Sound’, in H. Chopin: Poésie sonore internationale (Paris, 1979), 13–40

A.A. Volodin: Ėlektro-muzïkal'nïye instrumentï (Moscow, 1979)

D. Gojowy: Neue sowjetische Musik der 20er Jahre (Laaber, 1980)

W.D. Kühnelt: ‘Elektroakustische Musikinstrumente’, Für Augen und Ohren, Akademie der Künste Berlin, 20 Jan – 2 March 1980 (Berlin, 1980), 47–73 [exhibition book]

F.K. Prieberg: EM: Versuch einer Bilanz der elektronischen Musik (Freudenstadt, 1980), 160–76

I.D. Simonov: Untitled memoir in N.A. Garbuzov: muzïkant, issledovatel', pedagog, ed. Yu.N. Rags (Moscow, 1980), 283–6

Electronics & Music Maker (1981–) [continued as The Mix]

A. Askew: ‘The Amazing Clément Ader’, Studio Sound, xxlii (1981), no.9, pp.44–8, no.10, pp.66–8, no.11, pp.100–02

T. Bacon, ed.: Rock Hardware: the Instruments, Equipment and Technology of Rock (Poole, Dorset, 1981)

H. Davies: ‘Making and Performing Simple Electroacoustic Instruments’, Electronic Music for Schools, ed. R. Orton (Cambridge, 1981), 152–74

R.S. James: Expansion of Sound Resources in France, 1913–40, and its Relationship to Electronic Music (diss., U. of Michigan, 1981); section rev. as ‘Avant-Garde Sound-on-Film Techniques and their Relationship to Electro-Acoustic Music’, MQ, lxxii (1986), 74–89

A. Mackay: Electronic Music (Oxford, 1981)

Ces musiciens et leurs drôles de machines, Centre Pompidou Paris, 20 Jan – 22 Mar 1982 (Paris, 1982) [exhibition catalogue]

R. Donington: Music and its Instruments (London, 1982), 203–20

Ye.M. Krasnovsky: ‘Ėlektromuzïkal'nïye instrumentï’, Muzïkal'naya ėntsiklopediya, ed. Yu.V. Keldïsh (Moscow, 1982), vi, 511–14

A. Modr: Hudební nástroje [Musical Instruments] (Prague, 7/1982), 211–29

B. Schrader: Introduction to Electro-Acoustic Music (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1982), 61–74, 122–76

G. Armbruster: ‘Portable Keyboards’, Keyboard, ix/6 (1983), 20–26

B. Doerschuk: ‘Performers on Portables’, ibid., 27–31

P. White: ‘History of the Guitar Synth: a Personal Account of its Development’, Electronics & Music Maker, iii/4 (1983), 32

H. Bode: ‘History of Electronic Sound Modification’, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, xxxii (1984), 730–39

T. Darter and G. Armbruster, eds.: The Art of Electronic Music (New York, 1984)

K. Ebbeke: Phasen: zur Geschichte der elektronischen Musik (Berlin, 1984), 1–27

Electronic instruments: Bibliography

since 1985

MGG2 (‘Elektroakustische Musik’, E. Ungeheuer and M. Supper)

Sound on Sound (1985–)

R.D. Larson: Musique Fantastique: a Survey of Film Music in the Fantastic Cinema (Metuchen, NJ, 1985), 266

P. Manning: Electronic and Computer Music (Oxford, 1985, 2/1993)

Nuova Atlantide: il continente della musica elettronica 1900–1986, Palazzo Sagrado, 25 Oct – 23 Nov 1986 (Venice 1986) [exhibition catalogue; incl. H. Davies: ‘Storia ed evoluzione degli strumenti musicali elettronici’, 17–59; N. Bernardini: ‘Live Electronics’, 61–77; R. Valentino: ‘Le altre elettroniche’, 79–101]

G. Batel, G. Kleinen and D. Salbert, eds.: Computermusik: theoretische Grundlagen, kompositionsgeschichtliche Zusammenhänge, Musiklernprogramme (Laaber, 1987)

J. Schaefer: New Sounds: a Listener’s Guide to New Music (New York, 1987, rev. 2/1990 as New Sounds: The Virgin Guide to New Music), 1–49

W. Voigt: ‘Elektronische und mechanisch-elektronische Musikinstrumente’, Fünf Jahrhunderte deutscher Musikinstrumentenbau, ed. H. Moeck (Celle, 1987), 313–40

H. Davies: ‘Elektronische instrumenten: classificatie en mechanismen’, Elektrische muziek: drie jaar acquisitie van elektrische muziekinstrumenten, Haags Gemeentemuseum, 28 may – Nov 1988 (The Hague, 1988) [exhibition catalogue]; Fr. trans. in Contrechamps, no.11 (1990), 53–69

R. Sutherland: ‘A Short History of Live Electronic Music’, Rê Records Quarterly, ii/3 (1988), 15–21; rev. as ‘Live Electronic Music’, New Perspectives in Music (London, 1994), 157–71

J. Appleton: 21st-Century Musical Instruments: Hardware and Software (Brooklyn, NY, 1989)

H. Davies: ‘A History of Sampling’, Experimental Musical Instruments, v/2 (1989), 17–19; rev. in Organised Sound, i/1 (1996), 3–11

W. Ruf, ed.: Lexikon Musikinstrumente (Mannheim, 1991)

E. Ungeheuer: ‘Ingenieure der neuen Musik: zwischen Technik und Ästhetik: zur Geschichte der elektronischen Klangerzeugung’, Kultur & Technik, xiv/3 (1991), 35-41

Contemporary Music Review, vi/1 (1992) [Live Electronics issue]

H. Davies: ‘Gesto v žlivej elektronickej hudbe/Gesture in Live Electronic Music’, Medzinárodné fórum elektroakustickej hudby [International forum of electroacoustic music]: Bratislava 1992, 59–69

H. Davies: ‘New Musical Instruments in the Computer Age: Amplified Performance Systems and Related Examples of Low-Level Technology’, Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought, ed. J. Paynter and others (London and New York, 1992), i, 500–13

M. Dery: ‘Spin Doctors’, Keyboard, xviii/10 (1992), 54–69

D. Kahn and G. Whitehead, eds.: Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant-Garde (Cambridge, MA, 1992)

H.A. Deutsch: Electroacoustic Music: the First Century (Miami, 1993) [incl. disc with music exx. and demonstrations]

P. Forrest: The A–Z of Analogue Synthesisers, i: A–M (Crediton, Devon, 1994, 2/1998), ii: N–Z (Crediton, Devon, 1996) [also covers many other earlier elec insts]

A. Lucier: Reflections/Reflexionen: Interviews, Scores, Writings (Cologne, 1995)

J. Colbeck: Keyfax Omnibus Edition (Emeryville, CA, 1996) [surveys 1000 insts]

C. Roads: The Computer Music Tutorial (Cambridge, MA, 1996)

C. Roads: ‘Early Electronic Music Instruments: Timeline 1899–1956’, Computer Music Journal, xx/3 (1996), 20–23

P. Trynka, ed.: Rock Hardware: 40 Years of Rock Instrumentation (London, 1996)

‘The Sampler on Trial’, Resonance v/1 (1996)

J. Chadabe: Electric Sound: the Past and Promise of Electronic Music (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1997)

‘Plattenspiele(r)n’, Positionen, xxx (1997) [special issue]

M.H. Schmeck: Musikinstrumente: von historischen und klassischen Instrumenten bis zur Instrumentierung für Volksmusik, Rock, Pop, Jazz und Neue Musik (Weyarn, 1998), 208–28

T. Standage: The Victorian Internet: the Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s Online Pioneers (London, 1998)