Archive for the ‘Instruments’ Category
- In: Instruments | Noise boxes | Sound art | Synthesizers
- 1 Comment
Nowadays lots of media artists, musicians and music software and hardware products are dedicated to translating visuals into sounds and vice versa. One of the pioneers in this area of “visual sound” was a British electronic composer called Daphne Oram. She was one of the founders of the famous BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1958. But after hearing Poème électronique of Edgar Varese at the Brussels World’s Fair, she decided to leave the BBC and start her own electronic music studio a year later, the Oramics Studios for Electronic Composition. In this studio, she made one of the first synthesizers and quite likely the first audiovisual synthesizer in the beginning of the 1960s: the Oramics Machine.
With this (of course) analogue and largely mechanical machine, she drew shapes and waveforms onto a synchronised set of ten 35mm film strips which overlayed a series of photo-electric cells. These cells in turn generated electrical charges to control amplitude, timbre, frequency and duration of sounds generated by oscillators. This audiovisual way of music composition was called “Oramics” by Daphne Oram:
Daphne Oram died in 2003 at the age of 77 and oramics and the Oramic Machine were forgotten. But in 2011 the Oramics Machine has been salvaged and now is part of the collection of the Science Museum in London. The videos below document the rescue of this pioneering synthesizer by the Science Museum and explain some of the groundbreaking audiovisual concepts behind it:
More information
- DaphneOram.org – website dedicated to preservation of the Daphne Oram collection
- Article The Story Of Daphne Oram’s Optical Synthesizer in SoundOnSound magazine
- Daphne Oram biography on Wikipedia
- Oramics music composition explained on Wikipedia
- The story of the Oramics Machine in Resident Advisor magazine
Ran into these guys yesterday in the Glaspaviljoen at the Bizarre Sound Creatures exhibition during the magnificent Dutch Design Week 2015 in Eindhoven:
Geluidsdrug, a collective organizing biweekly electronic jam sessions in Artspace Flipside, at walking distance from my home:
Everybody can join their jam sessions in Flipside, so I am going to pay them a visit soon..
More information:
- Dutch Design Week
- Bizarre Sound Creatures
- Geluidsdrug (in Dutch)
- Glaspaviljoen (in Dutch)
- Artspace Flipside (in Dutch)
Found on Vimeo: a documentary on the making of the Chalice Symphony by Andy Cavatorta and his team for Belgium beer company Stella Artois. A “chalice‘ is a goblet for drinking wine or (in this case) beer.
The symphony contains four beautifully crafted instruments using the chalice as a source of sound: On the website of Andy Cavatorta you can download sound files of these four instruments in .exs (Logic) or .nki (NI Kontakt) format
More information:
- Andy Cavatorta website
- In: Art | Instruments | Noise boxes | Sound art | Synthesizers
- 1 Comment
I recently bought a Moog Theremini for my ever expanding synthesizer studio. The Theremini is a new take by Moog Music on the age old Theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments ever made. The original Theremin generated sinus waves, which were triggered by moving your hands along two antenna’s. The new Theremini does the same, but uses digital instead of analog sound synthesis. This means it is capable of generating many more sounds than just a simple sinus waveform. This is the Moog promo video of the Theremini by thereminist Dorit Chrysler demonstrating the versatility of this renewed Moog theremin:
I have been interested in the Theremin from the 1980’s onwards. I even wrote an article on it and other ancient electronic instruments – such as the Telharmonium and the Ondes Martenot– for a popular science magazine in the late ’80s. The instrument was invented in 1928 by Russian inventor (and spy: read: Theremin. Ether Music and Espionage by Albert Glinsky ) Lev Termen a.k.a “Leon Theremin” in the USA. This video shows him playing his invention:
The Theremin was used in modern 20th century composed music by composers such as Messiaen and Shostakovich, but is better known for its use in film scores, notably of sci-fi B movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing (From Another World) and in the British TV series Midsomer Murders. In pop/rock music the Theremin was used by the likes of the Beach Boys (Good Vibrations), Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band (Electricity), Led Zeppelin (Whole lotta Love) and space rock band Hawkwind. During the ’90’s there was some kind of a theremin revival, which is sometimes credited to the Portishead song “Mysterons” from their Dummy album. However, the distinctive “theremin” sound on this track was made by a synthesizer (probably a Roland SH-101), not by a theremin:
It is hard to play a theremin due to the glissandi generated by the hand gestures: it is difficult to keep a pitch by not moving your hands while playing. So there are only a few contemporary thereminists of which Lydia Kavina, Carolina Eyk and Dorit Chrysler (see above) are probably the most well-known. This video shows a demonstration of the new Moog Theremini by Lydia Kavina, in which she explains some playing techniques:
The new Moog Theremini supports Midi and has a USB port, enabling it to be used as a Midi controller. So it introduces new possibilities for an instrument which is nearly 100 years old in electronic music. Check it out if you are interested in both the history and future of electronic music instruments.
More information:
- A Brief History of the Theremin video by Albert Glinsky
- Theremin World website
- Moog Thermini product information
- Pulling music out of thin air: an interview with Leon theremin on the Moog website
nnnoises.com 