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Introduction
Are we the future of the past? Let's go back to the early twentieth century and the recent invention of
filters and VCA, which has been followed by the invention of many new controls and new electronic
instruments. If among these, many are now parts of our cabinets of curiosities, some are worth a
closer examination... Sensor technology now enables to recreate some of these forgotten controls
with a new accuracy, turning them into innovative tools.
1. HISTORICAL PARALLELISM
A quick historical comparison between the
XXth and the XXIst century will lead to the
conclusion that both centuries have known, in
their early years, a certain effervescence in the
design of new controllers. This parallelism can
be explained by recent discoveries that have,
at both times, opened wide fields of new
technical possibilities. May it also find its
origins in a particular political and economical
environment – this won't be the subject of this
paper.
1.1 1920s effervescence
The creation of the first electronic oscillators,
followed by the invention of filters and VCA
enabling to play tremolos and vibratos and to
recreate
the
musicality
instruments, opened the field of the research
for new controls, which would offer more
possibilities than generic keyboards. The
1920s remains the most fertile years for the
evolution of electronic music instruments with
the invention of new controls like dial-operated
non-keyboard electronic instruments or ribbon-
controlled
instruments.
Sergeivitch Termen developed the Theremin
using the body capacitance as a control
mechanism, freeing the performer from the
keyboard and fixed intonation. He also created
the first fingerboard cellos. In France and in
Germany, a whole family of dial-operated non
keyboard
electronic
developed. Among them, René Bertrand and
Edgard Varèse's Dynaphone or Jörg Mager's
Electrophon and Spharaphon. At the end of
the 1920s, a family of the fingerboard
instruments –or ribbon controllers- appeared.
In France, les Ondes Martenot, designed by
Maurice Martenot, included both a seven-
octave keyboard and a ribbon controller that
allowed pitch inflections like a voice or stringed
instrument. It allowed for a wide glissando
when the player moved a finger ring attached
to the metal ribbon that controlled frequency.
Hundreds of symphonic works, operas, ballets,
and film scores were composed for this
instrument
by
Varèse,
Maessian.
In Leipzig, Peter Lertes and Bruno Helberger
developed the Hellertion. This fingerboard was
Persephone markII user's manual
of
classical
In
Russia,
Lev
instruments
was
Honneger
and
3
a flat metal resistance strip covered with
leather. Depending on where the strip was
pressed, a different resistance in the circuit
was created altering the voltage sent to the
oscillator and thereby producing different
pitches. The force of the pressure controlled
the
volume
of
the
fingerboard was marked to help the performer
find the correct pitch on the strip and had a
range of approximately five octaves. The
original instrument had just one fingerboard
strip which was gradually increased to four and
then on the later models, six aligned in parallel
horizontally at the height of a piano keyboard.
The four and six strip models allowed four and
six voice polyphony.
The Trautonium was the first instrument to ally
position and pressure control. Created in 1931
by Franz Trauntwein, it used filters to modify
the timber of the note and a keyboard. The
Original
Trautonium
consisting of a resistance wire made of a tube
of graphite stretched over a metal rail marked
with a chromatic scale and coupled to a neon
tube oscillator. When the performer was
pressing the wire, it would touch the rail and
complete the circuit. The Trautonium had a
three octaves range that could be transposed
by means of a switch. The Sonar, developed
by N. Anan'yev in the USSR in the 1930s also
had a fingerboard continuous controller to vary
the pitch of the oscillator.
1.2. The supremacy of keyboards
After the 40s, the general use of keyboards
(and the war) slew down the research of new
types of controls. Ribbon controllers were back
in the 1960s with Moog ribbon controllers
which Keith Emerson was famous for attaching
to a pyrotechnics control. The Theremin-like
sound in the Beach Boys' song "Good
Vibrations," was played by a ribbon-controlled
instrument called the Electro-Theremin, which
the Beach Boys have later replaced by a Moog
ribbon controller with a Moog synthesizer.
Only a few synthesizers from the 1980s had
ribbon
controls:
Yamaha
controller, Kurzweil synths and the Korg
Prophecy.
output
signal.
The
had
a
fingerboard
CS80's
ribbon
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