In tune: electronic music's track record

From old mechanical music players to the modern day: how instruments, devices, and recording studios affected our sense of hearing and revolutionized the world of sound.

Oskar Sala am Trautonium (1930)Deutsches Museum

Completely new sounds—the pioneers of music

Music and musical instruments have existed since the dawn of humanity, when our ancestors made flutes, pipes, and drums. Over the millennia, we have created not only have countless different instruments, but also different styles. In the 20th century electronic music began to enjoy great success. One of the great pioneers in this field was Friedrich Trautwein (left), the inventor of the Trautonium. Oskar Sala, a composer form Berlin, (seated in the middle of the picture) made further refinements to the instrument and used it to conquer Hollywood.

Der Sprechapparat von Kempelen (1771)Deutsches Museum

Kempelen's speaking machine
Around 1800 the inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734–1804) developed a device that imitated the parts of human speech organs and was able to generate entire words. It is not a machine with fixed programmed words or sentences, but is played like a musical instrument. It is considered an icon of the Enlightenment, as it represents the growing interest in the study of nature and man and the mechanical imitation of the latter, as well as the beginnings of speech synthesis. This machine was the forerunner of vocoders, which were also used in the Siemens Studio in the mid-20th century.

Video zum SprechautomatDeutsches Museum

Das Theremin (1920)Deutsches Museum

The theremin
In 1920 the Russian scientist Leon Theremin invented the first portable electronic instrument. He initially called it the "etherophone" but it was later renamed the "theremin," after its inventor. The instrument caused sensation at the time as it produced sound without having to be touched. A theremin player moved their hands around the antenna and influenced the pitch depending on their distance from it. The volume was controlled by a pedal like this model from 1929. In 1921 Theremin was invited to the Kremlin to give Lenin a private performance.

Das Theremin von Robert Moog (1954)Deutsches Museum

Theremin lived in the USA from 1927 to 1938. After his return to the USSR, he developed espionage devices for the KGB, among other things. Theremin died at the age of 97 in November 1993. His namesake instrument was used in numerous soundtracks, predominantly to accompany supernatural events. For example, it can be heard in Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound" (1945) and "The Thing from Another World" (1951). The theremin was then distributed around world following the enhancements made by Bob Moog (photo). Even pop bands and rock groups made use of the theremin, including Captain Beefheart in "Electricity" (1967) and Led Zeppelin in "Whole Lotta Love" (1969).

Video ThereminDeutsches Museum

The theremin concert
Lydia Kavina, the grandniece of Leon Theremin and the world's leading artist on this instrument, at a concert in Munich in 2006. At the concert, she played a piece by Alexander Alyabyev entitled "Solovey moy solovey" (The Nightingale), accompanied by Stefan Kirpal (violin), Stephen Ristau (cello), and Andreas Kirpal (piano).

Das Trautonium der Rundfunkversuchsstelle (1930)Deutsches Museum

The trautonium
A decade after Theremin's innovation, Friedrich Trautwein developed the instrument to which he gave his name—an electronic instrument that is regarded as a precursor to synthesizers. The trautonium can sound like a violin, an oboe, or a siren, and can produce vocal sounds. There is no keyboard, just a metal rail with a string wrapped with resistance wire stretched over it. When the string is pressed onto the metal rail, a circuit is closed and a sound is produced by tubes inside the instrument.

In this picture you can see the trautonium from the experimental radio station that was affiliated with the University of Music in Berlin. The experimental station was regarded as a "laboratory for new sounds," but as a research institution, it also concerned itself with talking film technology, which became popular in 1929, and the first possible ways of storing music on records. In addition, it promoted the development of new instruments. This specimen from 1930 is the oldest trautonium and the only one still kept there, which, in addition to being operated by the metal rail and the controls for setting the filters…

…is also operated by this pedal which controls the volume.

Trautonium (1930)Deutsches Museum

The Volkstrautonium
The company Telefunken built 200 "Volkstrautoniums," or "People's Trautoniums," in a series known as "Trautoniums to Play at Home." As the price was very high by the standards of the time, these were not a market success and were discontinued.

There was also a specific school that taught people how to use them properly.

In addition to the elegance of the sound, the playing dynamics as well as trills, ornaments, and timbres could be created and manipulated.

Orchester der ZukunftDeutsches Museum

On June 20, 1930 the audience responded with skepticism and curiosity to a concert premiere of the trautonium. Paul Hindemith, Oskar Sala, and Rudolph Schmidt performed music, including "Short Pieces for Three Trautoniums" by Hindemith on 3 instruments. Two years later, a large collection of "electric" musical instruments was presented at the special show "Electrical Music" in 1932. As you can see in the photo, trautoniums, theremins, Hellertions, Neo-Bechstein grand pianos, electrochords, electric violins, and electric cellos were played in harmony on the stage as the "orchestra of the future" and demonstrated different techniques of tone generation, tone colors, and playing styles.

Oskar Sala am Trautonium (1930)Deutsches Museum

The electronic pioneer
Oskar Sala (1910–2002) was already writing his own compositions as an adolescent. After passing his high school exams, he studied music in Paul Hindemith's master class in Berlin. It was through Hindemith that Sala also met Friedrich Trautwein. After his concert in the Deutsches Museum on May 6, 1932, what is now the oldest known trautonium was presented to the museum's collection. In the following years, Sala developed more types of the instrument. As well as the Volkstrautonium, he also created the "Rundfunktrautonium" (radio trautonium), as seen in this photo, and the portable concert trautonium.

Alfred Hitchcock und Oskar SalaDeutsches Museum

From 1949 to 1952 Oskar Sala developed the "Mixturtrautonium" (mixture trautonium). A fellow former student from Berlin had been composing for Universal Studios in Hollywood since finishing his studies. He put Sala into contact with Alfred Hitchcock, who wanted synthetic bird sounds for his next film, "The Birds." This is how Hitchcock came to meet Oskar Sala, and he even flew to Sala's recording studio in Berlin where he was impressed by the sounds made by the trautonium. Other films in which Sala's trautonium provided the soundtrack include "The Curse of the Yellow Snake" and "The Secret of Dr. Mabuse."

Video zum Trautonium (1961)Deutsches Museum

Das Tonstudio von Oskar Sala (1958)Deutsches Museum

Oskar Sala's recording studio
From the end of the 1950s, Oskar Sala no longer performed in front of an audience, instead only working in his Berlin recording studio.

Porträt von Oskar SalaDeutsches Museum

But from 1988 onward Oskar Sala (here with a picture of the mixturtrautonium) performed again in public and created new works and sounds for film. He appeared as a guest at festivals and talk shows throughout Europe, appeared in lecture concerts and theaters, met numerous artists, and gave countless interviews. He was honored in radio broadcasts and films and received several awards. In 1995 Sala loaned his mixturtrautonium to the Deutsches Museum Bonn permanently, and in 2000 he donated his estate to the Deutsches Museum. He remained the only trautonium player throughout his life. Oskar Sala died on February 26, 2002 in Berlin.

Das Siemens-Studio (1955)Deutsches Museum

The Siemens Studio
The story began in 1955 when the company asked the composer Carl Orff for advice on unusual music for a 90-minute film. Orff recommended his young colleague, Josef Anton Riedl, who at the time was building the Siemens Studio for Electronic Music in the company's own electro-acoustic test laboratory with the help of a large team of highly-qualified technicians. By the end of the 1960s it was heavily influencing contemporary music. Among other things, the Siemens Studio produced soundtracks for industry and documentary films and background music for experimental plays.

A range of generators were used to create sound. Many generators were built solely for the studio and could not be used anywhere else. From about 1960 there was a wall with 20 sine-wave oscillators available which had a frequency band of 16 to 16,000 Hertz. Up to 10 sine-wave generators were required for one sound in order to produce fundamental frequencies as well as overtones, providing an acoustic pattern familiar to the ear. Depending on the dynamics of the overtones, different timbres or the impression of a vowel in human language could be created.

The sounds were changed by filters or modulators like these behind the vocoder's wall, which was the best of its kind in the world at the time. This could process a frequency spectrum of up to 10,000 Hertz on 20 channels. The Siemens Studio's vocoder became famous for producing the computer voice from the science fiction series "Space Patrol Orion."

Der Lochstreifenleser im Siemens-Studio (1955)Deutsches Museum

A major innovation came in the form of the tape reader. The data carriers were punched paper strips with which the various generators could be individually pressed in and out, and sound and volume could be selected. The punched tape was prepared according to the composer's instructions, then inserted into a fast reader—the rest ran automatically and could be recorded in one go. This meant that people no longer had to work with tapes, sticking individual pieces of tape together.

Die Hohnerola im Siemens-Studio (1955)Deutsches Museum

Another feature is the Hohnerola, an electronically controlled reed organ by Hohner, which was modified by Siemens engineers. The electromechanical instrument could be completely controlled by punched tape. The box above is what is known as a sawtooth generator.

Video zum Siemens-StudioDeutsches Museum

The Siemens Studio in operation
This is how the Siemens Studio at the Deutsches Museum sounds—extracts from a presentation by Dr. Stefan Schenk from the Institute of Musicology at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Die Yamaha CS-80 (1976)Deutsches Museum

The Yamaha CS 80
The Yamaha CS 80 came onto the market in 1976 and was the world's first commercially available synthesizer that also allowed multi-tone playing. However, the sensitive device was only suitable for musicians in the studio, not for tours.

Die Yamaha CS-80 (1976)Deutsches Museum

Only 800 of these were produced by 1980. Famous artists who used the CS 80 include Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre. Peter Gabriel's legendary album "So" featured the instrument, and it sounded just as it did on Michael Jackson's classic hit "Billie Jean."

Die Casio VL1 (1981)Original Source: By Dontpanic (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Casio VL1
Over the years, synthesizers became smaller and smaller. In 1981 the Japanese company Casio brought the VL1 model onto the market. It became an instrument that shaped the music of the 1980s. The Human League and Stevie Wonder used the Casio, as did the New German Wave band "Trio" in their biggest hit "Da, Da, Da."

Credits: Story

Created by Deutsches Museum.

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
Explore more
Google apps