Electrophone

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As Elektrophon , translated from Greek and electric Klinger , also called etherophone is called based on the Hornbostel-Sachs ostensibly the group of instruments that the reproduction of the sound event a headphone or the respective proportions of space adapted corresponding audio amplifier with subsequent speakers need to use. The actual technology used to generate the sound and the way it is played is very diverse.

In principle, electronic instruments with electrical amplification (such as jazz guitars ) and instruments with electronic sound generation (such as electronic organs or synthesizers ) can be distinguished by generators.

In the extended and related sense, the electrophones could also include MIDI devices that do not have their own sound input device or are only used to store appropriate MIDI commands ( sequencers ). Since the boundaries to computer technology are fluid here, an exact categorization is not possible and is not considered necessary by the actual user.

One can make a distinction according to tone generation or differentiation according to playing style.

Hammond organ
Theremin

history

In German-language literature, especially in encyclopedias, the Moravian preacher Prokop Diviš has the honor of creating the first electrophone with the development of the Denis d'or as early as 1730 . However, this is based on the formulation "electric mutation wing" in the Reallexicon of Curt Sachs' musical instruments from 1913, which has been misinterpreted. The piano was a mutation, electric was just an electric shock that could be given to the player.

In contrast, the French Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Delaborde used static electricity to generate sound in 1759 with the clavicin électrique .

The technically experienced Berlin lawyer Richard Eisenmann, a student of Helmholtz , invented a device around 1900 with which a piano could imitate other instruments, such as an organ or a stringed instrument. With this invention it was also possible to let tones swell up and down. In order to influence the vibrations of the strings and vary the timbre, Eisenmann used a device that was very advanced for the time. In contemporary accounts it is described as follows:

“An accumulator battery of ten cells is needed to operate the piano. Above each string there is a horseshoe magnet , one wire end of which is connected to that of all other electromagnets on a common metal rail, which is connected to the battery by a circuit breaker of special construction . The circuit breaker is switched on and off by means of a pedal, the movements of which can also change the current strength, which causes the aforementioned modulations. "

literature

Web links

Commons : Electrophones  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wieland Ziegenrücker: General music theory with questions and tasks for self-control. German Publishing House for Music, Leipzig 1977; Paperback edition: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, and Musikverlag B. Schott's Sons, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-442-33003-3 , p. 170.
  2. ↑ Wieland Ziegenrücker: General music theory with questions and tasks for self-control. 1979, p. 170.
  3. ↑ Peer Sitter: The Denis d'or: Ancestor of the 'electroacoustic' musical instruments? ( Memento from January 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 304 kB). In: Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller (Ed.): Perspectives and methods of a systemic musicology. Report on the colloquium in the Musicological Institute of the University of Cologne 1998 (= Systemic Musicology. Vol. 6). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2003, ISBN 3-631-39502-7 , p. 303 ff .; Online as systemic musicology. Festschrift Jobst Peter Fricke for his 65th birthday. ( Memento from June 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) 2003, revision 2010, Musicological Institute University of Cologne, Dept. Systematics.
  4. ↑ Innsbrucker Nachrichten , June 11, 1902, p. 2.