Melochord

The melochord is an electronic musical instrument that can be viewed as an early form of the synthesizer . It was developed in 1947 by the German engineer Harald Bode and was used in the studio for electronic music of Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne during the 1950s.

The melochord was a monophonic instrument, it had a tone generator built with tubes and a circuit for shaping the envelope . The keyboard was three octaves. The instrument was tuned in a conventional equally tempered scale . The range could be expanded to seven octaves by means of switches. The volume could be influenced with a pedal.