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Conceptually similar, there was also the ANS synthesizer [1] designed by the Soviet engineer Evgeny Murzin. Unlike the Mellotron, it was opto-electronic, givin
by retrac 3y ago
Conceptually similar, there was also the ANS synthesizer [1] designed by the Soviet engineer Evgeny Murzin. Unlike the Mellotron, it was opto-electronic, giving the composer more direct access and control over the "samples". Waveforms were drawn on glass plates, and pressing one of the keys would scan across the associated plate, feeding the generated signal through various filters, etc.
It features prominently in the soundtrack by Eduard Artemyev, for the historical film Siberiade from 1979. [2]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANS_synthesizer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANS_synthesizer
[2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=sJj9y4t9UnU https://youtube.com/watch?v=sJj9y4t9UnU
- rodgerd 3y ago> Waveforms were drawn on glass plates Interestingly enough the documentary "Sisters with Transistors" show some British pioneers adopt a similar approach, but drawing on film rather than glass plates, in the 40s and 50s.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoThat was Daphne Oram, who was a pioneer and all-round innovator. You can find her book online and it's a fascinating insight into a different cultural universe than the one we have today. But her Oramics system was more like an automation controller hand-painted onto film strip than optical waveform synthesis. It was a direct ancestor of the automation in all modern DAWs.
- joezydeco 3y agoA somewhat distant cousin to that is the Mattel Optigan, which used waveforms printed on a transparent sheet of plastic and spun over a photocell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optigan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optigan
- epcoa 3y agoThat’s how sound movies worked for years.
- cadr 3y agoThere is a cool app that emulates it - https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/ans/ https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/ans/
- FpUser 3y agoThink this guy Nikolai Voinov from Soviet Union was doing it in 1930. Quite amazing: https://youtu.be/Z7Zb4rso82M https://youtu.be/Z7Zb4rso82M
- denton-scratch 3y ago> Waveforms were drawn on glass plates That sounds similar to how the Hammond organ worked, I think. I believe it had spinning wheels with a wavy edge; light shone past the edge of a wheel generated an electrical waveform.
- bzzzt 3y agoHammond organs use an electromagnetic pickup to get the waveform from the wheels.
- Gordonjcp 3y agoI remember my dad telling me years and years ago about an arbitrary function generator that they used at university, where you had an oscilloscope with a cardboard mask representing the function's graph in front of the screen, and a light sensor in a light-tight funnel that controlled the spot height. When light shone on the sensor it would reduce the input voltage, and so the spot would trace the top of the cardboard mask. This actually works quite well!
- ano-ther 3y agoVery clever!