The trautonium is a monophonic electronic musical instrument invented ca. 1929 by Friedrich Trautwein in Berlin. Soon Oskar Sala joined him, continuing development until Sala's death in 2002. Instead of a keyboard, its manual is made of a resistor wire over a metal plate which is pressed to create a sound. Expressive playing was possible with this wire by gliding on it or create vibrato with small movements. Monophonic can mean: In rrded audio, a monaural recording with only one channel. ... A musical instrument is a device constructed or modified with the purpose of making music. ... 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Location of Berlin within Germany / EU Coordinates Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2) Administration Country NUTS Region DE3 City subdivisions 12 boroughs Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD) Governing parties SPD / Left. ... Oskar Sala Oskar Sala (June 18, 1910 - February 26, 2002) was a 20th century German electronic musician and composer. ... For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ... The layout of a typical musical keyboard A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers on a musical instrument which cause the instrument to produce sounds. ... A manual is a keyboard designed to be played with the hands on a pipe organ, harpsichord, clavichord, electronic organ, or synthesizer. ... Resistor symbols (non-European) Resistor symbols (Europe, IEC) Axial-lead resistors on tape. ... Vibrato is a musical effect where the pitch or frequency of a note or sound is quickly and repeatedly raised and lowered over a small distance for the duration of that note or sound. ...

Paul Hindemith wrote several short trios for three Trautoniums with three different tunings: bass, middle, and high voice. One of the first additions of Sala was to add a switch for changing the static tuning. Later he added a noise generator and an envelope generator (so called 'Schlagwerk'), formant filter (several bandpass filters) and the subharmonic oscillators. These oscillators generate a main pitch and several harmonics, which are not multiples of the fundamental tone, but fractions of it. Four of these waves can be mixed and the player can switch through these predefined settings. Thus, it was called the Mixtur Trautonium. Oskar Sala composed music for industrial films, but the most famous was the noises for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Paul Hindemith aged 28. ... An ADSR envelope is a parameter used in synthesizers, including those that produce sound by subtractive synthesis, to control the sound produced. ... The frequency axis of this symbolic diagram would be logarithmically scaled. ... Cross coupled LC oscillator with output on top An electronic oscillator is an electronic circuit that produces a repetitive electronic signal, often a sine wave or a square wave. ... Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE (August 13, 1899 – April 29, 1980) was a highly influential film director and producer who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and thriller genres. ... The Birds (1963) is a horror film by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on the short story The Birds (ISBN 0-582-41798-8) by Daphne du Maurier. ...

The German manufacturer Doepfer sells some devices for the commercial market to allow for Trautonium-like synthesizer control. Doepfer Musikelektronik GmbH Doepfer is a manufacturer of audio hardware based in Gräfelfing/Germany, founded in 1992 by Dieter Döpfer. ... A synthesizer (or synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument designed to produce electronically generated sound, using techniques such as additive, subtractive, FM, physical modelling synthesis, phase distortion, or Scanned synthesis. ...

See also

• Theremin
• Ondes Martenot
• Subharchord

Léon Theremin playing an early theremin The theremin (originally pronounced but often anglicized as [1]), or thereminvox, is one of the earliest fully electronic musical instruments. ... Ondes martenot demonstrated by inventor Maurice Martenot The Ondes Martenot (or Ondes-Martenot or Ondes martenot or Ondium Martenot or Martenot or ondes musicale) is an early electronic musical instrument with a keyboard and slide invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot, and originally very similar in sound to the Theremin. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ...

External links

• Trautonium resource
• Doepfers Website
• Neumixturtrautonium VST