by Benjamin Rogers

Created on: January 23, 2007   Last Updated: February 16, 2012

Tuneful Tools.
It is easy to forget that musical instruments are being invented and evolving all the time. A whole sub-culture of experimental instrument makers exists. They've formed guilds, publish journals, have web sites and build, play and record with some of the most weird, beautiful and interesting devices.
Essentially, musical instruments fall into one of four categories

Chordophones (stringed), Aerophones (wind instruments), Membra phones (Instruments involving stretched skins) and Idiophones (producing a sound from something without changing it in any way.) One of the most unusual musical instruments I have heard of is Skariofszky's Zither. A long trained worm in a trough of water activates the zither as it undulates its body with precise motions, allowing drops of water to fall onto the strings of the zither, producing complex Hungarian folk melodies. Ethnomusicologists would class this as a chordophone.

The worlds' first electronic instrument, Cahill's Dynamophone, or Telharmonium was patented in 1897. It weighed about 200 tons and was 60 feet long. We have divided the octave into twelve equidistant degrees (semi-tones), viewing this as unnatural prompted Dr. Thaddeus Cahill to construct an apparatus that makes it possible to transform an electric current into an infinite gradation of the octave. The monstrous instrument occupied the entire floor of "Telharmonic Hall" on 39th Street and Broadway New York City for 20 years.

The theremin is one of the earliest fully electronic musical instruments. The theremin is unusual in that it is the only musical instrument played without being touched.. The instrument has two antennas around which the user moves their hands to generate its unique, eerie and haunting sounds. It was often used in 1950's sci-fi film sound tracks is most famously the sound heard at the beginning of "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys (although this was not provided by a true theremin, but an Electro-Theremin, which is controlled mechanically). Easy to learn but notoriously difficult to master, Clara Rockmore is widely considered the greatest thereminist ever. In the 1930's she toured to wide acclaim, performing a classical repertoire in concert halls.

The instrument was invented by Russian Lon Theremin in 1919. Lenin was so impressed with the device that he began taking lessons in playing it and sent Theremin on a trip around the world to demonstrate the latest Soviet technology. Theremin settled in America in 1928 untill he was kidnapped

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>