![]() Although tempermental and prone to pitch and mechanical issues, the Mellotron was used extensively by many U.K. Hailed as the world’s first electric piano, the Storytone is prized by musicians and collectors alike for its realistic piano sound – only 500 or so were ever built.įinding a high level of acceptance in the 1960s, Harry Chamberlin’s Mellotron was an electro-mechanical keyboard that generated sounds by playing back pre-recorded tape loops. You can hear the Ondioline on Del Shannon’s Runaway.ĭesigned by famous piano manufacturer Story & Clark in association with RCA, the Storytone piano debuted at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The keyboard even allowed the player to produce natural-sounding vibrato by depressing a key and using side-to-side finger movements. In the late 1930s, French musician Georges Jenny invented what he called the Ondioline, a monophonic electronic keyboard capable of generating a wide range of sounds. An outstanding example of the Theremin’s use can be heard on the Beach Boys iconic smash hit Good Vibrations. It was a simple oscillator that was played by moving the performer’s hand in the vicinity of the instrument’s antenna. The modern synthesizer’s evolution began in 1919, when a Russian physicist named Lev Termen (also known as Léon Theremin) invented one of the first electronic musical instruments – the Theremin.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |