Way Old School
Electronic Music Instruments 1870 - 1990. Hundreds of instruments, many with pictures and extensive descriptions, such as the Mixturtrautonium.
Micro-tonal intervals could be produced on the Mixturtrautonium. To ensure accurate contact with the notes leather covered sprung and moveable metal tongues are added to each string. In a c-tuning they are located above the nots c,d,g and a in each octave. Unlike with a vibrating string, the gradation of the electrical string manual is linear and not exponential so that all octave have the same finger range.
"....A clear advantage of the semi-conductor Trautonium is the absolute precision in sub harmonic frequency division. Each string controls the frequency of a top oscillator. this operates parallel four dividers who's signals in their interrelationship results in a mixture. each divider can be switched to one of a maximum of 24 values (20 in the case of the tube version) Three settings can be pre-selected which correspond to the sideways switch positions of the trautonium pedal. additionally to the frequency of the top oscillator a simoultaneaously working frequency ("neighbouring tone") in a freely determinable interval can be produced, which alternatively is available for one of the dividers. In this way it is possible, for instance to make a major characteristic from the minor chord pattern of the sub harmonic series. The square wave-shaped basic signal of a divider initially enters a transformer which turns it into a saw tooth signal. Together with noise proportions which can be admixed, the latter is passed to a format filter which can impress on this raw material the vowel sounds u,o,a,e,i or gliding transitions. Each of the four mixture dividers has its own filter."
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Posted by johndan at February 28, 2004 10:13 PM
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