MUS 6 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Thaddeus Cahill, Ondes Martenot, Reverberation
Lecture 12 – Electric/Electronic Instruments
❖ What makes a musical instrument?
• Engineered in a particular way for the human body to invoke vibrations from a
particular material
o Plucking or bowing (stringed instruments)
o Moving air (woodwind instruments)
o Striking a membrane (percussion)
o Hybrid? (piano, hammered dulcimer)
• Components:
o Something to start vibration
o Components that modulate vibration (sometimes)
o A resonant body that amplifies the vibration
• Ailit to e epressie
o Inflection, through ability to change the timbre of a tone
▪ Having continuous control over some aspect of the sound
o Dynamic contrast
o Or?? Eaple, Auditor Roughess, middle eastern instrument called a
Mijwiz
▪ No dynamic contrast
▪ No control over softness or roughness
❖ Electronic Instruments
• Generally mimic acoustic instruments in that particular behaviors are coaxed out
of the human performer.
• Vibrations are translated into voltage then amplified through electric, rather
than acoustic means.
• The Ondes Martenot
o Monophonic instrument (as opposed to polyphonic)
o Special loudspeakers:
▪ Metallique
▪ Palme
▪ Principal with spring reverb
• The Telharmonium, 1897 Thaddeus Cahill
o Keyboard instrument, polyphonic
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