Electronic Musical Instruments

Name	Image	Tradition	Description
Continuum Fingerboard		United States	The Continuum is a music performance controller developed by Lippold Haken and sold by Haken Audio, located in Champaign, Illinois. Technically a MIDI controller, the Continuum features a touch-sensitive neoprene playing surface. Sensors under the playing surface respond to finger position and pressure in three dimensions and provide pitch resolution of one cent (one one-hundredth of a semitone) along the length of the scale (the X dimension), allowing essentially continuous pitch control for portamento effects and notes that aren't on the chromatic scale, apply vibratos or pitch bends to a note. The Continuum does not itself generate sounds. Rather, it must be connected to a sound-producing source that will receive MIDI input, such as a synthesizer module.
Digital Piano		Japan	A digital piano is a modern electronic musical instrument designed to serve primarily as an alternative to a traditional piano, both in the way it feels to play and in the sound produced. Some digital pianos are also designed to look like an acoustic piano. While digital pianos may fall short of the genuine article in feel and sound, they nevertheless have many advantages over normal pianos: They do not require tuning; They are much more likely to incorporate a MIDI implementation; They may have additional features to assist in learning and composition.
Drum Machine		United States	A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums and/or other percussion instruments. Drum machines are very useful instruments for a wide variety of musical genres, not just purely electronic music. They are also a common necessity when session drummers are not available or desired. The image shows a Yamaha RY30 Drum Machine.
Electronic Keyboard		United States	An electronic keyboard or digital keyboard is a type of keyboard instrument. Its sound is generated or amplified by one or more electronic devices. Electronic keyboard instruments are typically inexpensive, smaller, with mediocre sound quality, and lack many features offered by professional instruments.
Electronic Organ		United States	An electronic organ is an electronic keyboard instrument originally designed to imitate the sound of a pipe organ. It has developed today into two forms of the instrument, the imitation pipe organ as used in churches, and the Hammond organ-style instrument used in more popular music genres. The imitation pipe organ is often referred to as pipeless or digital organ.
Electronic Piano		Italy	An electronic piano is a keyboard instrument designed to simulate the timbre of a piano (and sometimes a harpsichord or an organ) using analog circuitry. Electronic pianos work similarly to analog synthesizers in that they generate their tones through oscillators, whereas electric pianos are mechanical, their sound being electrified by a pickup. Most electronic pianos date from the 1970s and were made in Italy, although similar models were made concurrently in Japan. An exception is the range of instruments made by RMI in the USA from 1967 to approximately 1980, which became one of the more popular electronic pianos used by professional musicians. Most electronic pianos (including the RMI) are not velocity sensitive, in that they do not vary their volume based on how hard or soft the keys are played, like an organ.
Mellotron		England	The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. The heart of the mellotron is a bank of magnetic audio tapes (which are parallel linear, not looped as has sometimes been reported or presumed). Each tape has approximately eight seconds of playing time. Playback heads (underneath each key) enable the playing of pre-recorded sounds. The earlier MKI and MKII models contained two side-by-side keyboards: On the right keyboard were 18 selectable "lead/instrument" sounds (such as strings, flutes, and brass instruments). The left keyboard played pre-recorded musical rhythm tracks (in various styles).
Ondes Martenot		France	The ondes Martenot (French for "Martenot waves"; also known as the ondium Martenot, Martenot and ondes musicales) 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. The sonic capabilities of the instrument were subsequently expanded by the addition of filter banks and switchable loudspeakers. The instrument is especially known for its eerie wavering notes produced by the thermionic valves that produce oscillating frequencies. The production of the instrument stopped in 1988 but a few Conservatories in France still teach it. In 2008, there is a project to rebuild an instrument which is as close as possible from the original.
Rhythmicon		United States	The Rhythmicon, also known as the Polyrhythmophone, was the world's first electronic drum machine (or rhythm machine). In 1930, the avant-garde American composer and musical theorist Henry Cowell commissioned Russian inventor Léon Theremin to create the remarkably innovative Rhythmicon. Cowell wanted an instrument with which to play compositions involving multiple rhythmic patterns impossible for one person to perform simultaneously on acoustic keyboard or percussion instruments. The invention, completed by Theremin in 1931, can produce up to sixteen different rhythms. The image shows Joseph Schillinger and the Rhythmicon (1932).
Sampler		United States	A sampler is an electronic music instrument closely related to a synthesizer. Instead of generating sounds from scratch, however, a sampler starts with multiple recordings (or “samples”) of different sounds, and then plays each back based on how the instrument is configured. Because these samples are usually stored in RAM, the information can be quickly accessed. The sampler has become an important instrument in hip hop, electronic music, and avant-garde music.
Synthesizer		United States	A synthesizer (or synthesiser) is an electronic instrument capable of producing musical sounds. The term originates from the Greek syntithetai. Synthesizers create electrical signals, which are then converted into a sound by a speaker. Analog synthesizers create sound by electrical oscillators which are fed to filters, and digital synthesizers by performing mathematical operations in a microprocessor. Sometimes both methods are used side by side. Both analog and digital synthesized sounds may sound dramatically different than recordings of natural sounds, though digital sampling synthesizers significantly blur this distinction. Music synthesizers sometimes include a keyboard, which makes them reminiscent of certain traditional musical instruments, like a piano or an organ.
Teleharmonium		United States	An early electromechanical instrument was the Telharmonium or Teleharmonium (also known as the Dynamophone), developed by Thaddeus Cahill in 1897. The Telharmonium was intended to be listened to using telephone receivers. Like the later Hammond organ, the Telharmonium used tonewheels to generate musical sounds as electrical signals by additive synthesis. An authoritative history of the Telharmonium is 'Magical Music from the Telharmonium' by Reynold Weidenaar, Scarecrow Press, 1995.
Theremin		Russia	The theremin (theramin, or thereminvox, also known as an aetherphone) is one of the earliest fully electronic musical instruments. It was invented by Russian inventor Léon Theremin in 1919, and it is unique in that it was the first musical instrument designed to be played without being touched. The controlling section generally consists of two metal antennas to sense the relative position of the player's hands. These sensors control audio oscillator(s) for frequency from one hand, and volume from the other. The electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker. To play the theremin, the player moves his hands around the two metal antennas.
Trautonium		Germany	The trautonium, a predecessor to the synthesizer, 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. The image shows a Mixtur Trautonium, one of two instruments worldwide.
Turntable		United States	The phonograph, or gramophone, was the most common device for playing recorded sound from the 1870s through the 1980s. In more modern usage, this device is often called a turntable, record player, or record changer. The earliest known invention of a phonographic recording device was the phonautograph, invented by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville and patented on March 25, 1857. It could transcribe sound to a visible medium, but had no means to play back the sound after it was recorded. Thomas Alva Edison announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877, and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29. The device was patented on February 19, 1878 as US Patent 200,521. The image shows an Edison cylinder phonograph ca. 1899.

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