The forgotten 1950s vacuum tube synthesizer is back - Hohner Electronium modded

HAINBACH

"The Hohner Electronium, a German 1950s vaccuum tube synth in accordion form, came to me end of 2019 and worked for all of one day. It took me some to time to find a reliable tech that could fix it and also mod it. Now it boasts a send/return, so we can hear the direct sound of this gorgeous 1950s synth and add FX. And add FX I did."

Old Hohner Bassophon synthesizer "accordion" fisarmonica

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

I believe this is the first Bassophon to be featured on the site. Looks the same as the Electronium in this demo video by Hainbach.

"It is not a typical accordion, as the sound will be produced electrical, not by reeds. It is called "Bassophon" . The case includes its loudspeaker. Please note, that it has a German plug. (Maybe I can buy for your an adapter if you need one) The instrument makes sounds on most of the keys, but needs professional service and repair. Size: approx.17inch x 14,5" x 7,5" (43/37/19cm) The instrument needs repair and cleaning"

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Hohner Electronium - a vacuum tube synth from the 1950s

Published on Dec 23, 2019 HAINBACH

"In which I demonstrate one of the most beautiful instruments I ever had the pleasure of playing, the Hohner Electronium. Made by Hohner in the 1950s, this vacuum tube synth in Akkordeon form packs a deep bass and a rather poetic midrange. The German avantgarde of the time quickly discovered it, Stockhausen used the Model Pi (piano version), and Harald Boje played a modified version. You can hear it in Stockhausen's Telemusik and certain versions of Spiral.

Thanks to Jeremiah Runnels for this amazing gift!"

Yuri Suzuki gives Raymond Scott's Electronium electronic sequencer an AI makeover

Uploaded on May 8, 2019 Dezeen

Note Yuri Suzuki brought us the Global Synthesiser Project. You can find additional posts featuring Yuri here. See the Electronium label for demos of the original and more (including an unexpected user, none other than, Michael Jackson).

"Japanese designer Yuri Suzuki has reimagined a sixty-year-old electronic sequencer machine as a physical piece of music software that uses artificial intelligence to generate melodies.

Conceived by musician Raymond Scott in 1959, the Electronium, which is regarded as the world's first electronic sequencer, was made up of three switchboards mounted on a wooden cabinet.

Although the machine was never completed, it was meant to allow users to perform and compose music simultaneously.

Using pre-programmed algorithms, it would turn a snippet of any given melody into a full composition while enabling users to add embellishments over the top.

Presented at the upcoming Barbican exhibition AI: More Than Human, Suzuki – who is a partner at Pentagram – wanted to recreate the landmark machine using musical AI software Google Magenta.

Read more on http://www.dezeen.com/?p=1355258"

DreamPipe - free online micro studio w/ synthersizer & drum machine for Chrome

DreamPipe is a new, free, online synth for Chrome from the creator of Dreampipe Electronium and Space Bumps.

"It's an online micro-studio consisting of four monophonic synths and one drum machine. Loosely based around Sequential Circuits SixTrak. Users can record and share loops and (when it's been developed) export loops to midi and mp3."

You can find it here: https://dreampipe.fun

Vintage Synthesizer Brochures Including Rare Vako Orchestron, Moog Constellation, and Electronium

Note: Auction links are affiliate links for which the site may be compensated.

via this auction

"A nice set of very rare synthesizer brochure / catalog paperwork. Raymond Scott ELECTRONIUM May 70, MOOG Syn Amp, VAKO Orchestron for YES, MOOG Sonic Six, Moog Constellation 1973 Taurus Apollo Lyra - for Keith Emerson of ELP. These documents are used but in good condition. Will not separate, sold as-is, thank you."

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FascinationMachine Promo

FascinationMachine Promo from Stan Warnow on Vimeo.

"Sample video of Rebel Technologies modern version of Raymond Scott's Fascination Machine--it's essentially a micro-Electronium, and it will be at --The Raymond Scott Festival, at the Colony Theatre in Burbank, CA., this Saturday, September 8th. More info at www.raymondscottfestival.com"

Three Willow Park - Raymond Scott Electronium Release

Three Willow Park Promo from Stan Warnow on Vimeo.

Promo from Reckless Night Music for Basta Music's new release of Raymond Scott electronic music:Three Willow Park--Electronic Music from Inner Space 1961-1971

A new release featuring Raymond Scott's work on the Electronium, available on multiple formats via Amazon, digital on iTunes, and currently sold out at Dusty Groove.

via Raymondscott.net, where you'll find the full post.

"Three Willow Park: Electronic Music from Inner Space, 1961–1971, now available from Basta, represents the second anthology of pioneering electronica by Raymond Scott. The album contains 61 previously unissued gems, many featuring hypnotic rhythm tracks played by Scott’s Electronium — an invention which composed and performed using programmed intelligence. Three Willow Park reveals that Scott was producing beat-oriented proto-techno before the 1970s explosion of electronic music and rhythms on the pop charts, a significant achievement that should not be overlooked."

Dreampipe Electronium Online Browser Based Synth

This one in via J T. It's a bit like an online Korg KAOSS Pad.

Click through to give it a try: http://www.dreampipe.io/electronium

"The idea was to make something relatively complex as accessible and immediate as possible, thus there are only two levels of interaction: tapping the 'randomise sound' generates new patches; dragging on the canvas alters the frequencies of the 3 oscillators (x axis controls osc 1 + 2, y axis controls osc 3) . The output of each oscillator controls the frequency of the next oscillator in the chain apart from the third, which is connected to the audio output. This is by no means a serious piece of music production software, but rather something fun and easy to interact with. Hope you like.
And yes, the name is a reference to Raymond Scott."

Raymond Scott - 'Twilight in Turkey' - Electronium

Published on Mar 22, 2013 gopogator

Electronium From New Deluxe DVD Edtion of Deconstructing Dad - The Raymond Scott Documentary

Electronium Progress Report Excerpt from the new Deluxe DVD edtion of Deconstructing Dad--The Raymond Scott Documentary from Stan Warnow on Vimeo.

"Just to give a taste of what's in this very special DVD extra which is an overall progress report on the ongoing restoration of the Electronium by Darren Davison. There's lots more on the new Deluxe Edition DVD itself."

Mark Mothersbaugh's Tour of Mutato Muzika

Published on Jun 4, 2013 keyboardmag1·273 videos

"In this archival clip from May 2010, Mark Mothersbaugh gives us a tour of some of the vintage synths in Mutato Muzika, DEVO's headquarters in L.A."

EMS SYNTHI AKS, Oberheim TVS, Moog Memorymoog, Minimoog & Sonic Six, various circuit bent gear, EMS VCS3, custom DIY modular Aries Modular, EDP Wasp, Novachord, Electronium, TONTO, EML 500, Polybox, Octave CAT, Pink Floyd's Ondioline, Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 & more.

Update via Michael Hewel in the comments: "the modular around 08:00 is an Aries"

Final Set of A-Z of Analogue Synthesisers

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via this auction

The listing is from the author Peter Forrest who states this is likely the last set.  These are great books and imo the most comprehensive.  Click on the pics to get an idea of what they are like.  Peter also has other items listed including The Museum of Synthesizer Technology and Synthesizer von Gestern II.

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Motown's Raymond Scott Electronium Breaths New Life

You might remember the Electronium Restoration Project from this previous video post.

Jeff E. Winner, one of the men behind the critically acclaimend documentary film on Raymond Scott's life, Deconstructing Dad, wrote in on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge that they have made progress on the restoration and the Electronium is now producing sound!


A little history via wikipedia: "The Electronium, created by Raymond Scott, is an early combined electronic synthesizer and algorithmic composition / generative music machine.

Its place in history is unusual, because while in intention it is analogous to the digital algorithmic composition systems that would follow it, it was implemented entirely as an analog electronic machine.
The exact time for the beginning of Scott's efforts in making the machine is not known, but it is estimated to the late 1950s or early 1960s, with a workable unit by 1969. Scott, however, never ceased to modify and further develop the device by the time of his death in 1994.[1]

It was one of the very few electronic creations of Scott to be sold to a customer, as he was normally highly secretive about his devices[1]. A single Electronium machine was sold to Motown records, following a 1969 meeting between Scott and Motown’s Berry Gordy. The initial contract required that Scott visited Motown for three months to teach staff how the machine is used. This culminated in the 1971 hiring of Scott to serve as director of Motown's electronic music and research department in Los Angeles, a position Scott held until 1977.[1][2] No Motown recordings using Scott's electronic inventions have yet been publicly identified."

via Jeff E. Winner on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge:

"It's Alive! Yesterday I received this email from Darren Davidson, who is attempting to restore the Motown Electronium:

On Nov 28, 2012, at 1:18 PM, Darren Davison wrote:

Good Morning!

Last night a few Electrical/Egineering freinds of mine and I were trying to get to the bottom of why the Electronium would still not utter a sound. After about an hour of tinkering and following the initial setup procedure Raymond wrote up, the machine began to make very simple and crude sounds. We recorded the sounds and although they are hardly musical, it is a fantastic milestone.

Most of the tone generators, but of course, there are more questions than answers. The voltages delivered by the power supplies are still not quite right and many of the pot switches are so sticky, that adjusting them is like steering a car in ice with a flat tire. The recording and "Auto-composing" portion is still not working and my feelings were "just get it to make some kind of controllable sound" first, then work on getting fancy.

I am sure this will accelerate things, and I have been in contact with Alan Entenman and am sending him photos of the internals of the Electronium in hopes of refreshing his memory of how some of it should work on the recording and keyboard side.

Anyway, I am hoping that by March, even if it is not recording or auto composing, the sounds are less harsh and that some of the other features such as the "Bass generators, "counterpoints", and other features are working.

I will send a copy of the sound files as soon as I can, most likely this evening. It's on the Engineering guys phone and he is having trouble sending vide for some reason. The whole thing was recorded on an Iphone and there is a 4 min? video of me adjusting knobs and such. In all fairness to their help, their names are Guy Lewis and Pete Levno.

Now I think we will start picking up steam!

—Darren"

Also on http://raymondscott.blogspot.com/2012/11/electronium-restoration-update.html - you can track the site for updates on everything Raymond Scott.

You can also see the Electronium and Raymond Scott labels directly below, at the bottom of this post, for all posts here on MATRIXSYNTH.

Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO & Jeff E. Winner with Raymond Scott's Motown Electronium

Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO & Jeff E. Winner with Raymond Scott's Motown Electronium from Jeff E. Winner on Vimeo.

"Video shot by Stan Warnow; bonus scene from DVD: http://ScottDoc.com • YouTube alternalink: http://youtu.be/lCvkcGlhwoo

• Transcript follows:

MARK MOTHERSBAUGH: So sick! I mean, there are temporary touch-buttons called "DOOWAH!" What does that mean?!

JEFF E. WINNER: It was made for Motown, so we figure he was trying to relate to their vocabulary.

MM: That's great. I don't know — but it really makes you wanna hear this thing. Looks like this was some sort of a — like that was the sequencer part of it. Decay, staccato, envelopes, and chords, but there's just such a mixture of things...

STAN WARNOW: You don't really know that much about what each one of these things did? It's a mystery to all of us, I think.

MM: It's all speculation until you fire it up. Maybe Mister Entenmann... is that his name? He would probably be able to come here and say, 'Here's what they did, and I'll tell you why he bought red Krylon spray paint for this...'

SW: Yeah, he would.

JW: Raymond told this guy what he wanted, and he executed it, on this very model.

MM: That's amazing.

SW: Mitzi said he worked on it from the very beginning, until it was shipped out to Motown.

MM: They made a beautiful cabinet for it. The cabinet's kinda interesting because it's the most retro part of it, in a way.

JW: Yeah.

MM: It looks like an old telephone communications station or something.

JW: An airplane.

SW: My dad valued all that stuff, and he had a complete wood-working shop, when he had that big place…

MM: When he was really going.

JW: He seemed to like this shape, because even his big rooms full of equipment, when it filled his room, was also this same kind of angle.

MM: Yeah, like a cockpit. You're sitting right there and you're like...

JW (to MM): Here's an earlier version, and here's that digital thing you were talking about last night. But he completely rebuilt it.

MM: Look at that room, that's amazing.

JW: See these angles?

MM: That's cool! (laughs)

JW: It used to be whole walls-full, then he shrunk it down, more and more.

MM: (laughs) This one almost fit on the console of your car, you could drive your Honda around town with a...

JW: Do you happen to remember if this is all removable? Does this stuff come off? Is this the base? You don't know? Is there 'guts' in there, or is that mostly empty?

MM: Oh no, there's stuff in there. Let me see... It's pushed up against the wall right now, so we can't... but there is some things inside it.

SW: That's what I was wondering."

via Jeff E. Winner on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge

RIP Mike Brown of Livewire Electronics

Via an Interview with Mike Brown on Vicmod
(Be sure to click through for the full interview):

"Mike tell us a little about yourself.

This is the one I usually dread... (I'm not one for talking about myself much) but how about this: Played in a few bands during the '80s & '90s... if anyone remembers Cafe'Noire, Aura Circuit, or my solo project, Electronium (probably not... haha) Studied electronic music at Cal State University San Bernardino under Dr.Raymond Torre-Santos (now at Hunter College in New York). At the time they did not have an electronic music program, so when I showed up for recitals with my reels of tape music... the jury of music dept. administrators threw me out... haha...2 years later they had a full blown electronic music major program. figures.

I had always wanted a modular synth... but being married with small kids,had no hope of justifying the expense. Then around 1994, I discovered a book in the local library... 'build your own synthesizer' by Thomas Henry. I thought "I can do *this*!" so I set about gathering parts from local surplus stores and schematics from anywhere I could get them... library books mostly... I was on the internet, but this was pre-web days I think... So then I went about starting small fires for the next six years or so... ;) Eventually, the circuits began to actually work... and then I was thoroughly hooked."

And we were too. Thank you for everything Mike, we are going to miss you.

http://www.livewire-synthesizers.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Livewire-Electronics/301279517212 - Livewire
https://www.facebook.com/L1V3W1R3 - Mike Brown


Image of Mike Brown and Gur Milstein of Tiptop Audio at NAMM 2011.

I met Mike at NAMM 2010. I was pretty humbled. He was one of the kindest and most genuine people I have ever met. He just made you feel comfortable and happy to be around. Like a beacon of peace in chaos. A great soul of a man.

For a look at the influence of his work: 510 posts and counting. His work, memory, and legacy will live on forever.

Raymond Scott's MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC.

via raymondscott.com
"Prepare yourself. This collection of Raymond Scott's electronic music is your ticket to uncharted realms. These 1953-'69 recordings were performed by Raymond Scott on pioneering music machines designed and built by Scott, such as the Clavivox, Electronium, Circle Machine, and Bandito the Bongo Artist. Also included are soundtracks of Scott's maverick (and decidedly 'non-kiddie') film collaborations with pre-Muppet era Jim Henson. A 144-page hardcover book features interviews with Scott colleagues, including synthesizer innovator, Bob Moog. The full-color book also contains countless unseen photographs, lab notes, schematics, and US patents. Over 2 hours of music... (Note: This is NOT a reissue; all music is previously unreleased.)"

Follow-up to Raymond Scott - Soothing Sounds For Babies
This one added to the Synth CDs post.

Raymond Scott - Soothing Sounds For Babies

via wikipedia:
"Soothing Sounds for Baby (1964) is a three-volume set of ambient electronic music by American composer, musician, and inventor Raymond Scott. Scott originally intended to lull infants to sleep with the music, but later generations have found value in the music for its minimalist aspects, often comparing it to the works of Brian Eno, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream despite having predated such artists by more than a decade.

Originally released in collaboration with the Gesell Institute of Human Development[1], the volumes are split up into three age groups: Volume 1 is 1 to 6 months; Volume 2 is 6 to 12 months; and Volume 3 is 12 to 18 months. The music gets more complex with each volume. Scott created much of the music on the albums with instruments he created, such as the Electronium and the Clavivox. "Particularly on Soothing Sounds for Baby, Scott proved to be one of the first composers to merge the Brave New World of electronic sounds with a rhythmic pop sensibility."[2] Basta Music of Holland released the albums as a 3-CD set in 1997[2]."


Surprisingly you can currently find copies on eBay here.

Vol. 1 Track Listing
1. Lullaby
2. Sleepy Time
3. Music Box, The
4. Nursery Rhyme
5. Tic Toc

Vol. 2 Track Listing
1. Tempo Block
2. Happy Whistler, The
3. Toy Typewriter

Update: Per above I was surprised to see these on eBay. It turns out these are re-issues. Via Jeff E. Winner in the comments: "We issued CDs of all 3 volumes in 1997 — which are still in-print & selling very well — and these vinyl LPs, also still in-print. We have a 3-LP vinyl version of our MANHATTAN RESEARCH INC. compilation too (but it doesn't include the amazing, 144-page hardcover, full-color book):" link

Mark Mothersbaugh with The Electronium

via The Raymond Scott Archives's Photos

"Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo) with the Motown version of Raymond Scott’s instantaneous-composition invention, THE ELECTRONIUM (and a Yamaha DX-7), in Scott’s guesthouse in Van Nuys, CA, 1993. [Photo by Mr. Bonzai, published in BILLBOARD magazine]"

This one in via Jeff

Deconstructing Dad - Raymond Scott Film

Friday 17 / 19.45 / K1 On KLIK!"Raymond Scott was a prolific composer, musician and inventor whose music became synonymous with animated films during the Golden Age of Animation in the ‘30s and 40’s. In the 90’s, Scott’s music had a resurgence in animation through Ren & Stimpy, Duckman and the Animaniacs.Scott was also a pioneer in electronic music, building a “simultaneous composition and performance machine” called the Electronium and acting as the mentor of Robert Moog, who went on to invent the Moog Synthesizer."via vitomf, via cartoon brew

Update via Jeff E. Winner in the comments: "Jim Henson took that photo — that's his briefcase on the floor. And you're only seeing half of the shot — here's the entire thing"