flickr By jochenWolters
"More than thirty years before
Bob Moog conceived of the synthesizer as we know it today, Friedrich Trautwein developed his
Trautonium, a highly complex, monophonic electronic musical instrument.
The pitch is "selected" via a string that is pressed against a metal bar and, in essence, works like a ribbon controller.
Although you may not be familiar with this fascinating "pre-synth", chances are that you've already heard some of the sounds it is capable of producing: The bird sounds in Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 movie, "The Birds", were created by Trautonium virtuoso,
Oscar Sala.
Jürgen Hiller has been building and repairing Trautoniums for more than twenty years. The one you see above is being custom-built for a customer and includes an unusual percussive module labeled "Schlagwerk" (German for "drum mechanism")."
See the Trautonium label below for more.
Update via Tomoroh Hidari on Facebook: "I had the pleasure to work on a replica of a mixtur trautonium built for the Technisches Museum Vienna, together with a friend. it's an amazing instrument! here's a (free download) album we did on it (and laptops) in '08:
http://alien.mur.at/ujvary/jetztzeit.html"
