The Trautonium - 1930s tube synthesizer

Hardware
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Pressure-sensitive ribbon-controller subharmonic oscillator vacuum tube synthesizer dating back to 1929. “Tongues” can be used for fixed pitches.

I’ve read a lot about early electronic instruments but I think this was new to me. Heard about it from a link someone posted in a Facebook discussion about Hindemith:

Custom-built Trautoniums, including a CV/gate model for use with modular synths:

https://www.trautoniks.de/com/product.html

Detailed technical discussion:

http://www.doepfer.de/traut/traut_e.htm

Doepfer Eurorack A-113 subharmonic generator:

http://www.doepfer.de/a113.htm

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Cool! Particularly the acoustic-instrument like sounds in the Hindemeth piece are great!

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Always goosebumps about that chord progression… (first video)

My last travel…This one is in Brussels - MIM
Staring… amazed

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Berlin 05/2018

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What’s that first one? Its manual looks like separate metal pads rather than the usual long ribbon.

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Unfortunately I only have that photo…
It just seems its missing the “wire”
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/how-the-trautonium-found-favor-with-nazis-and-gave-hitchcocks-emthe-birdsem-its-distinctive-screech

edit: no info on http://www.mim.be/en also…

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And don’t forget the wonderful performance at Superbooth last year:

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Thanks for sharing this. Interesting controller design. And interesting that Telefunken manufactured a version for the consumer market.

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Hainbach released a lovely interview featuring the artist LudoWic and how he plays Trautonium

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LudoWic explains how to use the metal tabs, though he himself uses only the wires. Also seems clear from his comments that the “subharmonics” are really used as chords.

Watching a few videos I was interested to see that Oskar Sala kept upgrading to more modern versions of the instrument.

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I saw a trautonium concert last year in Munich! The videos above are private unfortunately.Edit: Not private, you just have to switch to Youtube. Neat!

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I made a crude Trautonium using an Otamatone, a low pass filter, and simple leaf spring mechanism that I ordered from sendcutsend.com.

Here’s a video breaking down the project. The video starts with a little history lesson for people who aren’t already in the know about expressive synths. Please enjoy, thanks.

At the end of the video I share that I’m working on a more serious Trautonium thing long term. I’ll have more to share on that later but there’s a little teaser performance in there for now.

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