The ANS synthesizer is a photoelectronic musical instrument created by Russian engineer Evgeny Murzin from 1937 to 1957. The technological basis of his invention was the method of

graphical sound Graphical sound or drawn sound (Fr. ''son dessiné'', Ger. ''graphische Tonerzeugung'',; It. ''suono disegnato'') is a sound recording created from images drawn directly onto film or paper that were then played back using a sound system. There ar ...

recording used in

cinematography Cinematography () is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography. Cinematographers use a lens (optics), lens to focus reflected light from objects into a real image that is transferred to some image sen ...

(developed in Russia concurrently with USA), which made it possible to obtain a visible image of a

sound wave In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the ...

, as well as to realize the opposite goal— synthesizing a sound from an artificially drawn sound

spectrogram A spectrogram is a visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies of a signal as it varies with time. When applied to an audio signal, spectrograms are sometimes called sonographs, voiceprints, or voicegrams. When the data are represen ...

. In this case the

sine wave A sine wave, sinusoidal wave, or sinusoid (symbol: ∿) is a periodic function, periodic wave whose waveform (shape) is the trigonometric function, trigonometric sine, sine function. In mechanics, as a linear motion over time, this is ''simple ...

s generated by the ANS are printed onto five glass discs using a process that Murzin (an optical engineer) had to develop himself. Each disc has 144 individual tracks printed onto it, for a total of 720 microtones (discrete pitches), spanning 10 octaves. This yields a resolution of 1/72

octave In music, an octave (: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is an interval between two notes, one having twice the frequency of vibration of the other. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referr ...

(16.67 cents). The modulated light from these wheels is then projected onto the back of the synthesizer's interface. These are arranged in a continuous swath vertically, with low frequencies at the bottom and high frequencies at the top. The user interface consists of a glass plate covered in non-drying opaque black mastic, which constitutes a drawing surface upon which the user makes marks by scratching through the mastic, and therefore allowing light to pass through at that point. : ''and'' : — these small figures describing how ANS Synthesizer generate the sound: (1) On the bottom: the rotating glass disk (optical tonewheel) irradiated by a light beam through a slit, generates intermittent light beam corresponding to the multiple sound wave spectrum (with 144 pitches per disk). (2) On the middle: this intermittent light beam irradiate the score glass plate from the bottom, passes through the transparent area (caused by scratch) of the score glass plate. (3) On the top: the resulting light beam is incident to the multiple photocells above the score, and these outputs as electrical signals are summed, amplified and finally played through the loudspeaker, as the sound intended on the score.
On the above process, (1) the intermittent light beam as the sound spectrum, and (2) score glass plate, are corresponding to Scriabin's colour keyboard. On the horizontal axis of the score, the time is plotted. The vertical axis is the pitch of the sounds on a logarithmic scale, i.e. the tempered scale of pure sinusoidal tones. The optical slit of the pure tone generator is located behind the score along the vertical pitch axis. Light beams modulated with pure tones are projected onto the optical slit. On the other side of the glass of the score is placed a reading

photocell Photodetectors, also called photosensors, are devices that detect light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation and convert it into an electrical signal. They are essential in a wide range of applications, from digital imaging and optical c ...

. The glass of the score can be moved in the direction of the time axis. Along the optical slit of the generator, all pure tones have the same width, and each tone occupies a definite geometric place according to the logarithmic scale of the pitch of sounds. In front of the glass plate sits a vertical bank of twenty

s that send signals to twenty

amplifier An amplifier, electronic amplifier or (informally) amp is an electronic device that can increase the magnitude of a signal (a time-varying voltage or current). It is a two-port electronic circuit that uses electric power from a power su ...

s and

bandpass filter A band-pass filter or bandpass filter (BPF) is a device that passes frequencies within a certain range and rejects ( attenuates) frequencies outside that range. It is the inverse of a '' band-stop filter''. Description In electronics and s ...

s, each with its own gain adjust control. It is akin to a ten-octave equalizer with two knobs per octave. The ANS is fully

polyphonic Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ...

and will generate all 720 pitches simultaneously if required (a vertical scratch would accomplish this). The glass plate can then be scanned left or right in front of the photocell bank in order to transcribe the drawing directly into pitches. In other words, it plays what one has drawn, similar to how a score is written. This process can be aided with a gear-motor drive (similar to an engineering

lathe A lathe () is a machine tool that rotates a workpiece about an axis of rotation to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, deformation, facing, threading and turning, with tools that are applied to the w ...

) or it can be moved manually. The scan speed is adjustable down to zero. The speed at which the score scans has no relation to pitch but serves only as a means of controlling duration.

History and creation

Murzin named his invention in honour of the composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (ANS): Scriabin (1872–1915) was an occultist, theosophist, and early exponent of color-sound theories in composition. The synthesizer was housed in the electronic-music studio situated above the Scriabin Museum (just off of the Arbat in central Moscow) before moving to the basement of the central university on the corner of Bolshaya Nikitskaya. It was saved from the scrapheap thanks to Stanislav Kreichi, who persuaded the university to look after it. The ANS was used by Stanislav Kreichi,

Alfred Schnittke Alfred Garrievich Schnittke (24 November 1934 – 3 August 1998) was a Russian composer. Among the most performed and recorded composers of late 20th-century classical music, he is described by musicologist Ivan Moody (composer), Ivan Moody as a ...

, Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, and other Soviet composers. Edward Artemiev wrote many of his scores of the movies of

Andrei Tarkovsky Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (, ; 4 April 1932 – 29 December 1986) was a Soviet film director and screenwriter of Russian origin. He is widely considered one of the greatest directors in cinema history. Works by Andrei Tarkovsky, His films e ...

with the help of the ANS. Of particular note is Artemiev's score of Tarkovsky's '' Solaris'' in which the ANS was used to abstract, sci-fi effect akin to

ambient music Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes Musical tone, tone and atmosphere over traditional Musical form, musical structure or rhythm. Often "peaceful" sounding and lacking Musical composition, composition, beat, and/or structured melod ...

. After several years at the Theremin Center, the ANS (there is only one—the original was destroyed and this is the improved version) is now located in the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

Recordings

An album of works by the composers mentioned above, called "Musical Offering" was released on Melodiya (C60 30721 000) in 1990—although the recordings date from the 1960s and 1970s. Recordings by Stanislav Kreichi—"Ansiana" and "Voices and Movement"—as well as earlier works ("Electroshock Presents: Electroacoustic Music") that used the synthesizer are available on Electroshock Records. A soundtrack of the film ''Into Space'' (1961) in collaboration with Edward Artimiev remains unreleased. In 2002,

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

broadcast a program about the ANS by Isobel Clouter as part of her ''Soundhunter'' series. In 2004, the British experimental group Coil released '' CoilANS'', a boxed set of experimental

drone music Drone music, drone-based music, or simply drone, is a minimalist genre of music that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or tone clusters called '' drones''. It is typically characterized by lengthy compositions featuring relativel ...

performed on the ANS. The Norwegian artist Zweizz released a cassette in 2007 on which side B is made entirely out of ANS recordings. The British experimental group T.A.G.C. utilized sounds generated on the ANS on two compositions that were released in 1996 on the ''Deepnet'' compilation album. ''ANS (For Evgeny Murzin)'', Track 11 of the album ''For 2'' by German musician Carsten Nicolai, released in 2010, was recorded live with the ANS Synthesizer at Theremin Center, Moscow State Conservatory.

Software Emulations

Virtual ANS

The ANS has been simulated by developer Alexander Zolotov in his software, ''Virtual ANS''. Written in Pixilang, the app is supported by Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Apple iOS and Android. Now in its third major version, the simulator's stable release was in 2019.

MZ2SYNTH

MZ2SYNTH is an open-source wavetable synthesizer program, inspired by the ANS synthesizer, written in Fortran 2003. It is a command-line application which takes input in the form of a 720-row PPM image, and generates output in the form of a two-channel 32-bit floating point Sun AU audio file. The 720 virtual oscillators span 10 octaves, and each oscillator generates sine, square, sawtooth and triangle waves. The four waveform types can be associated with any of the red, green, blue and

luminance Luminance is a photometric measure of the luminous intensity per unit area of light travelling in a given direction. It describes the amount of light that passes through, is emitted from, or is reflected from a particular area, and falls wit ...

channels of the input image. Using the SoX ''play'' command as a helper application, MZ2SYNTH can generate 48000 c.p.s. audio samples and play them in real time on a PC with a 3 GHz quad-core Intel i5 CPU, with any desired additional effects such as chorus, reverberation, etc. MZ2SYNTH is actively developed on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

, and is currently in alpha pre-release status with basic features.

Footnotes

References

Bibliography

{{columns-list, colwidth=30em, ;Documents *{{cite web , ref={{sfnref, Kreichi, 1997 , author = Stanislav Kreichi , date = 1997-11-10 , title = The ANS Synthesizer: Composing on a Photoelectronic Instrument , url = http://www.theremin.ru/archive/ans.htm , website = Theremin Center *{{cite book , ref={{sfnref, Smirnov, 2013 , author = Andrey Smirnov , date = 2013 , chapter = 7. Graphical Sound: The ANS Synthesizer , chapter-url=http://asmir.info/soundz/Sound_in_Z.pdf#page=121 , title = Sound in Z - Experiments in sound and electronic music in early 20th century Russia , url = http://asmir.info/soundz/Sound_in_Z.pdf , location = London , publisher = Sound and Music / Koenig Books , publication-date = 2013 , isbn = 978-3-86560-706-5 , pages = 227–236 ;Patents *{{cite patent, ref={{sfnref, Murzin, 1957 , country = USSR , number = 118695 , status = application , title = Фотоэлектрический синтезатор музыки (Photoelectric Music Synthesizer) , url = https://patents.google.com/patent/SU118695A1/en , pubdate = 1957-06-24 , inventor = Е.А. Мурзин (Murzin, E.A.) .
''For the figurers lacked on above, see'' {{cite web , url=https://img.findpatent.ru/img_data/357/3576286.jpg , title=Fig.1, 2 on: {{cite web , author = Е. А. Мурзин , date = 1957-06-24 , title = ФОТОЭЛЕКТРИЧЕСКИЙ СИНТЕЗАТОР МУЗЫКИ , url = https://findpatent.ru/patent/11/118695.html , website = FindPatent.ru ;Discographies and reviews *{{cite web , ref={{sfnref, Snowman-john, 2011 , date = 2011-07-07 , title = The ANS Synthesizer discography (part 1) , url = http://snowman-john.livejournal.com/23776.html , {{cite web, ref={{sfnref, Snowman-john, 2013 , date = 2013-06-03 , title = (part 2) , url = http://snowman-john.livejournal.com/23776.html , language = Russian, English , website = snowman-john.livejournal.com *{{cite AV media , ref={{sfnref, Electroshock, 1999 , people = various artists , date = 1999 , title = Electroshock Presents Electroacoustic Music Volume 4 • Archive Tapes Synthesizer ANS 1964-1971 , trans-title = , type = CD, Compilation , language = , url = https://www.discogs.com/release/235627-Various-Electroshock-Presents-Electroacoustic-Music-Volume-IV-Archive-Tapes-Synthesizer-ANS-1964-197 , access-date = , format = , time = , location = Russia , publisher = Electroshock Records , id = ELCD 011 , isbn = , oclc = , quote =
''See also reviews on'': {{cite web , ref = {{sfnref, Groove Unlimited , title = Electroacoustic music #4 , url = http://www.groove.nl/cd/3/39881.html , format = reviews , id = 39881 , website = Groove Unlimited , access-date = 2005-12-13 , archive-date = 2010-04-15 , archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100415062600/http://www.groove.nl/cd/3/39881.html , url-status = dead ;Others *{{cite web , ref={{sfnref, Zolotov, 2020 , author = Alexander Zolotov , date = 2020-04-12 , title = Virtual ANS imulator, url = https://warmplace.ru/soft/ans/ , website = warmplace.ru *{{cite web , ref={{sfnref, Kirn, 2019 , author = Peter Kirn , date = 2019-06-06 , title = Jam like you're in a Tarkovsky film with this major app update , url = https://cdm.link/2019/06/virtual-ans-3-spectral-synthesis/ , website = cdm.link *{{cite web , ref={{sfnref, Lamprecht, 2024 , author = E. Lamprecht , date = 2024 , title = Frankenbeans/MZ2SYNTH GitHub Repository , website =

, url = https://github.com/frankenbeans/MZ2SYNTH Synthesizers Soviet inventions Russian inventions Russian electronic musical instruments Graphical sound optoelectronics