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Novachord
The Novachord is the world's first commercial polyphonic synthesizer, polyphonic synthesizer. Incorporating many circuit and control elements found in modern synthesizers, and using subtractive synthesis to generate tones, it was designed by John M. Hanert, Laurens Hammond and C. N. Williams, and was manufactured by the Hammond organ, Hammond company. Only 1,069 Novachords were built over a period from 1939 to 1942. It was one of very few electronic products released by Hammond that was not intended to emulate the sound of an organ. History of production While production of the Novachord began in November 1938, it was first heard at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The Novachord Orchestra of Ferde Grofé performed daily at the Ford stand with four Novachords and a Hammond organ, Hammond Organ. The first instrument was delivered to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 30, 1940 as a birthday present. The Novachord was not well-suited to the technique of organists or pianists ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polyphonic Synthesizer
Polyphony is a property of musical instruments that means that they can play multiple independent melody lines simultaneously. Instruments featuring polyphony are said to be polyphonic. Instruments that are not capable of polyphony are monophonic or paraphonic. An intuitively understandable example for a polyphonic instrument is a (classical) piano, on which the player plays different melody lines with the left and the right hand - depending on music style and composition, these may be musically tightly interrelated or may even be totally unrelated to each other, like in parts of Jazz music. An example for monophonic instruments is a trumpet which can generate only one tone (frequency) at a time, except when played by extraordinary musicians. Synthesizer Monophonic A monophonic synthesizer or ''monosynth'' is a synthesizer that produces only one note at a time, making it smaller and cheaper than a polyphonic synthesizer which can play multiple notes at once. This does not n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synthesizer
A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments, and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI. Synthesizer-like instruments emerged in the United States in the mid-20th century with instruments such as the RCA Mark II, which was controlled with punch cards and used hundreds of vacuum tubes. The Moog synthesizer, developed by Robert Moog and first so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jerry Goldsmith
Jerrald King Goldsmith (February 10, 1929July 21, 2004) was an American composer, conductor and orchestrator with a career in film and television scoring that spanned nearly 50 years and over 200 productions, between 1954 and 2003. He was considered one of film music's most innovative and influential composers. He was nominated for eighteen Academy Awards (winning in 1977 for ''The Omen''), six Grammy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, nine Golden Globe Awards, and four British Academy Film Awards. He composed scores for five films in the ''Star Trek'' franchise and three in the Rambo (franchise), ''Rambo'' franchise, as well as for films including ''Logan's Run (film), Logan's Run'', ''Planet of the Apes (1968 film), Planet of the Apes'', ''Tora! Tora! Tora!'', ''Patton (film), Patton'', Papillon (1973 film), ''Papillon'', ''Chinatown (1974 film), Chinatown'', ''The Omen'', ''Alien (film), Alien'', ''Poltergeist (1982 film), Poltergeist'', ''The Secret of NIMH'', ''Medicine Man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Gorgon
''The Gorgon'' is a 1964 British horror film directed by Terence Fisher and starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Richard Pasco and Barbara Shelley. The screenplay was by John Gilling and Anthony Nelson Keys. It was produced by Keys for Hammer Films. Plot Germany 1910: The village of Vandorf has suffered seven horrific murders in five years. In each case, the unfortunate victim has been turned to stone. In the old millhouse on the edge of the forest, Sascha Cass tells her artist boyfriend Bruno Heitz she is carrying his child. Wanting to stand up to his obligations, Bruno races off into the night to see Sascha's father despite her pleas for him not to go. She races after him, but soon loses him in the dark forest. There, amongst the dark shadows, something catches her attention. She looks into the face of something hideous and screams. Raising her head once more, she looks upon the horror and screams again before dying. Upon examination of the body, Dr. Namaroff, a loc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hammer Horror
Hammer Film Productions Ltd. is a British film production company based in London. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic horror and fantasy films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Many of these involve classic horror characters such as Victor Frankenstein, Baron Victor Frankenstein, Count Dracula, and the Mummy (undead), Mummy, which Hammer reintroduced to audiences by filming them in vivid colour for the first time. Hammer also produced science fiction, Thriller film, thrillers, film noir and Comedy film, comedies, as well as, in later years, television series. During its most successful years, Hammer dominated the horror film market, enjoying worldwide distribution and considerable financial success. This success was, in part, due to its distribution partnerships with American companies such as United Artists, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, American Internationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Bernard (composer)
James Michael Bernard (20 September 1925 – 12 July 2001) was a British film composer, particularly associated with horror films produced by Hammer Film Productions. Beginning with ''The Quatermass Xperiment'', he scored such films as ''The Curse of Frankenstein'' and ''Dracula''. He also occasionally scored non-Hammer films including '' Windom's Way'' (1957) and '' Torture Garden'' (1967). Early years and World War II Bernard was educated at Wellington College, previously attended by Christopher Lee, who starred in many of the Hammer horror films Bernard scored. In an interview late in his life, Bernard recalled that in his mid-teens three of his favourite books were '' The Devil Rides Out'', ''She'', and ''The Hound of the Baskervilles''. While still a schoolboy, Bernard met Benjamin Britten when the composer came to consult the school's art master, Kenneth Green, about the stage designs for ''Peter Grimes''. Britten took interest in an inter-house music competition, and advi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vibrato
Vibrato (Italian language, Italian, from past participle of "wikt:vibrare, vibrare", to vibrate) is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch (music), pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterized in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation ("extent of vibrato") and the speed with which the pitch is varied ("rate of vibrato"). In singing, it can occur spontaneously through variations in the larynx. The vibrato of a string instrument and wind instrument is an imitation of that vocal function. Vibrato can also be reproduced mechanically (Leslie speaker) or electronically as an Audio signal processing, audio effect close to Chorus (audio effect), chorus. Terminology History Descriptions of what would now be characterised as vibrato go back to the 16th century. However, no evidence exists of authors using the term vibrato before the 19th century. Instead, authors used various descrip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trautonium
The Trautonium is an electronic synthesizer invented in 1930 by Friedrich Trautwein in Berlin at the Musikhochschule's music and radio lab, the Rundfunkversuchstelle. Soon afterward Oskar Sala joined him, continuing development until Sala's death in 2002. Description 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, creating vibrato with small movements. Volume was controlled by the pressure of the finger on the wire and board. The first Trautoniums were marketed by Telefunken from 1933 until 1935 (200 were made). The sounds were at first produced by neon-tube relaxation oscillators Example of a similar early neon keyboard invention by Winston E. Kock (later, thyratrons, then transistors), which produced sawtooth-like waveforms. The pitch was determined by the position at which the performer pressed the resistive wire into contact with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ondes Martenot
The ondes Martenot ( ; , ) or ondes musicales () is an early electronic musical instrument. It is played with a lateral-vibrato Keyboard instrument, keyboard or by moving a ring tied to a wire, creating "wavering" sounds similar to a theremin. Dynamics and timbre are adjusted using controls in a drawer on the instrument's left side. A player of the ondes Martenot is called an ondist. The ondes Martenot was invented in 1928 by the French inventor Maurice Martenot. Martenot was inspired by the accidental overlaps of tones between military radio oscillators, and wanted to create an instrument with the expressiveness of the cello. The ondes Martenot is used in more than 100 orchestral compositions. The French composer Olivier Messiaen used it in pieces such as his 1949 symphony ''Turangalîla-Symphonie'', and his sister-in-law Jeanne Loriod was a celebrated player of the instrument. It appears in numerous film and television soundtracks, particularly Science fiction film, science fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Entr'acte
(or , ;Since 1932–35 the recommends this spelling, with no apostrophe, so historical, ceremonial and traditional uses (such as the 1924 René Clair film title) are still spelled . and ', , and ) means 'between the acts'. It can mean a pause between two parts of a stage production, synonymous to an intermission (this is nowadays the more common meaning in French), but it more often (in English) indicates a piece of music performed between acts of a theatrical production. But despite this, an entr'acte is often paired with a longer intermission, as an intermission is usually "between acts." However, there can also be an entr'acte on its own, usually between the two acts without an intermission. In the case of stage musicals, the serves as the overture of act 2 (and sometimes acts 3 and 4, as in ''Carmen''). In films that were meant to be shown with an intermission, there was frequently a specially recorded on the soundtrack between the first and second half of the film, al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
