Fascinating Keyboard Instruments

[Sacred Synthesis]

If I had a million dollars, I'd probably make our home into a keyboard museum.  I've always loved the keyboard and been fascinated with unusual keyboard musical instruments with a lot of character.  So, I thought I'd start a thread on the topic.  Here's the first example - the Viola Organista.  Who knew that Leonardo da Vinci had invented the first string synthesizer?  Now that's vintage, even moreso than a Mellotron!



http://www.violaorganista.com/en/about/

[chysn]

One of my favorite keyboard instruments is the pneumatic player piano. My grandparents had one in their basement when I was little, and they had a closet full of rolls. When I was very young, it worked, and my grandpa would operate it with its pedals. As I got older--or, more pertinently, as my grandparents got older--its playback mechanism fell into disrepair, but it still functioned as a regular piano.

One of the interesting things about the player piano is that the various manufacturers got together in the early 20th century and developed a standard format, so that one company's rolls could play on any other company's pianos. This is the best kind of history to repeat itself.

Anyway, I've always been fascinated by the instrument, and it certainly threw some gasoline on my later interest in synthesizers.

[Sacred Synthesis]

There's a natural progression from player piano to sequencer, right?   

[chysn]

There's a natural progression from player piano to sequencer, right?   

That's sort of it. If I had been born in the age of the player piano, I would have tried to acquire blank rolls and put music onto them according to the standard. It appeals to my inner maker, which a century later manifests as writing support software for the Evolver or writing custom firmware for Peaks.

Another keyboard instrument that captured my imagination in college was the "prepared piano," the brainchild of John Cage. Take a regular grand piano, and start putting $#!& inside it: tacks in the felt to change the transients, bits of hardware (or metal toys or saxophone reeds or 35mm film) on the strings, between the strings, or latticed* through the strings to change the timbre and/or pitch. This approaches synthesis, but also lets the piano sound more explicitly like the percussion instrument it is.

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* I don't know if "lattice" can be a verb. Sorry if I inappropriately verbed it, but I hope my meaning is clear enough.

[Sacred Synthesis]

Yes, the inner synthesist makes his or her appearance in all sorts of unforeseen ways, making ordinary keyboard instruments just a little extraordinary.  On my first church organist job, I played a tiny tracker pipe organ with only about six stops.  But my inner synthesist immediately sought out ways of improving the sound and drawing out a greater variety of tones.  I soon figured out that, if you pulled out one stop only about 90% and another stop 100%, the set of flat pipes would fail to completely fill with air, leaving them slightly flat, compared to the other set.  The result was a gorgeous detuned effect.   All I did was detune the "oscillators" to create a natural chorus.

[Chaparral]

There's a natural progression from player piano to sequencer, right?   

Not if the player piano scroll was constructed by Conlon Nancarrow. He uses irrational time intervals that I have not seen on any sequencer 

[Bald Eagle]

The Luray Caverns Stalacpipe organ is pretty cool. Saw it live years ago.

[Sacred Synthesis]

The Hammond Novachord, a synthesizer from 1938:

[Sacred Synthesis]

An interesting video on old Italian synthesizers:

[maxter]

How about a bowed keyboard instrument? Meet the Nyckelharpa, swedish for "keyharp". Dating back to at least 1350, it's a swedish traditional instrument. Both fascinating and ingenious imo. And that sound character! It has a keyboard, so I figured it would qualify to make this thread...

[markwilkins]

How about a bowed keyboard instrument? Meet the Nyckelharpa, swedish for "keyharp". Dating back to at least 1350, it's a swedish traditional instrument. Both fascinating and ingenious imo. And that sound character! It has a keyboard, so I figured it would qualify to make this thread...

Wow. That is pretty cool. I’ve never heard of or seen one of those. I’m glad you posted this.

Mark

[Soundquest]

Wow,  never knew about these.  Neat.

[maxter]

Realized that none of the videos above showcased one of Nyckelharpas attributes... the clicky trills.

The main attribute is of course the character of sound that it has. The resonating strings and the body makes for a quite naturally "reverby" sound. Not as pronounced as a bowed Psaltery for instance, which is good, or else fast passages would be obscured by it. Other than that, the trills are quite special. It has a couple of more tricks up its sleeve, but those are the most obvious. It has a "fuller" sound than many bowed instruments imo, but because of that it also occupies more sonic space. Not necessarily heard on studio recordings though, as the bottom and top ends are often attenuated.

Nothing fancy here, but I'm pretty sure it's Roine Stolt on lead guitar.


If you're allergic to that 80's sound, here's a more folksy one.

[maxter]

Here's a cute one, the Suzuki Andes:


Reminiscent of the Claviola, but far from the same, the Hohner Claviola functions more similarly to a harmonica, that is, inhaling air through it makes for anything 2 semitones lower than when exhaling. The Andes functions more flute-like. Both interesting instruments, imo.

[Sacred Synthesis]

I almost bought one of these for my wife - a music teacher - but they're pitched just too high.  Still, such a lovely pure tone.

[maxter]

[jok3r]

Wow. It's the second time the last few days, that I saw this instrument posted in a forum. The other forum is a German digital pipe organ forum. This instruments seems to fascinate synthesists and organists all together.