Can't wait to see this.
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Tour details are here
https://www.peterpichler-trautonium.com/english/australia-tour/
Sadly Peter isn't coming to Sydney.
The tour only covered Perth, Melbourne & Canberra.
(Thanks to Andrew of NLC for telling me about the gig in Perth.)
![Peter Pichler's Mixturtrautonium. Foto courtesy by Edward Beierle]()
I'm going to the Canberra gig to see the Alfred Hitchcock classic "The Birds" to a score using the Trautonium.
The Trautonium is one of the earliest electronic instruments.
![]()
It was invented in Berlin, Germanyby Friedrich Trautwein in the 1930s.
I understand they are still being produced in various forms today.
There is no keyboard. Instead it uses a resistor wire over a metal plate. The above Trautonium is one of the earliest. Probably less than 200 were made. Enhancements made by Oskar Sala in the fifties. This led to the well known Mixtur-Trautonium.
"The sounds were at first produced by neon-tube relaxation oscillators (later, thyratrons, then transistors), which produced sawtooth-like waveforms. The pitch was determined by the amount of resistive wire chosen by the performer (allowing vibrato, quarter-tones, and portamento). The oscillator output was fed into two parallel resonant filter circuits. A foot-pedal controlled the volume ratio of the output of the two filters, which was sent to an amplifier.
Doepfer produce a few Eurorack modules which provide Trautonium possibilities.
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The 113 module represents the sound generation core of the Mixtur-Trautonium introduced by Oskar Sala . The master frequency ( in this context a sawtooth wave) is divided by an integer 1...24 to obtain the sub-harmonics. The master frequency comes from an external oscillator like a rectangle output of a VCO to the frequency input of the A-113. The rectangle outputs are converted to sawtooth waveforms.
The frequency dividers of the 4 sub-harmonics is adjusted with up/down buttons as displayed with 2 character LED displays.
The sub-harmonics are available as single outputs and as mix output with adjustable levels for the sub-harmonics. The four sub-harmonics generated by the A-113 contain strong harmonic spectra with even and odd harmonics. They represent ideal basic sound sources to be modified with separate sound processing modules
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The output of the A-113 is fed into 4 parallel resonant filter circuits..... Formant filters.
The 104 is a replica of the lowpass/bandpass arrangement of the Mixtur Trautonium
There is no voltage control.
You could substitute the 104 with four separate 12 dB multimode filters and a 4 input mixer.
The filters must have at the least: low pass & band pass & off.
The signal is fed into each filter in parallel and then into the mixer.
![]()
Links
+ Doepfer
+Wikipedia
+ Birds Live score
Tour details are here
https://www.peterpichler-trautonium.com/english/australia-tour/
Sadly Peter isn't coming to Sydney.
The tour only covered Perth, Melbourne & Canberra.
(Thanks to Andrew of NLC for telling me about the gig in Perth.)
Peter Pichler's Mixturtrautonium. Foto courtesy by Edward Beierle
Edward Beierle [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
I'm going to the Canberra gig to see the Alfred Hitchcock classic "The Birds" to a score using the Trautonium.
The Trautonium is one of the earliest electronic instruments.
Telefunken Volkstrautonium, 1933
It was invented in Berlin, Germanyby Friedrich Trautwein in the 1930s.
I understand they are still being produced in various forms today.
There is no keyboard. Instead it uses a resistor wire over a metal plate. The above Trautonium is one of the earliest. Probably less than 200 were made. Enhancements made by Oskar Sala in the fifties. This led to the well known Mixtur-Trautonium.
"The sounds were at first produced by neon-tube relaxation oscillators (later, thyratrons, then transistors), which produced sawtooth-like waveforms. The pitch was determined by the amount of resistive wire chosen by the performer (allowing vibrato, quarter-tones, and portamento). The oscillator output was fed into two parallel resonant filter circuits. A foot-pedal controlled the volume ratio of the output of the two filters, which was sent to an amplifier.
Doepfer produce a few Eurorack modules which provide Trautonium possibilities.
The Doepfer A-113
The frequency dividers of the 4 sub-harmonics is adjusted with up/down buttons as displayed with 2 character LED displays.
The sub-harmonics are available as single outputs and as mix output with adjustable levels for the sub-harmonics. The four sub-harmonics generated by the A-113 contain strong harmonic spectra with even and odd harmonics. They represent ideal basic sound sources to be modified with separate sound processing modules
The 104 is a replica of the lowpass/bandpass arrangement of the Mixtur Trautonium
There is no voltage control.
You could substitute the 104 with four separate 12 dB multimode filters and a 4 input mixer.
The filters must have at the least: low pass & band pass & off.
The signal is fed into each filter in parallel and then into the mixer.
Links
+ Doepfer
+Wikipedia
+ Birds Live score