Magic Music From The Telharmonium Documentary 3
September 3, 2010 in Local Music by stagemaster
It was 1906. “Get Music on Tap Like Gas or Water” promised the headlines, and soon the public was enchanted with inventor Thaddeus Cahill’s (1867-1934) electrical music by wire. The Telharmonium was a 200-ton behemoth that created numerous musical timbres and could flood many rooms with sound. Beginning with the first instrument, constructed in the 1890′s, and continuing with the installation of the second instrument at Telharmonic Hall in New York, the rise and fall of commercial service, the attempted comeback of the third Telharmonium, and ending with efforts to find a home for the only surviving instrument in 1951, this documentary provides a definitive account of the first comprehensive music synthesizer. You can get a full DVD of this documentary: www.amazon.com This clip was reposted from magneticmusic.ws with the permission of Reynold Weidenaar.
I think the voices could have done without the distortion, but the documentary was quite interesting.
Yes, that’s right. The Melllotron is what i meant.
I think you mean the Mellotron used magnetic tapes.
Even the Moog, with its magnetic tapes, is based on magnetic induction. One could argue that if the telharmonium’s rotor faces were formed in such a way as to reflect, as they passed the stator, the varying magnetic waveform of the recorded signals on a moog tape, it could produce some of the simpler sounds.
Various tone-wheel organs and synths are/were (50′s to 70′s) based on this magnetic induction concept. They used amplifiers to boost the tiny signals made by magnetic pickup heads over small rotating drums having metal teeth rather than the Telharmonium’s brute force generation of the music signals.
I don’t think so. As far as I know it’s part of the forgotten sound world now
As far as I know there are no known audio recordings of the Telharmonium…. tis a pity.
As far as I know there are no known audio recordings of the Telharmonium…. tis a pity.
As far as I know there are no known audio recordings of the Telharmonium…. tis a pity.
Are there any recordings of what this thing actually sounded like ? would be amazing to hear what it sounded like
suena como a clavicordio de johann sebastian bach, quizá el lo hubiese utilizado magistralmente, lamentablemente murió 170 años antes a 1880
Uno de los primeros instrumentos para producir música electrónicamente, un parteaguas en la historia del arte, en partícular de la música!
según algunas estimaciones tenía una longitud de 200m cuadrados
suena chido !