#rhythmicon

cred: daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2015/06/rhythmicon-feature

Leon Theremin’s Rhythmicon played by Andrei Smirnov | Loop

Exploring the first drum machine of the history #Rhythmicon (at Kraków, Poland)

for virtual rhythmicon

This demo is about the third Rhythmicon machine developed in the sixties by noone less then Leon Theremin. The first was developed in 1932, also by Leon Theremin.

On the topic of pizzicato - we can look at the term 'string piano' - a term to described "pianistic extended techniques in which sound is produced by direct manipulation of the strings, instead of or in addition to striking the piano's keys." The technique was pioneered by American composer and music theorist Henry Cowell. Cowell was described as avant-garde, and his compositions have been described as "seminal explorations of atonality, polytonality, polyrhythms, and non-Western modes". Cowell served as inspiration to pianists such as Béla Bartók and John Cage. He wrote New Musical Resources in 1930, and in the same year concerning his thoughts on harmonic rhythm  he would commission Léon Theremin (inventor of the aptly named theremin in 1928) to design the Rhythmicon - or the world's first drum machine. In the video is the 1925 piece 'Banshee' by Cowell. It makes uses of these extended techniques described to create an indecisively nefarious black hole, or a worm hole to something else. This is modernism after all. In 1962 he edited and released Primitive Music of the World - on Folkway Records. The recording features indigenous recordings from regions such as the Philippines, the Western Congo, Northern Japan and New Zealand. Download it here.