In my opinion, those are the very things (apart from the hardware’s great sound) that make it a truly exceptional work of tech art.

But regrettably, I couldn’t find any that go beyond technical demonstrations, in order to cover the module’s historical and ideological contexts (except for the original Make Noise demo videos, to a certain extent). There’s an abundance of videos covering this module, of course. I’ve been considering writing about Make Noise/Tom Erbe Telharmonic for some time now. Make Noise Telharmonic and electronic music history. So here it is, preserved for posterity (and, if you like, further comments and thoughts). It’s such a lovely read that I felt it shouldn’t live only on The FaceBook. Kyiv, Ukraine-based composer/artist Oleg Shpudeiko – aka Heinali – recently wove together a history of the original Telharmonium and the new Telharmonic module. You know, in a good way.īut if turn-of-the-last-century pioneering instruments are being made into compact modules, we also need a different kind of history. Instead, we have a wormhole of simultaneous possibilities.

That old progression from past to present to future seems so boring now. Put those elements together, and you recreate… a giant electro-mechanical instrument patented in 1897, but in a form that has never existed before. The module combines analog and digital control and synthesis, and pairs a well-known modular creator with one of recent years’ best known engineers and teachers of digital synthesis. The Make Noise/Tom Erbe Telharmonic is emblematic perhaps of how synthesizer history now folds in on itself. But now it’s a compact modern synth module, too. The 200-ton, building-sized Telharmonium original produced some of the first electronic music.

Soundhack telharmonic