Models
3 models
-
ANS synthesizer
Optically controlled music instrument
Synthesizer · Russia
The ANS synthesizer is a photoelectronic musical instrument designed by the Soviet engineer Evgeny Murzin and completed in 1957, named after the composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin. It generates sound from images: marks made on glass plates coated with opaque mastic are read optically and resynthesized as continuous additive tones. A single instrument was built and was famously used by composers such as Edward Artemiev, including for Soviet film scores.
-
Virtual ANS
Software synthesizer emulating the Russian ANS photoelectronic synthesizer
Synthesizer · Russia
Virtual ANS is a software synthesizer developed by Alexander Zolotov (WarmPlace) that recreates the ANS, the photoelectronic synthesizer built in the Soviet Union by engineer Evgeny Murzin and named after the composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin. Like the original instrument, it produces sound from drawn images: the user paints on a vertical spectrogram-style canvas where the horizontal axis is time and the vertical axis is pitch, and the program resynthesizes that picture additively across a large bank of sine-tone oscillators. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and in a web browser, and is widely used for spectral, drone, and experimental sound design.
-
Digital Keyboards Synergy
Digital electronic musical instrument
Keyboard
The Synergy is a digital synthesizer made from about 1982 to 1985 by Digital Keyboards Inc., a US division of Crumar. A more affordable, preset-oriented spin-off of the Crumar GDS system developed from Bell Labs research, it became closely associated with Wendy Carlos, who used it extensively and created many of its patches.