Intonarumori

250px|thumb|Russolo, his assistant Ugo Piatti and the intonarumori Intonarumori are experimental musical instruments invented and built by the Italian futurist Luigi Russolo between roughly 1910 and 1930. There were 27 varieties of intonarumori built in total, with different names.

==Background== thumb|250px|Original sketch of one of the intonarumori (1914) Russolo built these instruments to perform the music outlined in his The Art of Noises manifesto written in 1913 and published in book form in 1916. The instruments were completely acoustic, not electronic. The boxes had various types of internal construction to create different types of noise music. Often a wheel was touching a string attached to a drum. The wheel rattled or bowed the strings, while the drum functioned as an acoustic resonator. Many of the instruments featured a handle on top of the box, which was used to vary the string tension. Pulling the handle raised the tone, and the horn attached to the box amplified the sound. Intonarumori ('noise tuner' in Italian) made noise, but not at a very high volume, since they were all acoustic devices. This "noise music" consisted of sounds that were found in nature or sounds that were directly, or indirectly, made by humans. These instruments used enharmonic properties to create sounds that glided from one note to the next, like the sound of a police siren.