Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- drum machine
- Image
- Joseph Schillinger and the Rhythmicon.jpg
Show 2 more facts
- Commons category
- Rhythmicon
- discoverer or inventor
- Henry Cowell
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~8 min read
Encyclopedic overview
7 sectionsContents
- Development
- Introduction
- Later years
- See also
- Notes
- Further reading
- External links
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The Rhythmicon, also known as the Polyrhythmophone, was an electro-mechanical musical instrument designed and built by Leon Theremin in 1930 for composer Henry Cowell, intended to reveal connections between rhythms, pitches and the harmonic series. It used a series of perforated spinning disks, similar to a Nipkow disk, to interrupt the flow of light between bulbs and phototoreceptors aligned with the disk perforations. The interrupted signals created oscillations which were perceived as rhythms or tones depending on the speed of the disks. It generated both pitches and rhythms, and has been described as a precursor of drum machines.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Rhythmicon” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.