Soviet electronic music from 1932. The 'Variophone'
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- Опубликовано: 13 дек 2014
- Soviet electronic synthesised music from 1932. Evgeny Sholpo and Nikolai Voinov working on the 'Variophone' photo-electrical synthesiser.
www.120years.net 
Видеоклипы
This sounds so much like 8-bit game music! Wow.
It's like PCM in a way. They're pulsing a light source.
Game Boy Style Rulez
Una de las líneas de la Música Electrónica Clásica (E. Soundtrack y E. Experimental) es la raíz del Chiptune (YMO finales de los 80's E. Japón en síntesis con el EDM de Giorgio Moroder post 1977).
wow a very early precursor to the 80's-90-2000's nintendo games music.
everybody gangsta till the variophone starts playing this music at 3 am
5:25
im listening to this at 4:31 am
They had the sound. Chip music in 1932. 37 years before the chip.
Really ahead of it's time
Voinov didn't work on Variophone, he has created his own unique system named Nivoton after him (NIkolay-VOinov-TONsystem). It existed simultaneously with three other different systems developed by Soviet Russian experimental musicians since late 1920s, including the Variophone
Acid in the 30s are really damn good.
Let me get this straight, the song was recorded back in the 30s yet it sounds like a NES video game. What kind of sorcery is this?
Russians
The Russian Avant-Garde movement
If you look at the drawing, there are a few ingenious things that stand out! Like a vibrato controller I noticed recently! Upper left corner. The two cones is a variable speed control, controlled by dial 34, setting the speed of the vibrato, whereas dial 35 sets the depth of the vibrato, and according to the cones and mechanism, repeatedly changes the tension of the drive belt!
A similar system is also applied in the lower left corner, to repeatedly change the intensity/volume of the note, I believe. Achieved by changing the size of the opening that the light shines through to expose the film.
Likewise, the two cones in the middle control the notes. Connected to the ball in the middle is a small dial, pointing at the names of notes, and I believe that by changing what gears that the middle gear to the left of the cones mesh with, you can select the octave. Not sure about that last one.
Big up Evgeny and Nikolai taking us back on the beat with this one
Wait. Holy shit? This can't be 1932!!! The Hammond Organ hadn't even come out yet!!! Sounds like SNES music though.
The principle was simple enough, the different predefined waveforms were recorded on rotating disks and played back in the same way as early (and quite late, actually) movie soundtracks were, and with varying speeds and compositions.
Nes music
The Ondes Martenot was first played in 1928 and the Trautonium a year later. That same year, Laurens Hammond began work on what a few years later would be marketed as the Novachord; his first significant patent on purely electronic sound generation was filed in 1930. But even those aren't the earliest synth, which was the Telharmonium, patented in 1897, and there were a couple dozen purely electrical musical instruments created between then and when the Variophone was created..
4 years later they started sampling. Look it up. The Germans did it.
The soviets have always been more technologically advanced than the west smh
I believe that funny thing in the center is a speed controller that changes the pitch of the tone and the section on the left affects the envelope. It's all rather ingenious.
It's a continuously variable transmission. Like a gearbox, but it moves smoothly between ratios. Crazy.
The whole contraption was a light modulator which is then exposed on film. I wonder if the board on the lower left would cast different shapes into the light source. There is a second CVT on the top left which looks like it might modulate the film speed by modulating tension on the drive belt that inevitably is responsible for film speed.
@@charleslambert3368 Yeah,there were automobile transmissions designed like this,that got shelved. Too efficient.
I think they sometimes get used on golf carts and stuff. But CVTs just can't handle the sorts of torques and powers seen in proper automotive. Anything other than big steel gears (and the odd torque converter) will just be destroyed by the heat and the friction and the forces within a couple of years.
@@charleslambert3368 CVTs are used on Golfcarts, Gokarts, Snowmobiles, Automobiles. and I've seen them used on skid-steer loaders and other farm equipment.
amazing. 40 years before Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk actually formed in 1970
@@NickDoesArts pedant!
@@version736ha2 Seriously, check the Kraftwerk wikipedia article
Kraftwerk were honestly late to the whole electronic music scene, a lot of people performed intricate electronic music before they even started integrating proper synthesizers in their works.
@@BetamaxFlippy Kraftwerk weren't the inventors of electronic music, but they were the ones who took electronic music from the experimental scene to the underground scene (through hip hop culture) and then to the pop scene (with synthpop and the New Wave).
Reminds me of Tom Dissivelt and Pac Man, combined. I like the parpy classical track about half way through and the fairground wurlitzer style one the best. Excellent stuff.
Soviet's best invention
0:40 That is fire!
"Electronic Music 1932" wow! :')
2:00 at 2x speed, if that was sampled, could be a good remix on the right instruments.
A very early; very interesting synthesizer !
from 5.25 minutes really electronic music new sounds timbres on a new instrument
Sounds like ANS sounds.
Now we just wait for the Anthony Fantano review.
4:31 sample this bass tone
Done and done ✅
05:25
That's scary.
Minecraft music.
Really cool
Incredible
2:00
This part reminds me too much of coffin dance
love it!!
Very interesting. Thank-you! And all of this was a generation before the heyday of Vyacheslav Mescheryn. I wish that we could see this schematic in higher definition. 360p doesn't allow us to read any of the text, or to see clearly what some of the parts are. The audio would also be more clear with the higher bandwidth of even 480p, and 720p.
The diagram can be found online in supreme high quality, and I have commented on some of the notable features of it here. Sadly, translating the text in the upper right didn't shed much light on anything, so I think our best guesses are still observing the drawing.
Man this shits a bop
Impressive!
For more in a similar vein, look up the Novachord by Hammond in the late ‘30’s.
A certified hood classic
Awesome
Wow!
sigh only 862 views so im what the 862 person to see this due to a random seach of date of electronic music lol if anyof the other peeps who came here could tell me about how they came to this page it would be great just wondering what randomly brought the rest of u here
+Zoldark1 I came from the 8-Bit Operators Facebook page
+Zoldark1 A friend of mine shared this page and here I am :)
+Zoldark1 My brother sent it to me
im looking for cool shit to sample ;)
Zoldark1 langlang tweet it.
What's the last track? That can't be 1932. It sounds groundbreaking. Is it the ANS synthesizer from much later?
Sounds hardly anything like the ANS, but I see what you mean.
That sounds like the ANS to me too.
It is works of Yevgeny Sholpo: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variophone
@@PierreRipplinger yes, ANS is based on works of Yevgeny Sholpo
@@GCSoundArtifacts en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variophone
Master system in da 30's
chiptune origin
Did the gameboy music before it was cool
Chiptune, first generation
Sounds like music of a gameboy
Ur listening to Kraftwerk?
Hold my hipster glasses !
never heard Kraftwerk sound remotely like this!
05:25 Who's decided to climb down to the underworld to record ghosts ?!
Fnaf
@@novostranger Gesundheit.
If this is a hoax, it is wonderfully stylish. If this is for real, this is wonderfully stylish )
Bruh that music was indeed made in the 1930s, it was made with variophone an electric music device made by USSR
u dont hear abt the soviets when looking for early electronic music because the ibm didnt like being beaten by the soviets by 30 years
the old nintendo ?
Anybody know the names of the pieces? The second one is ace.
+Michael Waters It's Rimsky Korsakov's 'La Suite Carburateur'. More details here: 120years.net/the-variophoneyevgeny-sholposoviet-union1932/
3:25 Is Rachmaninov, Prelude in C# minor, Op. 2
#watson
idk but this sounds creepy for some reason, maybe because of the noise lol
05:25 the sounds of hell
This is creepy af when listening at 3AM holy shit
The ghosts have some good music tho
no its nit
Broken animatronics be like
Techo
3:45
4:05
Sounds a like very known game....
Sounds like Nes castlevania
U96
𝕄𝕦𝕤𝕚𝕔𝕒 𝕕𝕖 𝕝𝕒 𝕡𝕣𝕖𝕙𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕚𝕒
I TOLD MY TEACHER THE SOVIETS WERE RIGHT!!!
No, sorry, they were left! 😁
sounds like nes music
The oldest psytrance I know of is Johannes Sebastian Bach.
Ouço isso e tento achar bonito, mas penso nos ucranianos morrendo de fome
gulagwave
💀
Skrillex’s communist great grandfather
Ok?
Someone tag mf doom
Weird to think of all the horrendous things that were going on in the Soviet Union at this time. Hundreds of thousands in Gulag, mass executions, paranoia, show trials.... and some people messing around producing things like this.
Listen more to anti-Soviet propaganda.
@@alexd.9336 I've been reading Solzhenitsyn and Anne Applebaum. What have you been reading?
@@Rufusdos Solzhenitsyn is the biggest liar ever, and he worked off Western money.
@@Rufusdos for example, my relatives who lived in those days...one relative was even in a terrible gulag (not without reason), only he stayed there for only a year and received a large sum of money because he participated in the construction of the White Sea canal
@@DVXDemetrivs I can’t comment on individual cases, but thousands died in the terrible slave labour conditions of the White Sea canal project. Let’s not forget that corruption of all kinds was absolutely everywhere in the gulag era, so your relative who profited might have given a somewhat edited version of events.
This recording was not made in 1932
how do you know?
It was made in 1932, thats how good the song is
At least one thing good from Communism!