Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning David White; Georges Jenny's "Ondioline" electronic keyboard

David White of Escondido contacted me a
few days ago, and today i finally got the
chance to talk with him -- he kept me on the
phone for 2 full hours. He's been involved
in a lot of musical and other artistic, and
scientific, projects.

He even worked for NASA at one point, and
now he's working on a redesign of the
traditional bowed-string instruments
(violin, viola, cell, contrabass). He contacted
me because he's interested in incorporating
microtonal capability into the electronics.

One of the last things he talked about
(for he had done by far most of the talking)
was the Ondioline, an electronic keyboard
capable of microtonality, invented in the
1930s or '40s (different website sources have
conflicting dates).

I'm expecting David to meet with me,
Jonathan, Brink, and Bill Wesley at the
Sonic Arts Gallery some upcoming weekend.
I'll report more about him as we interact
more. What he told me today was already
enough to fill several Microbeats.

http://tonalsoft.com/pub/news/microbeat-archive.aspx

I'll surely "coerce" David into becoming a member here.
He's really interested in a lot of the stuff
we talk about, including the "cosmic" topics
(natural resonance of the earth's vibrations, etc.).

So anyway, i had either never heard of the Ondioline
before or had forgotten about it in the dusty bins
of my memory of unending hours of microtonal research,
so i looked it up online and found that it's the
instrument featured on the instrumental solo of
the very popular 1961 hit by Del Shannon: "Runaway".

Here are some interesting links:

Technical info on the Ondioline:

http://go.zibycom.com/members/002222119/Site4/ondioline.html

Triva concerning the Ondioline:

http://www.spaceagepop.com/lpondiol.htm

Biography of Jean Jacques Perrey, who was a composer and
Ondioline sales rep -- with a lot of good historical
detail:

http://www.jeanjacquesperrey.com/jjp/auto/bio1.html

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com
Tonescape microtonal music software

David White; Georges Jenny's "Ondioline" electronic keyboard

🔗monz <monz@tonalsoft.com>

🔗monz <monz@tonalsoft.com>