The Electronic Sackbut - the World’s First Synthesizer

February 3, 2024 1:56 PM

In 1945, Hugh Le Caine, a physicist at Canada’s National Research Council, began working in his spare time on a single-channel musical instrument he dubbed the Electronic Sackbut. He was intrigued by the fact that the three auditory sensations associated with music—namely, pitch, loudness, and timbre—had counterparts in electronics—namely, frequency, amplitude, and the harmonic spectrum obtained by Fourier analysis. To demonstrate those qualities, Le Caine created a synthesizer that mimicked, among other things, a brass horn known as the sackbut. Listen to it on Hugh Le Caine - Compositions Demonstrations 1946-1974 (full album). Oh, and Vanilla Ice Remembers The Electronic Sackbut

Hugh Le Caine, aelectronic music pioneer - Waveshaper TV Ep.8 - IDOW archive series
Uncovering the secrets of the world’s first synthesizer (Part I) & (Part 2)

posted by ShooBoo (18 comments total)

That’s nearly a century after the Helmholtz “elektrische klankmenger” with a ten key keyboard from the 1860s. He was also interested in how to break down music and sounds into constituent components, and the electronic resonators were a way to demonstrate the fundamental and overtones.
posted by autopilot at 2:20 PM on February 3 [3 favorites]

Another early mechanical synth is Thaddeus Cahill's Teleharmonium from the 1800s. Metafilters own™ moonmilk made a laser cut version that demonstrates the different waveforms and frequencies by using a rotating drum of wooden wheels of different diameters and patterns.
posted by autopilot at 2:29 PM on February 3 [6 favorites]

Not nearly the first... Telharmonium (1897!), Ondes Martenot, Trautonium, Novachord, etc, etc, were all earlier.
posted by remembrancer at 2:29 PM on February 3 [6 favorites]

Vanilla Ice Remembers The Electronic Sackbut

Word to your mother.
posted by hippybear at 2:30 PM on February 3 [4 favorites]

"single-channel musical instrument he dubbed the Electronic Sackbut." Yet, the photo shown in the Vanilla Ice video shows that a second "T" has since dropped off the machine.
posted by user92371 at 2:59 PM on February 3

[sad sackbut noise]
posted by phooky at 3:33 PM on February 3 [4 favorites]

As soon as I saw the title knew people were going to pile on with corrections. Am not disappointed. I’d add the Theremin to the list of predecessors.

Lot of really cool stuff in here tho- inventing forms of control when components like potentiometers didn’t exist in the same way they do today. Super cool.
posted by q*ben at 4:44 PM on February 3 [3 favorites]

If you look at it, what these people devising instruments like this were trying to circumvent was the need for a human to exert themselves other than moving their fingers.

The piano did this pretty well, and harpsichord, etc, but were limited. Although the invention of the hammer system of the plano is one of the most amazing inventions ever in the pursuit of having a mechanical instrument exhibit the same range possible in breath or direct control instruments.

Nearly every instrument mankind has developed, whether you pound upon them or breathe into or across them or flap your lips into them or make a string vibrate in some fashion, they nearly ALL for centuries of music have involved requiring a human being to be skilled at making a sound come out of that thing, rather than simply being able to think a melody and express it with equal skill.

And I think that's what much of music development has tried to circumvent for the past couple of centuries, maybe beginning with player pianos? But further into synthesizers [Ed. note: creating the early synthesizer albums involved so much technical knowledge and studio skill they were nearly impossible for a couple of decades] and later samplers and later more sophisticated things, and we're really at the point where all you have to do is know how to play a keyboard and you can get any sound out.

Which means still a massive amount of learning of the basic layout of a keyboard but also music theory and how things all fit together and and and....

Although now we're at this doorway, with AI begging us to carry it across the threshold. And, like, there are amazing AI things with music. Like how Get Back the documentary worked, or also how they're teasing apart the extreme early 4-track recordings to make new, natural stereo mixes of albums like Revolver. [Ed Note: AI is being used here to mean machine learning techniques. We don't really have AI right now, but we do have computer tools that feel indistinguishable from magic, especially in the realm of music separation.]

I repeatedly find myself facing new music technology and saying "oh fuck no, let's not go there" and then later realizing that going there was a source of gigantic creativity.

So, like, here that is.. The Electronic Sackbut. Word to your mother.
posted by hippybear at 8:59 PM on February 3 [4 favorites]

I want to record an album just so I can start it with the sample of the guy saying "I believe you will agree that a new peak in low-downness has been achieved."
posted by credulous at 10:57 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]

what these people devising instruments like this were trying to circumvent was the need for a human to exert themselves other than moving their fingers

That kind of circumvention has always struck me as a massive lost opportunity, which is why I decided to spend my own musical exploration time on trying to play a drum kit rather than starting off down the electronic composition and sampling road.
posted by flabdablet at 11:43 PM on February 3

Can't help thinking that putting that Vanilla Ice link just above the fold was the MeFi equivalent of the mic drop.
posted by BCMagee at 12:52 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]

And, like, there are amazing AI things with music. Like how Get Back the documentary worked, or also how they're teasing apart the extreme early 4-track recordings to make new, natural stereo mixes of albums like Revolver.

Derail, but with Get Back and the new Revolver remix, we're at the border between extreme cleaning, and AI guided synthesis - ie regenerating a voice track vs just removing as much noise and interference as possible. Get Back is an incredible achievement for sure. With Revolver, I thought they tried just a tiny bit too hard. To me, the reissue has a bit of modern "edge" to the sound and in their efforts to generate isolated tracks to remix, they might have removed some of the desirable characteristics of those 1960s mics and rooms. Just an opinion, obviously.

This new ability to clean and regenerate sound recordings might be the audio equivalent of colourizing black and white films, maybe. Anyway, pretty amazing.

...sackbutts.

The claim to a synthesizer 'first' here is maybe Caine's focus on translating many separate physical components of a musical sound into their electronic circuit equivalents, where they can easily be controlled. As opposed to just creating a new and novel instrument with unique characteristics, like for example, a theremin.
posted by Artful Codger at 2:48 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]

If you look at it, what these people devising instruments like this were trying to circumvent was the need for a human to exert themselves other than moving their fingers.

Thus the pipe organ (although feet are also involved).
posted by TedW at 3:42 AM on February 4

have involved requiring a human being to be skilled at making a sound come out of that thing, rather than simply being able to think a melody and express it with equal skill.

This remains with electronic instruments, the primary difference is that the vibrational sound source is a loudspeaker rather than the person or the instrument itself. While there is some disconnect there, expressive technique and skill to me are mostly similar between playing/creating with acoustic and electronic instruments; the tech provides few shortcuts w/r/t knowledgeable skill.

Musicians really get hung up on that dividing line between mechanical and electronic music technologies, but to me they’re degrees on a spectrum, and making music with any tools requires the same kind of skills and musicianship across the spectrum of available tools. (A fun game for me is to read arguments that disparage or diminish electronic instruments/tools the same as those about adding valves to brass instruments, which was a major technological leap in the later 1800s, and not uncontroversial—just like the arguments about tuning systems as mechanical keyboard technology advanced in the early 1700s, and so on.)

I also think that the synthesizer, as general technology and as specific instrument, is one of the major musical inventions of all time, on par with the keyboard, functional harmony and metered rhythmic notation, because you can compose the sounds before you compose the music, like the pipe organ kind of did mechanically for a few centuries first, but so much more effectively. Max Mathews was on it early:

Computers have a key role in elucidating the subjective response that sounds elicit. This is particularly important for the modern composer because he or she is no longer limited to arranging sounds that can be produced from conventional instruments; it is now possible to call forth any sound that is imaginable--and even some that are not.

posted by LooseFilter at 7:34 AM on February 4 [5 favorites]

I also think that the synthesizer, as general technology and as specific instrument, is one of the major musical inventions of all time

I do agree with this, and that the sampling synthesizer is an equally important invention. I'm not sure if it is a separate thing or an iteration, but that whole Synclavier/Fairlight moment felt like a new revolution in and of itself.

I'm a giant fan of pre-sampling synth music. Vangelis, Larry Fast, Kitaro...

It's hard to imagine that at one point in history we had music like that actually on the Billboard charts.
posted by hippybear at 7:47 AM on February 4 [1 favorite]

that whole Synclavier/Fairlight moment felt like a new revolution in and of itself

And let's not forget the Emulator/Mirage/Akai follow-up moment, when sampling was democratized out of the hands of the ultrawealthy and into the hands of people at street-level, which got us things like Endtroducing and plunderphonics for the masses.

And these days, a $40 Raspberry Pi, (free open source) Pure Data, Ardour, and some cheapish peripherals picked up used gives a person access to more music tech than the Beatles ever had, or what most university electronic music labs had until very recently.

That Le Caine instrument may have looked like an industrial accident at a lumberyard, but it's part of a creative lineage of bringing the tools formerly reserved for an orchestra into the hands of everyday people. I sometimes feel jealous that I was part of the generation who had to buy in when cheap wasn't so cheap (I spent all my money on a sampler and music equipment when I was making $11k a year, so I drove the world's crappiest cars until I was into my thirties) while the youngsters have such miracles available, but I reap the benefits in getting to discover what they're creating, so it's hard to complain too much. Plus, I get to dig into the realm of what's now available with barely more than pocket money.
posted by sonascope at 10:01 AM on February 4 [2 favorites]

I reap the benefits in getting to discover what they're creating, so it's hard to complain too much

QFT
posted by LooseFilter at 10:17 AM on February 4

the electronic sackbut used to be on permanent display at the Museum of Tech in Ottawa, so I’ve seen it there. Not sure if it is still on view though. I found a nice recording of it on the Hugh LeCaine website.
posted by fimbulvetr at 3:43 PM on February 4 [1 favorite]