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GRAPHICAL SOUND | |
Graphical
(drawn) Sound is a technology for synthesizing sound from light that was
invented in Soviet Russia in 1929 as a consequence of the newly
invented sound-on-film technology. Pavel Tager initiated developments of
the first Russian sound-on-film systems in 1926 in Moscow and in 1927,
just a few months later, Alexander Shorin started his research
in Leningrad. Tager’s system, the Tagephon, was based on intensive
variable density optical recording on film while in Shorin’s Kinap
system the method of transversal variable area optical recording on film
was realized. Another version of Shorin’s system, the Shorinophone,
which was widely used for field and studio sound recording, was based on
the mechanical reproduction of gramophone-like longitudinal grooves
along the filmstrip.
Among the first Soviet sound movies ever created was "The 5-year Plan" (Piatiletka. The Plan of Great Works)
by Abram Room. The group working on this film in 1929 at Shorin’s
Central Laboratory of Wire Communication in Leningrad included the
painter, book illustrator and animator Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, the chief
of the composer’s brigade Arseny
Avraamov and the inventor Evgeny Sholpo. Meanwhile the sound-on-film
techology made possible access to the sound as a trace in a form that
could be studied and manipulated. It also opened up the way
for a systematic analysis of these traces such that they could be used
to produce any sound at will. When in October of that year the first
roll of film was developed, it was Tsekhanovsky who voiced the idea:
“What if we take some Egyptian or ancient Greek ornaments as a sound
track? Perhaps we will hear some unknown archaic music?” [1] He was
referring to the shapes and outlines of vases and how these could be
used like wave forms to generate sound. It was at this precise moment
that graphical sound techniques were invented. The next day they were
already furiously at work on experiments in what they referred to
variously as ornamental, drawn, paper, graphical, artificial or
synthetic sound. The laboratories that were soon created became the
first-ever prototypes of the future centres for computer music. While
most inventors of electronic musical instruments were developing tools
for performers, the majority of methods and instruments based on
Graphical Sound techniques were created for composers. Similar to modern
computer music techniques, the composer could produce the final
synthesized soundtrack without need for any performers or intermediates.
In December 1930 Mikhail
Tsekhanovsky wrote in his article About the Drawn Sound Film: "with the
invention of new drawn sound techniques (developed by Arseny Avraamov in
Moscow, Sholpo and [Georgy] Rimsky-Korsakov in Leningrad) we are
achieving a real possibility of gaining a new level of perfection: both
sound and the visual canvas will be developing completely in parallel
from the first to the last frame […] Thus the drawn sound film is a new
artistic trend in which for the first time in our history music and art
meet each other." [2]
At
exactly the same time similar efforts were being undertaken in Germany
by Rudolf Pfenninger in Munich and, somewhat later, by Oscar Fischinger
in Berlin. Serious research was conducted in Moscow by Boris Yankovsky.
Because of the cross-disciplinary nature of the new technique, people
involved in it had to be skilled not only in music, but in acoustics,
mathematics, sound-on-film technology and engineering. As a result even
skilled journalists often could not understand the physical meaning of
the phenomena under consideration or specific technological ideas.
Having no developed terminology, many mistakes and unexpected “puzzles”
appeared in their writings. Moreover, there were several known research
groups – competitors in Russia and Germany working in parallel. It led
to a very specific problem – encryption of the information. For
instance, in the well-known photograph
Oscar Fischinger holds ‘fake' rolls made by his Studio for publicity
purposes as he did not want his competitors to learn his actual
techniques. He never used rolls as large as this – they were fakes. [3] Yankovsky
had a very special way of making notes on his ideas. It is impossible
to understand the construction of his tools from reading one description
without referring to several other manuscripts that offer important
keys for understanding it.
Although there were several short articles
published in German, French and English [4-6] most publications about
research and developments in the USSR were only in Russian. At the same
time most important documents were never published at all and were
circulating only in manuscript form, similar to ‘Samizdat’
(self-published forbidden literature).
By 1936 there were several main, relatively comparable trends of Graphical Sound:
- Hand-drawn Ornamental Sound, achieved by means of shooting still images of drawn sound waves on an animation stand, with final soundtracks produced in a transversal form (Arseny Avraamov, early Boris Yankovsky); - Hand-made Paper Sound with final transversal soundtracks (Nikolai Voinov); - The Variophone or Automated Paper Sound with soundtracks in both transversal and intensive form (Evgeny Sholpo, Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov); - The Syntones method, based on the idea of spectral analysis, decomposition and resynthesis, developed in 1932-1935 by a pupil of Arseny Avraamov, the young painter and acoustician Boris Yankovsky. Among the researchers working with Graphical Sound after World War II were the famous filmmaker Norman McLaren (Canada) and the composer and inventor Daphne Oram (UK).
Ornamental Sound
The
ornamental sound technique, developed in 1929-1930 by Arseny Avraamov,
was similar to German animator and filmmaker Oscar Fischinger's sounding
ornaments first presented in 1932. In 1930, however, Avraamov was the
first to demonstrate experimental sound pieces – based on geometric
profiles and ornaments – produced purely through drawing methods. This
was achieved by means of shooting still images of drawn sound waves on
an animation stand.
In autumn 1930 Avraamov founded the
Multzvuk group at Mosfilm Productions Company in Moscow. To produce his
first drawn ornamental sound tracks he had on staff a special
draughtsman, cameraman Nikolai Zhelynsky, animator Nikolai Voinov and
acoustician Boris Yankovsky who was responsible for the translation of
musical scores into Avraamov's microtonal Welttonsystem as well as
Samoilov's Ober-Unter-Tone Harmony system. The final scores were coded
in Yankovsky's 72- step ultrachromatic scale with the dynamics and speed
variations indicated by the number of frames. Yankovsky
was also involved in the production of acoustic experimental studies,
developing methods for the synthesis of sounds with glissando, timbre
crossfades, timbre variations and polyphony by means of multiple
shooting on the same optical soundtrack (alternative to multi-track
recording which was not available yet).
From 1930-34 more than 2000 meters of sound track were produced by Avraamov's Multzvuk group, including the experimental films Ornamental
Animation, Marusia Otravilas, Chinese Tune, Organ Cords, Untertonikum,
Prelude, Piruet, Staccato Studies, Dancing Etude and Flute Study.
In autumn 1931 the Multzvuk group moved to NIKFI (Scientific Research
Institute for Cinema and Photography) and was renamed Syntonfilm
Laboratory. In December 1932 NIKFI stopped supporting Syntonfilm and the
group moved to Mezhrabpomfilm
where in 1934 it was closed as it was unable to justify itself
economically.
The whole archive was kept for many years at Avraamov's apartment,
where in 1936-37, during Avraamov's trip to the Caucasus, it was burned
by his own sons, making rockets
and smoke screens
with the old nitro-film tapes, which were highly flammable.
Paper Sound
In
1931 Nikolai Voinov left Multzvuk group and started his own research as
a developer of paper sound techniques. These were based on the
synthesis of sound waves by means of paper cutouts with the carefully
calculated sizes and shapes produced by his newly invented tool, the Nivotone. Voinov's method offers a surprisingly efficient level of control over the dynamics of sound.
As of 1931 Voinov was involved in the
activities of the IVVOS group (Ivanov, Voinov, Sazonov). This group
produced a number of animated cartoons with synthetic sound tracks,
including Barynia (1931), Rachmaninov's Prelude (1931), The Dance of the Crow (1933), About a Pig's Snout and a Soviet Kitchen Garden (1933),The Thief (1934) and Zones, Safety Lines (1934).
In early 1936 Voinov was dismissed from the Moscow Film Factory and his
laboratory was closed. For the rest of his life he worked successfully
as a cameraman at Souzmultfilm Studio. In Voinov's official biography
his most experimental work from 1931-36 is not even mentioned.
The Variophone
The
Variophone was invented by Evgeny Sholpo in 1930 at Alexander Shorin's
Central Laboratory of Wire Communication in Leningrad. In May 1930
Sholpo applied for a patent on a “method and device for the production
of a periodic sound track on film.” It was a continuation of research
that Sholpo had been conducting since the 1910s when he was working on
performer-less music.
The first version of the instrument was
built with assistance from the composer Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov (grandson
of the famous composer Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov) in 1931 at Lenfilm Studios. It was capable of
producing artificial soundtracks by means of Automated Paper Sound
techniques. Sholpo’s method made access easier to varieties of timbres.
Unlike Avraamov, who shot still images of sounds on an animation stand,
Sholpo used cardboard disks with circular images of combs with suitably
shaped cogs rotating synchronously with a moving filmstrip. The
advantages of the Variophone were in its flexible and continuous pitch
control and vibrato.
Although
the very first version of the Variophone was made with wooden parts
fixed by wires and tuned with ropes, it already incorporated one of the
most crucial and necessary devices – a mechanism for the precise and
continuous changing of the speed of rotation of the optical disk with
the sound wave pattern i.e. a means of controlling the pitch with the
possibility of synthesizing continuous glissandos. Also from the very
beginning the composer had full freedom to work with polyrhythmic
combinations and almost unlimited tempos in any passages.
By the early 1931 at Lenfilm Studio, with
assistance from G. Rimsky-Korsakov, Sholpo made a soundtrack for the
short propaganda film The year 1905 in Bourgeois Satire
(director N.I. Galkin, composer V.M. Deshevov). In the summer of 1932
Sholpo and Rimsky-Korsakov produced the synthesized soundtrack for the
new color cartoon The Symphony of Peace by E.J. Johansson and G.V. Bankovsky.
Many soundtracks for movies and cartoons
were produced using the Variophone. Among the most accomplished pieces
recorded with the Variophone in 1933-34 were The Carburettor Suite by G. Rimsky-Korsakov, Waltz by N. Timofeev, Flight of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner, and Franz Liszt's 6th Rhapsody.
The
Variophone was continuously under development and by 1936 the arsenal
of musical and acoustical means of the second version was enriched
highly with possibilities of free glissando with a speed of up to four
octaves per second, flexible and exact control over dynamics, and
options for deep vibrato for pitch, volume and timbre. The Variophone
could produce polyphonic soundtracks with up to twelve parallel voices.
Even compared with the subsequent and more advanced third and fourth
versions, it produced the most impressive quality and complexity of
sound. In 1941 during the blockade of Leningrad, together with composer
Igor Boldirev, Sholpo synthesized one of his most experimental pieces
– the soundtrack for the cartoon The Vultures. Although
aesthetically these works are similar to Walter Carlos' Switched-on Bach
(1968) and sound like eight-bit music, the main difference is in their
timing. In 1918 Sholpo developed special tools - the Melograph and
Autopianograph - to register the temporal characteristics of live
musical performance. Much electronic music has a rigid tempo, like a
metronome; Sholpo was able to simulate more subtle variations in tempo
such as rubato, rallentando and accelerando, based on his careful analyses of live piano performances by the best pianists.
Syntones and Audio Computing
In
1931-32 Boris Yankovsky (1904-1973) was on the staff of the Multzvuk
group. In 1932, however, disappointed with its Ornamental Sound
approach, he left the group. Unlike most of his colleagues he understood
that the waveform does not represent the tone colour uniformly and that
only the spectrum of sound developed in time with all the nuances of
its temporal transitions can give a complete picture. Of all the early
graphical sound pioneers, Yankovsky alone pursued the approach of
spectral analysis, decomposition and re-synthesis. His concept was based
on the belief that it is possible to develop a universal library of
sounds similar to Mendeleev's table of chemical elements. His curves
were spectral templates, semiotic entities that could be combined to
produce sound hybrids. As an option he developed several sound
processing techniques including pitch shifting and time stretching based
on the separation of spectral content and formants, resembling recent
computer music techniques of cross synthesis and the phase vocoder. To
realize these ideas he invented a special instrument, the Vibroexponator
– the most paradigm-shifting proposition of the mid-1930s.
In
1935 in one of his manuscripts Yankovsky wrote: ‘It is important now to
conquer and increase the smoothness of tone colours, flowing rainbows
of spectral colours in sound, instead of monotonous colouring of
stationary sounding fixed geometric figures [wave shapes], although the
nature of these phenomena is not yet clear. The premises leading to the
expansion of these phenomena – life inside the sound spectrum – give us
the nature of the musical instruments themselves, but “nature is the
best mentor” (Leonardo da Vinci) […] The new technology is moving
towards the trends of musical renovation, helping us to define new ways
for the Art of Music. This new technology is able to help liberate us
from the cacophony of the well-tempered scale and related noises. Its
name is Electro-Acoustics and it is the basis for Electro-Music and
Graphical Sound’. [7]
Yankovsky's
approach had much in common with that of Rudolf Pfenninger. Both were
primarily focused on acoustics. As Thomas Levin put it: ‘ Fischinger's
curves are not derived from sound, they generate it, whereas
Pfenninger's curves are in the last analysis derived from the sounds
that they analytically recreate… Pfenninger's curves are decidedly not
ornaments but are rather, as numerous critics have rightly noted,
“templates or print-types”, that is, semiotic entities that can be
combined to produce sounds in a linguistic – which is to say, thoroughly
technical and rule-governed – manner. Unlike Fischinger's curves, which
were continuous, Pfenninger's were discrete units'. [8]
The method developed by Boris Yankovsky was
based on pure audio computing techniques and possessed properties, very
common for digital technologies, such as discretization and quantization
of audio signals and related spectral data, manipulation with
ready-made parts, and operations with selections from databases of the
basic primitives (templates).
To perform complex mathematical calculations of waveforms as
well as other important parameters of sound and automated musical
performance such as rhythm, there were special ‘employee-computers’ on
the staff in the laboratories of Boris Yankovsky and Evgeny Sholpo.
These were mathematicians whose specific task it was to make
calculations.
In 1933 Yankovsky was invited to Mosfilm
Studios to organize the Laboratory for Synthetic Sound Recording, where
in 1934-35 he recorded a sizeable collection of samples of instruments
from the Symphony Orchestra of the Bolshoi Theatre. By 1936 the
collection of 110 synthesized templates was created. In 1935 Yankovsky
joined the Autonomous Research Section (ANTES) at the Union of Composers
in Moscow, founded by commissar Boris Krasin, Avraamov and Ogolevets.
It was the last significant manifestation of creativity with its roots
in the forward-looking 1920s. In 1936 the infamous Pravda article Confusion instead of music
was published, initiating a war by the totalitarian state against the
freedom of artistic expression. After the death of Krasin in 1936 ANTES
was closed and the Ministry of Culture stopped funding Yankovsky's
laboratory. It was passed to the NIMI institute at Moscow Conservatory.
Little changed, but by the end of 1937 he finally got his syntones to
make sounds.
In 1939
Yankovsky met Evgeny Murzin – a young inventor, fascinated by the idea
of a universal tool for sound synthesis. The same year Boris Yankovsky
and Evgeny Sholpo decided to unite their efforts and the new Laboratory
for Graphical Sound at the Institute of the Theatre and Film was
established. Yankovsky moved to Leningrad. He expected to complete the
final version of his vibroexponator in 1940 but finally was prevented by World War II and never returned to the graphical sound.
The ANS Synthesizer
In
1957 the young inventor Evgeny Murzin (1914-1970) finished developing
and patented a photo-electronic musical instrument called the ANS
Synthesizer. Its name was derived from the initials of influential
composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin. It was remarkably close to the
concept of Evgeny Sholpo's Mechanical Orchestra. The
instrument was based on a set of sine wave oscillators, produced by
pure optical means as multiple (144) graphical soundtracks printed on
four glass disks, adjusted on fixed frequencies, forming a discrete
pitch scale, covering the whole audible range with intervals between
successive pitches imperceptible to the human ear. Control over the
system and the process of sound synthesis was carried out by means of a
special graphical score with a diagram representing the spectrum of a
sound by means of drawn transparent strips, having appropriate shapse
and slopes, making it possible to operate the whole set of sine wave
tones synchronously and independently, controlling the sound on a
spectral level, directly manipulating the overtones, erasing the
difference between the pitch harmony structures and a spectral tissue of
a sound. A similar principle of the graphical score was used later in
the legendary UPIC computer system, developed by Yanis Xenakis in 1977
in the Centre d'Etudes de Mathematiques et Automatiques Musicales in
Paris.
The
instrument was based on the scale of 72 steps per octave proposed by
Boris Yankovsky, who was involved in the development of the ANS in
1939-40. The synthesizer is based on the same principles as the
variophone. It incorporates a set of rotating optical disks with
photo-printed round optical sound tracks. While in the variophone one
rotating disk produced a single sound, in the ANS each optical
disk contained 144 independent sound tracks. Four disks, used in the
first version of the instrument, could produce simultaneously 576 sine
waves with frequencies covering the whole audible range. ANS was a
real-time instrument, producing the audible result directly during work.
In 1967 the studio of electronic music was
established in Moscow, with the ANS synthesizer at its core. Among the
composers working with the ANS were Alfred Shnitke, Sofia Gubajdulina,
Edison Denisov, Eduard Artemyev, Alexander Nemtin and Stanislav Krejchi.
The instrument was used for scoring many films, in particular the early
films of Andrei Tarkovsky.
[1] Avraamov, Ars. “Sinteticheskaya muzika” Sovetskaya Muzika , 1939, No.8, pp. 67-75
[2] Tsekhanovsky M. 1930. “O Zvukovoi Risovannoi Filme.” Kino I Zhizn, Moscow. 1930, no. 34-35, p.14
[3] According to information received from the Fischinger Trust, the Center for Visual Music
[4] Von A. Leo. “Die Grosse Erfindung – ‘Graphomusik’”, Moskauer Rundschau, 15.03.1931
[5] Le “Variophone”, Le Journal de Moscou, 01.06.1935[6] Sоlеv, V. “Absolute Music by Designed Sound.” American Cinematographer. April, 1936, pp. 146-148, 154-155
[7] Yankovsky, B. “Analiz i sintez tembra” (Analysis and Synthesis of Timbre) March, 1935, Moscow.
[8] Levin,
T. “Tones from out of Nowhere: Rudolf Pfenninger and the Archaeology of
Synthetic Sound.” Grey Room 12 (Fall 2003): p. 32-79Unpublished article. Theremin Centre Archive. p. 35 [9] Smirnov A., Pchelkina L., 1917-1939. Son Z / Sound in Z. PALAIS / Palais de Tokyo Magazine, Paris, 2008, №7, pp. 66-77 (English and French). [15] Smirnov A., Pchelkina L., GENERATION Z. Booklet of the Generation Z exhibition. OSA Archivum, Budapest, 2011. (English and Hungarian).
[16] Smirnov A., Pchelkina L., Russian
Pioneers of Sound Art in the 1920s. Catalogue of the exhibition 'Red
Cavalry: Creation and Power in Soviet Russia between 1917 and 1945'. La
Casa Encendida, Madrid, 2011.
(English and Spanish). Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Lev Bolotsky and
Marina Sholpo for unique documents which they rescued from destruction
and kept for so many years. I also thank Nikolay Izvolov for information
and advice, Matthew Price and Rob Mullender for their help in
preparation of texts.
Andrey Smirnov, Moscow, 2011
|
(C) Andrey Smirnov, 2006 :: Updated 9 November, 2011 | Tomado de http://asmir.theremin.ru/graphical_sound.htm |
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