[HN Gopher] What Is an Electronic Sackbut?
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       What Is an Electronic Sackbut?
        
       Author : headalgorithm
       Score  : 26 points
       Date   : 2024-02-01 19:08 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
        
       | seanhunter wrote:
       | A sackbut is a Renaissance/Baroque predeccessor to the trombone,
       | often accompanied by cornettos[1]. Here's an example of a
       | Gabrieli canzon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWqFfDnV5KI
       | 
       | In that video the sackbuts are the three people at the back and
       | there are 2 cornettos at the front.
       | 
       | So this is an early synthesiser that sounded a bit like a sackbut
       | presumably.
       | 
       | [1] A virtuosic curved horn instrument with a trumpet-like
       | mouthpiece but fingering like a recorder.
        
       | puchatek wrote:
       | I might have spent too much time on Reddit to have a sensible
       | intuition for what a Sackbut might be.
        
       | thelastparadise wrote:
       | Can anyone explain what the little walmart power strip looking
       | thing is on this Sackbutt?
        
         | TylerE wrote:
         | Looks like a power strip. Looks like there might be an
         | amplifier built into the base. Most likely a much later
         | addition, or even a temporary one, to make moving it
         | around/displaying it/demoing it easier.
        
       | jdietrich wrote:
       | With all respect to the inventor, the Ondes Martenot was invented
       | decades earlier and was a legitimately useful instrument.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ondes_Martenot
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yidV0HeVyCg
       | 
       | To my mind, the best of the early (pre-Buchla/Moog) electronic
       | synthesisers was the Hammond Novachord. It's remarkable that a
       | commercial record was released with a polyphonic synthesiser as
       | the sole instrument in _1939_ , and even more remarkable that it
       | was anything but a novelty - it sounds absolutely gorgeous.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novachord
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1xrofiEa4w
        
         | gweinberg wrote:
         | Doesn't seem complete without the nuclear bombs.
        
       | nescioquid wrote:
       | The interesting thing to me is that the timbre controls seem to
       | have been intended to modify the instrument while it is sounding.
       | An organist can do this by pulling stops, and is similar to
       | setting patches on a Moog, but generally, you play the pitches
       | with both hands and pause to change settings.
       | 
       | I wonder if this was done simply to aid the prototyping, or if
       | the intention was that the performer would be changing the timber
       | during the performance, while the instrument is sounding. This
       | seems to be the effect you hear with the klaxon sound changing
       | into a grunty, nasal timbre at the beginning of the Sackbut
       | Blues.
       | 
       | My guess is that it was a prototyping convenience, but it would
       | seem to have big implications for how the instrument is used in
       | performance. A composer writing for it would have to think about
       | mutable timbre not dissimilarly to planning pedal changes for a
       | harp or even thinking about double-stops on string instruments --
       | there are practical limitations of the performer and instrument
       | that has to be considered.
       | 
       | That actually makes the music a bit more interesting to me than
       | an early 20th-century ideal of "liberating" music from the
       | confines of catgut and sloppy wet wood and metal.
        
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       (page generated 2024-02-01 23:01 UTC)