Wimshurst

Chord Music

Chord Music No. 2

Rings Cycle

Slow Music

With some intrepidation I decided to have a go firing up Novachord 346 for the first time in what turns out to be 8 years since I resurrected and partially restored this 1/4 ton behemoth!...

To my great relief, this now 87 year old quarter ton 163 tube beast came out of slumber with all 12 of her master oscillators in action and pretty much in the same order she was in last time I hooked this monster to the power!...

After some initial tests I made this recording consisting of one overdub of a plucked Attack setting over a slow sustained Attack setting whilst occasionally moving some of her triple L/C formant resonator controls, the Bright/Mellow control and the Vibrato Depth.  

The source is 100% Novachord and the recording was made directly from the line output of the pre-amplifier into basic delay and reverb but with no form of added modulation processing such as chorus/ensemble/flanger.  Any natural chorusing you hear is due to the Novachord's 6 free-running vibratos acting on pairs of her 12 master-oscillators.

It still truly astounds me that an all electronic instrument originally on the drawing board in the mid 1930s can sound like this.. and even moreso 85 years after she left the factory!!

We are so used to hearing muffled scratchy recordings from the 1930s – but that is not to say its what it sounded like on the day of the recording – the HF the NC produces is amazing for its era.

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2020.

Wimshurst

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