Herbert Eimert

[Martin Czech]

The other day I recieved a DAT tape of an old 1962 recording of Herbert
Eimerts "Grundlagen der Elektronischen Musik" (Fundamentals of E.M.).
Some scratches on the record, but still good quality.
Half of the recording is explanation (German of course),
the other half being sound demos and excerpts from pieces.

Well, I must say this stuff is really amazing.  I mean, it was 1953 (!)
when Eimert founded the worlds first studio for E.M. at the NWDR in
Cologne (this is what all web publications say, are there any earlier
?).  So he can be considered as the goodfather of E.M.  The studio
still exists today, maybe I try a visit arround christmas.

They already had :
Ringmodulators
Oscillators
Tape-Recorder
Tempophon
(Vocoder)-Filter bank (by connection to Homer Dudley)

They make good use of the vocoder filter-bank alone (every vocoder
should allow to use analysis filter just for plain filtering
purposes).  For example they took a spoken sentence, split it up into
different frequency bands, and than recorded the bands one by one, but
with different predelay on a tape. The Tempophon (tape recorder with
rotating head) allowed for time-stretching as well as pitch shifting of
course with all disadvantages of time domain systems.

This 1953-1960 stuff sounds more interesting than the complete festival
for modern music in Donaueschingen this year, not to mention the mainstream
electronic pop stuff. Shame on them.

m.c.

p.s.: J.H. , ever been in the Siemens studio for E.M. in Munich ? 
      Founded by Anton Riedl.