Rick Jelliffe releases Neumixturtrautonium

Over half a century ago, Oskar Sala created the Mixturtrautonium by adding his Sub-Harmonic Synthesis method to the even older electronic instrument, the Trautonium.

Rick Jelliffe's Neumixturtrautonium brings a modern slant to Sub-Harmonic Synthesis, with its range of tones from strings, choirs and reed instruments to bells and struck sounds. The Neumixturtrautonium's Sub-Harmonic Synthesis uses multiple sawtooth oscillators, authentically shaped to emulate valve waveforms, each at a relative frequency that is an integer count of a high frequency master. Each oscillator is then put through a band-pass formant or key-following filter, summed through special highly-controllable stereo envelope controllers, then sent through reverb and pitch shifting.

This architecture brings out different portions of different oscillators throughout the range of notes: the line between individual notes and chords can be blurred over the keyboard range in a single patch.

The Neumixturtrautonium has many voicing options, from different types of monophony to four voice polyphony. Each voice has five sawtooth oscillators (four Sub-Harmonic channels and one tunable auxiliary for chorus/celeste effects) and a delayable vibrato.

There are three banks of settings for the tuning of the Sub-Harmonic Oscillators. The MIDI modulation wheel is used to select the bank used. During performance with chordal sounds, the harmonies can be shifted and played by this means.

Each note in the scale is slightly adjustable, allowing most kinds of classical Western temperaments and Middle Eastern scales to be played.

The Neumixturtrautonium has 16 presets, and the website has some demonstration audio files.

Neumixturtrautonium costs US$29.95 and a demo version is available.