Sampling technology – 120 Years of Electronic Music

Operation of the *Singing Keyboard*. Image: Radio Craft may 1936

Wurlitzer employee James Nutall and RCA engineer Frederick Sammis created the Singing Keyboard in 1936, a precursor of modern samplers, the instrument played electro-optical recordings of audio waves stored on strips of 35mm film. The Singing Keyboard was designed for use in film studios to create and preview sound effects and music before the final edit:

“Let us suppose that we are to use this machine as a special-purpose instrument for making “talkie” cartoons. At once it will be evident that we have a machine with which the composer may try out various combinations of words and music and learn at once just how they will sound in the finished work. The instrument will probably have ten or more sound tracks recorded side by side on a strip of film and featuring such words as “quack” for a duck, “meow” for a cat, “moo” for a cow. . . . It could as well be the bark of a dog or the hum of a human voice at the proper pitch.”¹

Sammis had moved to Hollywood in 1929 to lead RCA Phototone into the era of film sound. Sammis was already familiar with the Moviola, a sound- and film editing table that incorporated photoelectric cells. This photo-electrical technique was used by Sammis in a number of musical instruments – the Polytone, the Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones and here with the Singing Keyboard. Using methods that were being developed for the new ‘talkies’, he recorded sung and spoken words onto individual strips of film. He then attached the resulting strips to the keyboard in such a way that a specific strip would be drawn across the optical cell when he depressed a corresponding key.

*Operation of the Singing Keyboard. Image: Radio Craft, May 1936. 617*

The Singing Keyboard had a variable amount of keys depending on the model design and its intended use – film studio or home/office use:

“It will be noted that there is nothing unusual about the appearance for, in fact, it is simply an orthodox 5- octave organ keyboard with the usual electrically connected stop keys. The form of the console may be whatever taste dictates: this model was designed for the home of a “cliff dweller” in a New York City apartment, hence, the keys telescope into the cabinet when not in use. In a cabinet no larger than the one shown. as many as 3 manuals may be accommodated with all the necessary stops, couplers. etc.”

which each controlled a pre-recorded film soundtrack – sound, speech, music – which played back when the key was pressed and silently returned to the beginning of the recording when the key was released – a technique used in later analogue sample instruments such as the Mellotron and Chamberlin.²

Biography: Frederick Minturn Sammis.

Born: 23-05-1877 Lexington, Greene, New York, United States – Died:1953 Santa Barbara, Ventura, California.

Frederick Minturn Sammis. Image: American Organist 02-1939, 50.

Sammis joined the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America in 1902 and eventually promoted to Chief Engineer in 1910 – which at that time was mainly focussed on radio connections between shipping and land stations. in 1915, Sammis resigned from Marconi and joined The American Radio and Research Association (AMRAD) where he specialised in making radio receivers for the U.S. Navy and the domestic US market. Following the war, Sammis moved to Hollywood in order to work for RCA Photophone as their Pacific Coast Manager. RCA Photophone Inc. was a subsidiary of RCA, set up in 1928 in order to exploit the Photophone sound-on-film system. During this period, Sammis experimented with the musical aspects of sound film and created three musical instruments: the Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones (1930), the Polytone (1933) the Singing Keyboard (1936) and Electrone (1939). In 1940 he joined the Overseas Trading Corp, as resident agent in charge of the LA office. Sammis died in 1953 in Santa Barbara, Ventura, California.

³ Irelands Eye, https://irelandseye.ie/the-life-and-career-of-frederick-minturn-sammis, retrieved: 19-01-24.

References

1
Sammis, F,(1936) The Singing Keyboard, Radio Craft, May 1936, 617.
2
Davies, Hugh, (2014), The Singing Keyboard, Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Oxford University Press, 523.
3
The life and career of Frederick Minturn Sammis, Irelands Eye, https://irelandseye.ie/the-life-and-career-of-frederick-minturn-sammis, retrieved: 19-01-24.

The Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones (1931)

The Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones was created and developed by the Italian born electronic engineer Arnold Lesti and US inventor, F. Sammis in Hollywood, USA around 1931. The Radio Organ used a similar photo-electrical technique as the Celluphone, Superpiano and other variants and in Lesti’s later instruments – The Polytone (1934) and Singing Keyboard (1936) the designed with Frederick Sammis at RCA’s Phototone studios in Hollywood. ¹The The Radio Organ. however used a technique to generate more complex timbres than it’s rivals by projecting the light beam through two sets of glass disks – a ‘Pitch disk’ generating a pitched fundamental plus it’s ascending harmonics and a Timbre disk modifying the tone using a drawn representation of the sound wave of a real instrument (horn, violin, clarinet, oboe and a human voice). The principle was improved in Lesti and Sammis’ development of the Trillion Tone Organ called the Polytone. ²

Radio Craft Magazine’s impression of the Trillion Tone Organ. Image: Radio Craft, January 1931.

Diagram of the photo-electrical technique of the Trillion Tone Organ. Image: Radio Craft, January 1931.

Tag: Sampling technology

The ‘Singing Keyboard’, Fredrick Minturn Sammis & James H. Nuthall, USA, 1936.

Biography: Frederick Minturn Sammis.

References

The ‘Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones’, Arnold Lesti, Leo Tiedemann, USA, 1931.

The Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones (1931)

References: