The ‘Companola’ (‘Kompanola’) and ‘Noisephone’ Igor Simonov, Russia, 1936

The engineer and physicist Igor Simonov was a colleague of Lev Termen at the ‘USSR Sound Recording Institute’, a sound studio laboratory that supplied real-time synthesised sounds for Moscow Radio in the 1930’s. Simonov collaborated with Termen on a number of projects including designs and instructions for home built Theremins but also built several of his own musical devices including a monophonic vacuum tube electronic keyboard instrument called the ‘Companola’ (1936) and the ‘Noisephone’, an electronic device for generating percussive and everyday sound effects – notably, the Noisephone was used to imitate the howling of the wind in the movie “The Forty First” (1957).


Sources:

THE HISTORY OF ELECTRO-MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS IN RUSSIA IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Irina Aldoshina, Ekaterina Davidenkova. Saint-Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences, Russia

‘Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage’. Albert Glinsky

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