the ‘Warbo Formant Orgel’, Harald Bode & Christian Warnke, Germany, 1937.

Harald Bode was an important figure in the development of electronic musical instruments in Germany during the late 1930s and later in the USA in the post WWII era. He had a major role in the designs of polyphonic electronic organs and after moving to the USA, went on to influence the designs of commercial synthesisers with his concepts of modular synthesis and one volt per octave controls adopted by Robert Moog and Donald Buchla in the 1960s.

Harald Bode’s first commercial design was the wonderfully named Warbo Formant Orgel, a partially polyphonic electronic organ built in Hamburg in 1937. The Warbo Formant Orgel was designed and built with the musical input from the, at the time, well known commercial music composer and band-leader Christian Warnke (hence ‘War- Bo’  Warnke/Bode); ¹ Abocab, Caspar .(2010) Instruments and Sound Devices of Harald Bode, eContact! 13.4. , https://econtact.ca/13_4/abocab_bode_instruments.html, retrieved 21/04/2024.

Warnke and Bode’s new instrument was presented at a cinema in Hamburg and at Bode’s own studio in September 1937 and received a great deal of interest from the local press:

Music of the future? Electricity as a sound source. Pioneering work in the field of electroacoustic musical instruments.

John W. R. Hellmann. Hamburger Tageblatt, 3 December 1937.

[…] This is where the shape development work of a young Hamburg electro acoustician comes in. Harald B0DE found the solution in his “Warbo-Formant Orgel” which allows the polyphonic playing on a manual. For each voice, only one tube is needed to produce the fundamental vibrations. The fundamental vibrations, which are amplified in the usual way are reproduced in the speaker, but still have no sound character. This sound character is achieved [in the Warbo Formant Orgel] by adding certain overtone groups or “formants” (hence the name!).

A large number of levers and knobs allow the synthetic production of any desired sound effect, both for imitating known sounds and to bring about completely new sound effects. Another new feature of Bode’s experimental instrument is the controllability of the “transient processes” by means of additional tubes, which also makes it possible to achieve the sound effects of beaten, rattling, and plucked tones with an arbitrarily long decay time.

An interesting feature of the “Formant organ” is that each voice can be coloured, highlighted and swelled for itself while playing on a manual, whereby auxiliary buttons also allow for voice crossovers. Thus, the possibilities of these devices, which are reminiscent of the “melody coupling” of individual organs, are much greater. Further, the instrument allows a pitch tremolo in addition to a dynamic tremolo and a sliding tone colour change during the playing.

Whether it has a future, whether it can gain a fine place alongside conventional instruments, or even – as optimists say – revolutionise our past music practice, that certainly can not be denied. The prerequisite for this is certainly that our composers must be prepared to create a new compositions for these new sound possibilities. ³J Hellmann, ohn W. R. (1937) Musik der Zukunft? Elektrizität als KlangqueIle.” Pionierarbeit auf dem Gebiet der elektroakustischen Musikinstrumente, Hamburger Tageblatt, 3 December 1937.

Diagram illustrating the 4 note polyphony of the Warbo Formant Orgel. European Electronic Music Instrument Design—Harald Bode, Journal of the AUDIO ENGINEERING SOCIETY, October 1961, Volume 9, NUMBER 4268, 268

European Electronic Music Instrument Design—Harald Bode, Journal of the AUDIO ENGINEERING SOCIETY, October 1961

A different and unique approach for a multitone instrument with a minimum of tone generators has been tried by the author in the Warbo Formant Organ (Fig. 3). In this experimentally built instrument, four relaxation-type oscillators were correlated to a 44-note keyboard by a switching system which coordinates the first oscillator O, to the highest note, the second oscillator Oz, to the note next to the highest, and so forth. The oscillator outputs were connected to gates (G, through G,), which were opened for the played notes only by an additional switching system. This instrument also comprised envelope control means for percussive tones and two sets of filters, one of which could be correlated at will to one group of voices (for instance, Ist and 3rd) and the other to the remaining ones (for instance, 2nd and 4th). Although this instrument was capable of producing interesting effects, the stability with the employed tone generating system was not sufficient, and the switching device was too expensive.

Two versions of the instrument were made and later stored at the  Heinrich-Hertz Institute (HHI) in Charlottenburg, Berlin. The institute’s building was completely destroyed during the war and with it the Warbo Formant Orgel. No recording of the Warbo Formant have been found. As with many other instruments designed by Bode the Warbo Formant Orgel pioneered aspects of electronics that became standard in later instruments. The Warbo Formant Orgel was a partially polyphonic (high note priority) four-voice, single keyboard instrument with 2 formant filters and key assigned dynamic envelope wave shaping allowing for variable wave shapes and percussive effects – features that were later used on Bode’s postwar instruments. With the assistance of Oskar Vierling at the HHI, between 1938 and 1939 Bode created a two monophonic manual and 30 note pedalboard version of the Warbo Formant Orgel he called the Melodium . ⁴Davies, Hugh. (2001) The Warbo Formant Orgel, The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians, New York : Grove, 74-5.

Harald Bode. Biographical notes

Harald Bode (Born: Hamburg October 19, 1909 – Died: New York, January 15, 1987) studied  mathematics, physics and natural philosophy at Hamburg University, graduating in 1934. In 1937, with funding support provided by the composer and band-leader, Christian Warnke, Bode produced his first instrument the Warbo-Formant Orgel (‘Warbo’ being a combination of the names Warnke and Bode). Bode moved to Berlin in 1938 to complete a postgraduate course at the Heinrich Hertz Institute where he collaborated with Oskar Vierling and the light music composer, organist and Trautonium virtuoso, Fekko von Ompteda. During this period Bode developed the Melodium ;  a unique monophonic touch-sensitive, multi-timbral instrument used extensively in film scores of the period.

When WWII started in 1939 Bode worked on military submarine sound and wireless communication projects “…We had the only choice in Germany, to go to military service or do work for the government. I praise myself lucky, that I was able to go to the electronic industry” ⁶Finch, James. (1980) Interview with Harald Bode, Syne Magazine, International Electronic Music Association (IEMA). and moved to the  small village Neubeuern in southern Germany, where in 1947 Bode built the first European post-war electronic instrument, the Melochord. In 1949 Bode joined the AWB company where he created the  Polychord a simpler, polyphonic version of the Melochord which was followed by the Polychord III in 1951 and the  Bode Organ, a commercial organ which became the prototype for the famous Estey Electronic Organ. After leaving AWB, Bode’s designs included the Tuttivox, a miniature electronic organ and collaborated on a version of George Jenny’s Clavioline, both big sellers throughout Europe.

In 1954 Bode moved to the USA, settling in Brattleboro, Vermont where he lead the development team (and later, became Vice President)  at the Estey Organ Corporation. In 1958, while still working at Estey, Bode set up the Bode Electronics Company where in March 1960 he created another unique instrument; a modular synthesiser “A New Tool for the Exploration of Unknown Electronic Music Instrument Performances” known as the  ‘Audio System Synthesiser’ which Robert Moog used as the basis for his line of new Moog synthesisers.

After the Estey Organ Company foundered in 1960, Bode joined the Wurlitzer Organ Co and moved to Buffalo, New York where he was one of the first engineers to recognise the significance of transistor based technology in electronic music.  Bode’s concepts of modular and miniature self-contained transistor based machines was taken up and developed in the early 1960’s by Robert Moog and Donald Buchla amongst others. 1962 saw the beginning of a long collaboration between Bode and the composer Vladimir Ussachevsky at the  Columbia Princeton Center for Electronic Music which lead to the development of innovative studio equipment designs such as the  ‘Bode Ring Modulator’ and ‘Bode Frequency Shifter’. The commercial versions of these inventions were produced  under the Bode Sound Co and under license Moog Synthesisers.

Harald Bode retired in 1974 but continued to pursue his own research. In 1977 he created the ‘Bode Vocoder’ (licensed as the ‘Moog Vocoder’). In 1981 he developed his last instrument, the ‘Bode Barber Pole Phaser’.