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:
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.
Biography: Frederick Minturn Sammis.
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 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.
References
- 1Sammis, F,(1936) The Singing Keyboard, Radio Craft, May 1936, 617.
- 2Davies, Hugh, (2014), The Singing Keyboard, Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Oxford University Press, 523.
- 3The 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 “singing keyboard” seemed to have no real need to be a mass distributed instrument. Intended for talkies, not everyone has a need for it’s use. The main innovation seems to be it’s ability to trigger and then pitch bend. This instrument also seems to have paved the way for a huge market in music technology, leading up to the mellotron and even today’s sampling.