In 1916 the American Avant-Garde composer Henry Cowell was working with ideas of controlling cross rythms and tonal sequences with a keyboard, he wrote several quartet type pieces that used combinations of rythms and overtones that were not possible to play apart from using some kind of mechanical control- "unperformable by any known human agency and I thought of them as purely
fanciful".(Henry Cowell)
In 1930 Cowell introduced his idea to Leon Termen, the inventor of the
Theremin, and commisioned him to build him a machine capable of transforming harmonic data into rhythmic data and vice versa.
"My part in its invention was to invent the idea
that such a rhythmic instrument was a necessity to further rhythmic development,
which has reached a limit more or less, in performance by hand, an needed
the application of mechanical aid. The which the instrument was to accomplish
and what rhythms it should do and the pitch it should have and the relation
between the pitch and rhythms are my ideas. I also conceived that the principle
of broken up light playing on a photo-electric cell would be the best means
of making it practical. With this idea I went to Theremin who did the rest
- he invented the method by which the light would be cut, did the electrical
calculations and built the instrument."
Henry Cowell
"The rhythmic control possible in playing and imparting
exactitudes in cross rhythms are bewildering to contemplate and the potentialities
of the instrument should be multifarious... Mr. Cowell used his rythmicon
to accompany a set of violin movements which he had written for the occasion....
The accompaniment was a strange complexity of rhythmical interweavings
and cross currents of a cunning and precision as never before fell on the
ears of man and the sound pattern was as uncanny as the motion... The write
believes that the pure genius of Henry Cowell has put forward a principle
which will strongly influence the face of all future music."
Homer Henly, May 20, 1932
The eventual machine was christened the "Rythmicon" or "Polyrhythmophone" and was the first electronic rhythm machine. The Rhythmicon was a keyboard instrument based on the
Theremin, using the same type of sound generation - hetrodyning vacuum tube oscillators. The 17 key polyphonic keyboard produced a single note repeated in periodic rhythm for as long as it was held down, the rhythmic content being generated from rotating disks interupting light beams that triggered photo-electric cells. The 17th key of the keyboard added an extra beat in the middle of each bar. The transposable keyboard was tuned to an unusual pitch based on the rythmic speed of the sequences and the basic pitch and tempo could be adjusted by means of levers.
Cowell wrote two works for the Rythmicon "Rythmicana" and "Music for Violin and Rythmicon" (a computer simulation of this work was reproduced in 1972). Cowell lost interest in the machine, transfering his interest to ethnic music and the machine was mothballed. After Cowell, the machines were used for psychological research and one example (non working) of the machine survives at the Smithsonian Institute.
Thr Rhythmicon was rediscoverd twenty-five years after its creation by the producer Joe Meek (creator of the innovative hit single 'Telstar', 1961) apparently discovered abandoned in a New York pawnbrokers. Meek brought it back to his home studio in London where it was used on several recordings.
This Rhythmicon was used to provide music and sound effects for various movies in the Fifties and Sixties, including: 'The Rains of Ranchipur'; 'Battle Beneath the Earth'; Powell and Pressburgers' 'They're a Weird Mob'; 'Dr Strangelove', and the sixties animated TV series 'Torchy, The Battery Boy'.
The Rhythmicon was also rumoured to have been used on several sixties
and seventies records, including: 'Atom Heart Mother' by Pink Floyd;
'The Crazy World of Arthur Brown' by Arthur Brown, and 'Robot' by the Tornadoes. Tangerine Dream also used some sequences from the Rhythmicon on their album 'Rubicon'.
"Henry Cowell: A record of his activities" Compiled June 1934 by Olive Thompson Cowell.
