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ARP Instruments, Inc.
ARP Instruments, Inc. was a Lexington, Massachusetts manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, founded by Alan Robert Pearlman in 1969. It created a popular and commercially successful range of synthesizers throughout the 1970s before declaring bankruptcy in 1981. The company earned a reputation for producing excellent sounding, innovative instruments and was granted several patents for the technology it developed. History Background Alan Pearlman was an engineering student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts in 1948 when he foresaw the coming age of electronic music and synthesizers. He later wrote: :"''The electronic instrument's value is chiefly as a novelty. With greater attention on the part of the engineer to the needs of the musician, the day may not be too remote when the electronic instrument may take its place ... as a versatile, powerful, and expressive instrument.''" Beginnings Following 21 years of experience in electronic engineering ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chroma Polaris + Fender Rhodes MK1 (front)
Chroma, Greek for color, may refer to: Color * Chrominance or chroma, a component of a television signal * Chroma, a type of colorfulness * Chroma, a measure of color purity in the Munsell color system Business * Chroma ATE, a Taiwanese electronics company * Enchroma, a lens technology and eyewear company Literature * '' Chroma: A Queer Literary Journal'', a UK-based journal * ''Chroma'', a short story collection by Frederick Barthelme * ''Chroma'', a book by Derek Jarman * Chroma, a character in ''The Phantom Tollbooth'' by Norton Juster Music * Chroma feature, a quality of a musical pitch class * ''Chroma'' (album), an album by Cartel * ARP Chroma or Rhodes Chroma, a polyphonic synthesizer * "Chroma", a contemporary composition by Rebecca Saunders Video games * ''Chroma'', a canceled 2014 video game by Harmonix * Chroma and Chroma Prime, playable characters from Warframe * Chroma, a fictional city in the video game "''De Blob''" * Chroma, a fictional supernatural force in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guitar Pickup
A pickup is a transducer that captures or senses mechanical vibrations produced by musical instruments, particularly stringed instruments such as the electric guitar, and converts these to an electrical signal that is amplified using an instrument amplifier to produce musical sounds through a loudspeaker in a speaker enclosure. The signal from a pickup can also be recorded directly. Most electric guitars and electric basses use magnetic pickups. Acoustic guitars, upright basses and fiddles often use a piezoelectric pickup. Magnetic pickups A typical magnetic pickup is a transducer (specifically a variable reluctance sensor) that consists of one or more permanent magnets (usually alnico or ferrite) wrapped with a coil of several thousand turns of fine enameled copper wire. The magnet creates a magnetic field which is focused by the pickup's pole piece or pieces. The permanent magnet in the pickup magnetizes the guitar string above it. This causes the string to generate a magn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ARP Avatar
The ARP Avatar was a guitar synthesizer manufactured by ARP Instruments beginning in 1977. While innovative, being one of the first commercial guitar-controlled synthesizers, it was a commercial failure, and is widely blamed for the financial collapse of ARP Instruments. History ARP Instruments began developing the Avatar in 1977, hoping to tap into the guitar player market, which was four times larger than the keyboard player market at the time. The Avatar was synthesizer module virtually identical to the ARP Odyssey without a keyboard with an added 6-way "fuzzbox" distortion effect, intended to be played by a solid body electric guitar via a specially-mounted hexaphonic guitar pickup whose signals were then processed through discrete pitch-to-voltage converters. Although groundbreaking as one of the first commercial guitar-controlled synthesizers, ARP spent $4 million on Avatar's research and development and initial production, and sales of the guitar synthesizer over the two y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ARP Avatar (top & Front)
The ARP Avatar was a guitar synthesizer manufactured by ARP Instruments beginning in 1977. While innovative, being one of the first commercial guitar-controlled synthesizers, it was a commercial failure, and is widely blamed for the financial collapse of ARP Instruments. History ARP Instruments began developing the Avatar in 1977, hoping to tap into the guitar player market, which was four times larger than the keyboard player market at the time. The Avatar was synthesizer module virtually identical to the ARP Odyssey without a keyboard with an added 6-way "fuzzbox" distortion effect, intended to be played by a solid body electric guitar via a specially-mounted hexaphonic guitar pickup whose signals were then processed through discrete pitch-to-voltage converters. Although groundbreaking as one of the first commercial guitar-controlled synthesizers, ARP spent $4 million on Avatar's research and development and initial production, and sales of the guitar synthesizer over the two y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microprocessor
A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circuitry required to perform the functions of a computer's central processing unit. The integrated circuit is capable of interpreting and executing program instructions and performing arithmetic operations. The microprocessor is a multipurpose, clock-driven, register-based, digital integrated circuit that accepts binary data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and provides results (also in binary form) as output. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic, and operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary number system. The integration of a whole CPU onto a single or a few integrated circuits using Very-Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) greatly reduced the c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polymoog
The Polymoog is a hybrid polyphonic analog synthesizer that was manufactured by Moog Music from 1975 to 1980. The Polymoog was based on divide-down oscillator technology similar to electronic organs and string synthesizers of the time. History The name Polymoog can refer either to the original Polymoog Synthesizer (model 203a) released in 1975, or the largely preset Polymoog Keyboard (model 280a) released in 1978. The Polymoog has a 71-note weighted Pratt & Read touch-sensitive keyboard divided into three sections with a volume slider for each. It also has a three-band resonant graphic equalizer section, which can be changed to a low/bandpass/high-pass filter. The Moog-designed 24 dB/octave filter section allows modulation modulated from its own envelopes, low frequency oscillation and sample and hold circuit. Ranks and waveforms of all notes are also adjustable combining waveforms, octaves, tunings, and their own independent LFO rates and amounts. The user can ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electronic Organ
An electric organ, also known as electronic organ, is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally designed to imitate their sound, or orchestral sounds, it has since developed into several types of instruments: * Hammond-style organs used in pop, rock and jazz; * digital church organs, which imitate pipe organs and are used primarily in churches; * other types including combo organs, home organs, and software organs. History Predecessors ;Harmonium The immediate predecessor of the electronic organ was the harmonium, or reed organ, an instrument that was common in homes and small churches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In a fashion not totally unlike that of pipe organs, reed organs generate sound by forcing air over a set of reeds by means of a bellows, usually operated by constantly pumping a set of pedals. While reed organs have limited tonal quality, they are small, inexpensive, self ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ARP Omni
The ARP Omni was a polyphonic analog synthesizer manufactured by ARP Instruments, Inc. Overview The Omni featured preset, electronically generated Orchestral ensemble String voices including polyphonic Violin and Viola sounds as well as monophonic Bass and Cello. The instrument also included a monophonic Bass Synthesizer section and a polyphonic Synthesizer section. The Synthesizer section featured a 24 dB/oct Voltage-Controlled Low Pass Filter (LPF); an ADSR envelope generator and a single waveform (triangle) Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO) were both routed to control the VCF Cutoff frequency. A Waveform Enhancement switch allowed selection of a square wave voice waveform vs. the default quasi-sawtooth waveform. The ARP Omni had a unique logo that was painted on to the back face of the unit. Voicing The String and Synthesizer sections of the 49-note Omni utilized the Mostek MK50240 Top Octave generator IC along with divide-down circuitry; as a result, these sectio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ARP Quadra
The ARP Quadra was a 61-key analog synthesizer produced by ARP Instruments, Inc. from 1978 to 1981. The machine combined pre-existing products: the Omni, Odyssey, a Solina-esque string synthesizer unit, a phaser and a divide-down organ with ADSR envelope, and a 4075 24 db low pass filter into one box. It has four sections. Bass is on the bottom two octaves, has two unison bass circuits (electric and string), with AR and a single pole low pass filter and a related AD envelope for cutoff. A string section is similar to the ARP Omni. Poly Synth, and a two voice Lead Synth similar to the Odyssey and a five way mixer with four unit outputs, a stereo pair, a line mono and an XLR out. There are 16 memory locations, but these do not provide storage of slider settings. The synthesizer's 8048-based microcontroller uses battery-backed CMOS SRAM storage to store and recall 16 sets of on/off decisions about which waveforms and modulations are turned on in each of the four sections, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phil Dodds
Philip Van Horn Weems Dodds (May 17, 1951 – October 6, 2007), credited as Phil Dodds and Philip Dodds, was an audio engineer who appeared in the 1977 motion picture ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind''. As ARP Instruments, Inc.'s Vice President of Engineering, Dodds was on the set to install and manage the ARP 2500 synthesizer used in the movie to play the five alien tones, and to program it for the sounds the filmmakers wanted. He had performed a similar function on other science fiction films, such as '' Logan's Run'', and some of the early ''Star Trek'' movies. Steven Spielberg, liking his looks, offered him a part in the movie on the spot; he spent the next nine weeks filming the now-iconic final scenes of the movie. He has considerable screen time for an extra, playing the notes on the synthesizer under the direction of several scientists and musicians, and gazing raptly up at the alien spaceship. In the film's credits, Dodds's name appears twice—once as "Jean Claude" ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
