Mandalamat
Christian Günther

 Instruments

Single piece self-designed music machines

Foto: A. Christou
Equipment Christian Günther
Situation: “Schaltzentrale” with Mo Wolpert and Guests
Berlin 2009
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Since more than 20 years I am constructing music machines and use them in performances like concerts or in a sound installation, often in combination with the mandalamat visual synthesizer. My main intention is to find new ways of sound creating and to reach unlistened areas of music. In this way I prefer to work with analog electronic and electromechanical systems.
When I came to west Berlin in the late 1980s, Gobi Hofmann and me started to work in a joint workshop, creating a lot of new instruments. He also made many of the cases my instruments are built-in. Our interest was to combine new ways of generating sounds with a special and ancient looking design (“Laboratorium für wissenschaftliche Grenzbereiche”). In the following time I further developed the machines to make them more operable and versatile.
In the 2000s I started to cooperate with Moritz Wolpert; for him I also constructed some nice instruments and both we take part in the  musical project “Berliner Ring”.
The sound machines are all using control voltages (CV) to change parameters, as well as trigger and gate signals. The  instruments can be switched together and combined one with another by plug connectors. So I play them by using an instrument like theremin or percussionist 1 – also a keyboard makes sense – or they operate automatically.
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Percussionist I
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Scratchomat I
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Monochord
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Theremin
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Scratchomat deluxe
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Rhythm Machine
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Emulgator
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Bontempi
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Vocoder
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Triggomat
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Universalansteuerung
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Musik

↓ Click here for details and sound files ↓

_Percussionist 1, self-constructed percussion synthesizer
Percussionist 1
_Scratchomat 1
Scratchomat 1
_ Monochord
Monochord
_Theremin
Theremin
_Scratchomat deluxe
Scratchomat deluxe
_Rhythm Machine
Rhythm Machine
_ Emulgator, self-designed sound machine
Emulgator
_ Bontempi
Bontempi
_Vocoder
Vocoder
_Triggomat
Triggomat
_Universalansteuerung
Universalansteuerung

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