The perfume organ, also called an octophone (unrelated to the mandola-related octophone), was an instrument invented by the French chemist Septimus Piesse, in which the keys of a piano activated one of 46 different odors. [1]
In 1857, in his book The Art of Perfumery, Piesse used music to describe how notes and smells can work together: "There is, as it were, an octave of odors like an octave in music; certain odors coincide, like the keys of an instrument." [2]
As Sadakichi Hartmann noted in 1913, the keys of the octophone "are complementary and can be combined to harmonies as sounds to a musical chord. It is a valuable guide on a quasi scientific basis for the manufacturers of perfumery, for it is only necessary to strike a chord on the piano, and to know what odors the respective notes of the chord represent, to arrive at the suggestion for some new bouquet." [1] Hartmann was skeptical of the value of the perfume organ for "aesthetical" experiments, as "the affinity between sounds and odors is purely speculative". [1]
In 1922 the magazine Science and Invention had an article on a new, silent, take on the perfume organ. [3] Instead of attempting harmony of music and scent, the keys on the keyboard of the Science and Invention version played only notes of perfume. There does not appear to be any evidence that this particular smell organ was ever constructed. [4]
Accordions are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type, colloquially referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is an accordionist. The concertina and bandoneón are related. The harmonium and American reed organ are in the same family, but are typically larger than an accordion and sit on a surface or the floor.
Figured bass is musical notation in which numerals and symbols appear above or below a bass note. The numerals and symbols indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones that a musician playing piano, harpsichord, organ, or lute should play in relation to the bass note. Figured bass is closely associated with basso continuo: a historically improvised accompaniment used in almost all genres of music in the Baroque period of Classical music, though rarely in modern music. Figured bass is also known as thoroughbass.
A musical keyboard is the set of adjacent depressible levers or keys on a musical instrument. Keyboards typically contain keys for playing the twelve notes of the Western musical scale, with a combination of larger, longer keys and smaller, shorter keys that repeats at the interval of an octave. Pressing a key on the keyboard makes the instrument produce sounds—either by mechanically striking a string or tine, plucking a string (harpsichord), causing air to flow through a pipe organ, striking a bell (carillon), or, on electric and electronic keyboards, completing a circuit. Since the most commonly encountered keyboard instrument is the piano, the keyboard layout is often referred to as the piano keyboard.
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700.
In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches, or chords. However, harmony is generally understood to involve both vertical harmony (chords) and horizontal harmony (melody).
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings.
Articles related to music include:
A tone cluster is a musical chord comprising at least three adjacent tones in a scale. Prototypical tone clusters are based on the chromatic scale and are separated by semitones. For instance, three adjacent piano keys struck simultaneously produce a tone cluster. Variants of the tone cluster include chords comprising adjacent tones separated diatonically, pentatonically, or microtonally. On the piano, such clusters often involve the simultaneous striking of neighboring white or black keys.
A manual is a musical keyboard designed to be played with the hands, on an instrument such as a pipe organ, harpsichord, clavichord, electronic organ, melodica, or synthesizer. The term "manual" is used with regard to any hand keyboard on these instruments to distinguish it from the pedalboard, which is a keyboard that the organist plays with their feet. It is proper to use "manual" rather than "keyboard", then, when referring to the hand keyboards on any instrument that has a pedalboard.
A broken chord is a chord broken into a sequence of notes. A broken chord may repeat some of the notes from the chord and span one or more octaves.
Chord organ is a kind of home organ that has a single short keyboard and a set of chord buttons, enabling the musician to play a melody or lead with one hand and accompanying chords with the other, like the accordion with a set of chord buttons which was originated from a patent by Cyrill Demian in 1829, etc.
Rocky Mount Instruments (RMI) was a subsidiary of the Allen Organ Company, based in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, active from 1966 to 1982. The company was formed to produce portable musical instruments, and manufactured several electronic pianos, harpsichords, and organs that used oscillators to create sound, instead of mechanical components like an electric piano.
In musical tuning, a temperament is a tuning system that slightly compromises the pure intervals of just intonation to meet other requirements. Most modern Western musical instruments are tuned in the equal temperament system. Tempering is the process of altering the size of an interval by making it narrower or wider than pure. "Any plan that describes the adjustments to the sizes of some or all of the twelve fifth intervals in the circle of fifths so that they accommodate pure octaves and produce certain sizes of major thirds is called a temperament." Temperament is especially important for keyboard instruments, which typically allow a player to play only the pitches assigned to the various keys, and lack any way to alter pitch of a note in performance. Historically, the use of just intonation, Pythagorean tuning and meantone temperament meant that such instruments could sound "in tune" in one key, or some keys, but would then have more dissonance in other keys.
The octophone is a stringed musical instrument related to the mandola family resembling an octave mandolin. It was marketed by Regal Musical Instrument Company, who introduced it 21 January 1928, as an "eight-purpose instrument".
This is a list of jazz and popular music terms that are likely to be encountered in printed popular music songbooks, fake books and vocal scores, big band scores, jazz, and rock concert reviews, and album liner notes. This glossary includes terms for musical instruments, playing or singing techniques, amplifiers, effects units, sound reinforcement equipment, and recording gear and techniques which are widely used in jazz and popular music. Most of the terms are in English, but in some cases, terms from other languages are encountered.
Smound is a perception or sense experience created from the convergence of scents and sounds in the brain. The word is a portmanteau of smell and sound.
The Art and Olfaction Awards are a non-profit award mechanism designed to celebrate excellence in international artisan, experimental and independent perfumery and olfactory art through a yearly blind-judged competition.
Piesse and Lubin was a luxury perfumery in London. Established in 1855, the company ceased operations in the 1950s.
Olfactory art is an art form that uses scents as a medium. Olfactory art includes perfume as well as other applications of scent.
George William Septimus Piesse, known as Septimus Piesse, was an English chemist and perfumer. Piesse was a leading author and innovator of modern perfume ideas, inventing the concept of notes in perfumery that are still used universally today. He was the co-owner of Piesse and Lubin, a perfume house that created some of the most popular scents of its day.