# explanation
The Ondes Martenot is one of the earliest electronic musical instruments. One eccentricity of the instrument is that it has two modes in which it can be played:
- au clavier -- using a standard piano-style keyboard, but with the quirk that the keyboard can be gently moved side to side to produce vibrato on notes. (Cool, right?)
- au ruban -- using a ring connected to a ribbon or wire. Sliding the ring to a point in front of a given key on the keyboard plays the corresponding tone.
It's this second mode that makes the instrument such a fascination for electronic instrument enthusiasts -- it's relatively easy to play in tune while at the same time being able to perform large tone sweeps characteristic of instruments like the
theremin.
This demo uses a slider reminiscent of the ruban mode of the Ondes Martenot. But it does so in order to look at how frequency scales compared to perceived pitch class.
So, a little intro.
[In progress]...