Unusual Electronic Sound in Vintage Recording..

[HideawayStudio]

I was wondering if someone might be able to help solve a long time sonic mystery for me..

Among the sea of genres I'm into I admit I am very fond of old Italian and French music and for a long time have been very curious to know what the source of the weird otherworldly sound is in the original intro of Domenico Modugno’s - Ciao, Ciao, Bambina (Piove)..

Its a really cool sound:



I believe the original recording is from 1959..

[nathanscribe]

That *is* cool. And interesting. Reminds me of a lot of the Radiophonic stuff done with tone generators and whatnot, or the Barron's work on Forbidden Planet, or the Star Trek foley material, etc. I think most of the latter were acoustic in origin. This sounds like a fairly pure tone with amplitude modulation, which would be fairly easy to do. No idea if it could be one of the earlier Solovox-style instruments or similar, though it also reminds of the Ondes Martenot. Sorry, no help at all. Just intrigued

[V301H]

It sounds to me like an Organ with a Leslie speaker and lots of Reverb. In the intro you can hear several low notes being smeared and gradually ascend in pitch. The Organ sound continues being played in a legato fashion overlapping notes in a higher register throughout the song. Since more than one note sounds at a time that would rule out a Solovox/Clavioline/Ondioline type instrument. I suppose a Hammond Novachord could be a possibility.

[Zamise]

I think it is a mic-ed up slinky spring, and or oripossbly also hear a saw, an actul saw, very vibrato-ish.

[haj]

This really sounds like Virtual ANS!
http://www.warmplace.ru/soft/ans/

[HideawayStudio]

This is very curious... Have a look at this live performance around 44 seconds in!!

[mpa1104]

I had a listen to the first posted link, and then the second one above confirmed my initial suspicion of a vibraphone being used. As for what's being done to it is beyond me. The original recording has some distortion which adds to the unusualness. The vibes rate is faster than your average vibraphone, so it's possible that the motor was souped up in some way, and the player is using soft-headed mallets which give very little attack to the notes. It does sound like it's going through some sort of extra amplification but with some sort of resonator involved (a bit like the Ondes Martenot speaker or a Cristal Baschet, something like that). Or just a good old spring reverb?
Really don't know tbh, just surmising out loud.

[HideawayStudio]

I had a listen to the first posted link, and then the second one above confirmed my initial suspicion of a vibraphone being used. As for what's being done to it is beyond me. The original recording has some distortion which adds to the unusualness. The vibes rate is faster than your average vibraphone, so it's possible that the motor was souped up in some way, and the player is using soft-headed mallets which give very little attack to the notes. It does sound like it's going through some sort of extra amplification but with some sort of resonator involved (a bit like the Ondes Martenot speaker or a Cristal Baschet, something like that). Or just a good old spring reverb?
Really don't know tbh, just surmising out loud.

The more I think about this the more I think its a red herring as it just might have been that the effect used on the original recording was not practical in a live performance and that the intro is actually on playback.

If you listen carefully you can hear discrete notes so its not likely to be a simple hand cranked oscillator. There is obviously a ton of fairly metallic reverb/resonator and a strong tremolo effect but quite what the source instrument is - heck knows..

I did also wonder if it was a heavily processed Hammond organ as the instrument is used in other parts of the song so some sort of custom effect could have been switched in and out but I'm not convinced...

[Virgule]

tape effects?.....which if it were the case, the source material could be anything.

[commodorejohn]

That's definitely a reversed percussive sound of some kind, I think. It's got the same quality as the reversed gong at the beginning of Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful of Secrets." Probably they played a downward scale on a vibraphone, added a little reverb to it, and reversed it.

[SquareWave]

Waterphone, I am thinking...

[garranimal]

I had a listen to the first posted link, and then the second one above confirmed my initial suspicion of a vibraphone being used. As for what's being done to it is beyond me. The original recording has some distortion which adds to the unusualness. The vibes rate is faster than your average vibraphone, so it's possible that the motor was souped up in some way, and the player is using soft-headed mallets which give very little attack to the notes. It does sound like it's going through some sort of extra amplification but with some sort of resonator involved (a bit like the Ondes Martenot speaker or a Cristal Baschet, something like that). Or just a good old spring reverb?
Really don't know tbh, just surmising out loud.

I too think vibraphone and soft mallets. Even though reverb plates were happening in the late 50s, I think mic placement can also give the less percussive, and more atmospheric effect we hear in the recording.

[cornutt]

I think it's a Lowrey or Thomas organ. It sounds like the tape was slowed down and sped up, and then the output of that went through either a Leslie or maybe a guitar amp with tremolo.

[synthroom]

The waterphone by all accounts dates from the late 1960s and a patent application was filed in 1973. The song in question is from before that so it seems the waterphone is out.

[HideawayStudio]

There may be a bit of clue here... although the music was performed in the main by an orchestra conducted by William Galassini an organist with an interesting background is also credited..

On the original FONIT record label the Hammond Organ player is credited as Mario Migliardi. On further research it transpires Mario was not just a session player but in fact a famous Italian composer, pianist and conductor who went on to produce music scores for several films. He was involved in the production of many pop songs of the era and had a strong interest in electronic music and sound effects and promoted its broadcast on radio.

It is my guess the curious intro is at least partly of his doing.