Synthesizer 2027: The Hamburg Legacy Studio

1930 · Berlin

Trautwein & Sala: The Trautonium

The synthesizer's ancestor — built in Berlin's radio lab.

Friedrich Trautwein unveiled the Trautonium at the Berlin Musikhochschule in 1930. His pupil Oskar Sala turned it into the Mixtur-Trautonium, opening the world of subharmonics — undertones below a note that don't occur in nature. Sala later scored Hitchcock's The Birds entirely on it.

Subharmonic Synthesis

1937 · Hamburg

Harald Bode: The Warbo Formant Organ

Human vowel-like filters, invented long before modern synths.

Hamburg-trained Harald Bode built the Warbo Formant Organ in 1937 and went on to invent the modular sound modifier and the ring modulator that defined the Cologne studio sound. His ideas seeded Moog and the whole modular lineage.

Subtractive + Formant Filter

1962 · East Berlin

The Subharchord

A rare subharmonic sound machine from the GDR.

Developed 1959–68 at the RFZ studio in Berlin-Adlershof, the Subharchord generated undertones rather than overtones — the East's answer to the WDR studio. Only seven were ever built; its cold, otherworldly tone scored sci-fi and radio drama.

Subharmonic + Noise

1974 · Düsseldorf

Kraftwerk: The Autobahn Noise Generator

Rushing highway wind and electronic rhythm from raw noise.

With Autobahn (1974), Kraftwerk turned the German motorway into music — filtered noise for rushing wind, pulsing rhythm for the journey. They made the synthesizer the lead voice of pop and inspired everything from hip-hop to techno.

Subtractive + Noise Block

1979 · Hamburg

Wolfgang Palm: The PPG Wave Computer

Morph through digital tables of distinct wave shapes.

In Hamburg, Wolfgang Palm pioneered wavetable synthesis — scanning through banks of digital waveforms for shimmering, evolving timbres. The PPG Wave became the sound of 1980s synth-pop and the direct ancestor of today's wavetable synths.

Wavetable Morphing

1995 · Germany

Doepfer: A-100 Eurorack

The modular format this whole studio is dressed in.

Dieter Doepfer's A-100 (1995) defined Eurorack — a small, affordable, open modular standard. It sparked a global cottage industry of compatible modules and the modern modular revival. The panels and knobs you see here are its visual language.

Analog Modular

2027 · The Lab

Stereo Vector Lab

Two oscillators drawing Lissajous figures in stereo.

The journey ends in the present-day lab: an X/Y oscillator pair where one channel drives left, the other right. Tune the ratio and phase and the output traces living geometric figures — watch them on the vectorscope above.

Vector / Lissajous

GENERATOR

Sine Wave

MODIFIER

Formant Filter

OUTPUT

Continuous Drone

Pick an era from the timeline to begin.

Frequency

50%

Vowel Shape

30%

Space / Echo

Synthesizer: Instrument of the Year

Synthesizer: Instrument of the Year

Sine Wave

Formant Filter

Continuous Drone