#ondomo

[nofatclips]

Scene XI by Snowdrops from their Live at the Archaeological Crypt of Paris [free download on Bandcamp]

[thekingofgear]

Jonny Greenwood’s ondes Martenot Tone

Jonny losing himself in a performance of Messiaen’s Vocalise Etude at RHK Dublin in 2015. Photo by Isabel Thomas for The Thin Air.

Written in response to the following anonymous question:

Hi TKOG! When Jonny uses his Ondes Martenot/Ondomo/French Connection etc. does he usually use the Sine Wave function or to produce a basic sine wave sound? I am trying to build my own similar instrument so was wondering what sound I should try and aim to produce. Thank you!

Despite how often the sound of the Martenot is described as a “sine tone”, you will only very rarely hear just a sine tone from the instrument. Jonny’s ondes sound on If You Say The Word for example (more on that later) is far richer than a sine wave. Most versions and offshoots of the Martenot do offer a sine wave, but players (ondists) generally combine it with other waveforms. A very common combination is the sine-wave (onde) added to a lowpass-filtered square-wave (petite gambe). This is similar to but richer than a sine wave, and often blends better with other instruments compared to the pure sine.

One reason for these combinations is that the speakers (diffuseurs) of the original Martenot added lowpass and highpass filtering. The currently-produced ondes Musicales Dierstein at one point used a guitar-oriented Celestian Vintage 30 speaker for its primary (principal) loudspeaker, which rolls off the highs at around ~5kHz and the lows at ~200Hz (full graph here). So even a rich waveform will start to sound like a sine when played at a higher pitch, because the speaker will roll off most of the harmonics of a high-pitched note. With a speaker like that, the combination of sine and filtered square will sound like a slightly richer sine wave at higher pitches. And at lower pitches where the fundamental sine sound is filtered out, the gentle square harmonics will still give definition to the note. The speaker really balances out the sound of the instrument.

Jonny’s Analog Tones

Jonny rehearsing There Will Be Blood with the Wordless Music Orchestra in 2014. His French Connection and its cabinet sit unused as he plays his original digital ondes Martenot. The amp is a rental Vox AC30CC2.

When it comes to Jonny specifically, his choice of waveform depends on both the instrument and the piece of music. For live performances of How To Disappear Completely from 2001 to 2012, Jonny used his French Connection and its Apprentice modular case (the French Connection is just a controller, and produces no sound on its own). At those shows, the instrument is connected directly to the PA, there’s no filtering from a guitar-type speaker. Perhaps that’s why he used a richer saw wave for low notes, and a purer sine-like wave for the high notes. You can hear this clearly in recordings of the band’s Saitama show. But the analog RS-95 oscillators that Jonny uses with his French Connection can’t actually produce a pure sine wave, no-matter the setting of its “shape” knob. So the RS-95′s sine wave sounds more like a triangle wave with some added even-order harmonics (the result of creating the sine wave from the saw/triangle wave). In addition, some other Analogue Systems modules like the RS-100 filter will gently overdrive when connected to a full-volume oscillator, which can add extra harmonics too. When Jonny performed There Will Be Blood with the Wordless Music Orchestra in 2014, he set the volume knob on his RS-110 filter to max, adding some overdrive to fatten sound of the RS-95′s sine output. And Jonny isn’t afraid to use the RS-95′s harmonically rich sounds too: the synthy sliding notes during the last section of the 2+2=5 recording are a great examples.

Unlike the original digital ondes Martenot he obtained in 1999, Jonny’s ondes Musicales Dierstein from 2011 uses analog transistors to generate its sounds (for more info on Jonny’s various Martenot offshoots, see this article). The Dierstein’s sine is also a slightly impure analog waveform, but it is much purer than the RS-95’s sine. It’s interesting to note that, for a performance of There Will Be Blood in 2014, Jonny did use the sine tone (Onde setting) when playing parts originally recorded with his original digital ondes Martenot. However, when playing new compositions with the London Contemporary Orchestra in 2015, Jonny instead used the clipped triangle wave, and even mentioned it sounded good in the concert hall (the Victoria Hall in Geneve). For that show, Jonny did use the Celestian speakers, which gave a warmer sound to the clipped triangle. It’s also interesting that Jonny seems to prefer using just one waveform at a time, rather than combining waveforms by turning on multiple switches.

A photo of the control drawer (tiroir) of Jonny’s Dierstein, posted on his twitter acount in 2015. Only C and D2 are active. C is a peak-limited triangle wave – imagine a triangle with the top chopped off to form a trapezoid. D1, D2, and D3 are switches for different speakers, and D2 is the reverberant speaker. On the Dierstein, D2 is a guitar-type speaker with a warm-soundng reverb emulation. This is pretty different from earlier versions of D2, which had a speaker connected mechanically to a set of large brass springs.

Stimulating Harmonics

So you may be thinking it’s best to start with a rich waveform and add some filtering. But some of the Martenot’s speakers can also add harmonics. The Palme and Metallique speakers both replace the cone of a normal speaker with a more resonant material. In the case of the Palme, the voice coil is coupled directly to the bridge of the custom-build string instrument. When the voice coil is sent into excitation by an input sound, it directly vibrates the strings. So the Palme does not simply add some stringy reverb. The strings of the Palme are actually “played” directly by the input sound, adding harmonics that were never present in the original sound (if you’re curious for more info on the Palme, see our article on building one).

Why should we care? Well, even when Jonny does use a pure sine setting, the final output we hear still might not be a sine wave. When a sine is used with the Palme speaker, the natural harmonics of the vibrating strings are added to the sound, and shaped by the resonance of the Palme’s body.

A photo of Jonny with his digital ondes Martenot and Palme speaker at the Koko in London for the Big Ask in 2006.

The studio recording of The National Anthem is a good example of a pure waveform used with the Palme. For that recording (which we transcribed in detail), Jonny used his original digital ondes Martenot. The digital instrument is able to produce a much purer sine wave than the analog offshoots of the ondes Martenot like the French Connection and Dierstein. But even so, we hear extra harmonics from the strings of the Palme, giving an ethereal haze to the notes.

Jonny also likes to use Vox AC30 amplifiers with his digital ondes Martenot, as he did perhaps most notably for the performance of Cymbal Rush on the Henry Rollins show in 2006. Overdriving the input of the AC30 adds extra harmonics to the sound, which are tamed by the lowpass filtering of the tone cut control and speaker – the same principle as overdriving an Analogue Systems lowpass filter. Jonny only had his digital ondes Martenot when he recorded his parts on If You Say The Word (2:38-3:05, 3:48-4:16). His tone on the song is much less hazy and reverberate compared to The National Anthem, doesn’t seem to have been used (unless it’s blended very softly underneath). But his tone is still fairly rich in overtones, so perhaps they were recorded through a tube amp like the AC30 for some gentle overdrive.

That said, it’s also worth noting that the digital Martenot can produce many additional sounds that his Ondomo, French Connection, and Dierstein are incapable of. Jonny’s interview with ondist Suzanne Binet-Audet for Caroline Martel documentary Wavemakers reveals some of the digital instrument’s more organ-like tones.

A long-exposure photograph of Jonny playing his digital ondes Martenot in the Round Room at Tottenham house, during the recording of In Rainbows.

Really, anything will do!

Simply put, there is no single waveform or timbre that can be attributed to an ondes Martenot. Each version and offshoot of the Martenot has its own waveforms, and they only sometimes overlap. But whether he’s playing his Ondomo or his French Connection, Jonny has nonetheless found a way to get his own sound from them. Ultimately, what matters most is the control interface. As long as one plays using the ring and intensity key (touche d’intensité), any periodic waveform will sound like an ondes Martenot – you might just need to adjust the filtering and reverb. That’s the reason VST replicas of the Martenot, such as Soniccouture's Ondes, sound so different from the real thing, despite using samples of the Martenot’s waveforms and impulse responses of the speakers. Unsurprisingly, the control interface is what matters most. Still, it might be worth playing around with the waveforms in a VST like that, just to hear what you like. You can also listen to the timbre samples on Josh Seman’s website, though you can’t use that to test blends of waveforms.

You seem interested in Jonny’s timbre specifically, but things are equally muddy when creating a historically-correct instrument. Most modern derivatives of the Martenot are based on the MK7 instrument, which used transistors. But many of the most famous pieces for the Martenot were written for earlier version of the instrument that used tubes. Those versions had a much fatter sound due to the tubes overdriving, and had a different range of waveforms and timbres. But this doesn’t stop modern ondists from performing Turangalîla beautifully with a MK7. As long as the instrument has enough timbres to cover a good range of moods, the specific waveforms are ultimately fairly unimportant.

[ygrrrrr]

if you live or stay in Japan this summer/autumn.

please contact me, if you need more info or help.

[thekingofgear]

Hi TKOG! Have you figured out how Jonny's Ondomo is amplified during live shows or is his signal just patched directly into the PA?

Hello! When performing live with all of Radiohead, Jonny has always run his ondes Musicales instruments directly to the PA (this applies to his original 80′s ondes Martenot, his Analogue Systems French Connection + The Apprentice, and his ASADEN Ondomo). Jonny’s Ondomos pass through his BOSS tuner, then through his effects, then through a DI box going directly to the PA. One can even see his green Radial Engineering direct box in the back of his stationary keyboard stand.

In this photo of Jonny’s stationary keyboard stand, one can see the Radial Engineering DI box (with a red-ish sticker on it) in the lower left corner of the back of the stand. This particular Ondomo is Jonny’s second “green-brown” Ondomo (JGB02).

[thekingofgear]

From Colin’s Twitter: a photo of Jonny with one of his Ondomo (ondes Martenot)!

This photo was taken during a performance of Desert Island Disk. On 2017 performances of that song, Jonny loops his Ondomo using an Akai Headrush E2, then manipulates the frequencies of the loop using a BOSS GE-7 EQ pedal. In the photo above, Jonny can be seen adjusting the sliders of the BOSS GE-7 (you can also see him adjusting the pedal in this video from Miami in 2017).

Jonny’s Ondomo loop on that song consists of the notes G, A, B, C, D, E, and G – all layered on top of eachother (on the radiohead.tv video of the band’s I-Days performance, you can clearly hear Jonny create the loop from 6:14-6:50). By leaving out the seventh note of the scale, Jonny makes it possible to interpret the scale as either the Major (Ionion) mode or the Mixolydian mode.

Thom’s playing sits squarely in G Mixolydian, so it’s a little odd that Jonny would leave out the note. However, since Thom’s guitar part consists predominantly of an alternation between chords on G and F natural, leaving the F natural out of the loop might make the chords on F stand out more strongly and provide a greater feeling of surprise each time that “modal” note is employed (F# is the expected “tonal” note). It probably also makes Ed’s rising and falling scales, which always end on F natural and never reach the final (G), stand out more strongly as well. By leaving out the F natural, it leaves open the possibility that Ed will play an F# leading tone at the peak of a scale and finally reach the G. The fact that this is possible but never occurs adds a certain “floating” character of the song (as do the delay effects on Ed’s guitar).

On 2016 performances of the song, Jonny similarly manipulated the frequencies of an Akai Headrush loop using a BOSS GE-7, but used his Crumar Multiman-S / Orchestrator as the input instead of an Ondomo (which he had not yet acquired).

[thekingofgear]

A photo of Micka Luna Jonny Greenwood and Alan Russell (the band’s live keyboard/laptop tech) at Radiohead’s studio, posted by Luna on his Instagram account. The trio are preparing Jonny’s Ondomo for Radiohead’s 2018 South American Tour. Jonny started using Asaden’s Ondomo as his ondes Martenot on tour last year, and it’s great to see that he’s continuing to use the instruments. He used four Ondomo on the last tour, with two on stage at all times and two as backups, but he recently returned one of his original Ondomo to Japan. You can read more about the various ondes Martenot which Jonny has used over the years in this article.

[thekingofgear]

Hello! Is the ondes martenot difficult to play in tune? I know jonny usually has a tuner close while he plays to make sure his pitch is right. Aren't there notches for you to be able to tell what notes to play? Or is it just very sensitive to movement? Or maybe it's just a precaussion to have the tuner?

Hello there! The ruban of the ondes Martenot is not so difficult as a violin, but because of its sensitivity it is still not easy to play. The indentations serve as guides, but they do not impart perfect playing. Precisely how you place your finger on the indentations will determine your pitch. The same holds true for guitar or bass: the frets on a guitar can result in good or bad intonation depending on one’s finger placement (the beginner’s mistake is to place their finger directly on the fret).

There are several reasons that it is useful to have a tuner on-hand when playing ondes Martenot, but they mainly have to do with the technical fluctuations of the instrument. Just as on other analogue synthesizers, the instrument needs to warm up before its pitch will stabilize, it can fall out of tune in the midst of performance. This is especially true for the ribbon, which can become out of sync with the indentations and require recalibration. While a skilled player can naturally adjust to tuning fluctuations to stay on pitch, a tuner can make this easier and allow for faster retuning. For Jonny, this would’ve been useful with his Analogue Systems French Connection and its associated modules: the ASys RS95e is an excellent-sounding oscillator, but like other analogue gear its pitch is very sensitive to temperature fluctuations. Temperature fluctuations don’t affect Jonny’s digital student model ondes Martenot, but that instrument’s ribbon can still require recalibration.

It should also be noted that it is primarily during his performances with Radiohead that Jonny uses a tuner with his ondes. He didn’t use one for his 2014 performances with the LCO, for example, and also has not used one when recording with the instrument. This suggests that Jonny has another use for the tuner: to ensure that he’s on pitch even when he can’t hear himself well. Jonny has previously mentioned that he can sometimes drift out of tune with the rest of Radiohead without realizing it. The tuner ensures that in times when he can’t hear his pitch precisely, he can at least visualize it. 

Jonny with his student model ondes Martenot at the The Big Ask Live, 2006.05.01. A BOSS TU-12H – Jonny’s favored tuner – is visible on top of the instrument.

A long-exposure photograph of Jonny playing his student model ondes Martenot in the “round room” at Tottenham House during the recording of In Rainbows. The lack of a tuner when recording supports the idea that it is used to help him visualize his pitch during performances when he cannot hear it well.

A photo of Jonny playing his student model ondes Martenot `without a tuner during the recording of Junun in 2015. Shoes are Adidas Y-3 High-tops.

Jonny performing Olivier Messiaen’s Vocalise étude in Manchester, 2014.10.10. Note that he is using no tuner with his ondes Musicales Dierstein.

[thekingofgear]

Hi, long time follower of the page here! I was curious about Jonny's role on live performances of How To Disappear Completely... is he using MAX alongise with his Ondes Martenot or is it a looper? Also, which parts of the song is he recording and over dubbing? Thanks in advance!

On performances of How To Disappear Completely and Where I End and You Begin, Jonny does all looping of his ondes Martenot with an Akai Headrush.

From 2000-2016, the Headrush was kept on a pedalboard below his primary keyboard stand, alongside the BOSS RV3 and BOSS FV300 which he also used with his ondes Musicales. This year, Jonny uses one of the band’s new rolling keyboard stands for his primary Ondomo (one in a JGB finish), and has the Akai Headrush on the stand’s lower shelf. He also has an FV30 on the lower shelf, and a GE7 (used to manipulate Ondomo loops on Desert Island Disk) and RV5 on the upper shelf next to the Ondomo.

Jonny’s keyboard pedalboard in 2003, featuring a BOSS FV300, a BOSS RV3, a BOSS LS2, and an Akai Headrush E1.