History of Electronic Music: The Rhythmicon was an early drum machine created by Leon Theremin in 1931, at the request of the pioneering American composer Henry Cowell.

This video shows the Russian scholar Andrey Smirnov demonstrating the how the Rhythmicon is played.  The device shown in the video is thought to be a later version, developed in the 1960s and now housed in the Theremin Center in Moscow.

The Rhythmicon

The Rhythmicon allowed for the real-time generation of complex rhythmic patterns that were thought to be unperformable by humans. Each successive note on the keyboard triggered a division of the basic beat in whole number ratios: the second key beating twice for each basic beat, the third key beating three times, and so on.

“My part in its invention was to invent the idea that such a rhythmic instrument was a necessity to further rhythmic development, which has reached a limit more or less, in performance by hand, an needed the application of mechanical aid,” according to Henry Cowell. “What rhythms it should do and the pitch it should have and the relation between the pitch and rhythms are my ideas. I also conceived that the principle of broken up light playing on a photo-electric cell would be the best means of making it practical. With this idea I went to Theremin who did the rest – he invented the method by which the light would be cut, did the electrical calculations and built the instrument.”

You can play a virtual Rhythmicon online at the American Mavericks site.