A demonstration of the Hammond Novachord, a fully polyphonic synthesizer built in 1939.

Hollow Sun has posted a short history of the Novachord. They have also published commercial sample libraries in EXS24, Kontakt and Refill formats, and offer a free sample instrument on their website.

Using divide-down oscillators (the world’s first?), the Novachord was fully polyphonic. The oscillators pass through resonators, hi-and lo-pass filters and a simple but effective envelope shaper. What is particularly impressive is that the Novachord had LFOs and envelope shapers for every one of its 72-notes so that the instrument was TOTALLY polyphonic! This is actually very impressive as even string synths 40 years its junior such as the ARP Omni, Moog PolyMoog, etc., were paraphonic – i.e. all voices sharing a single LFO/envelope. This means that combined with the huge polyphony, six octaves and a superb sustain control, you can combine massive chords and arpeggios with no chance of note stealing. The electronic architecture that makes this possible is beautifully elegant too. It also has vibrato but not like the type found on analogue synths – instead, the modulation is polyphonic which imparts a rich ensemble effect to its sounds.