Harald Bode

Harald Bode (October 19, 1909 – January 15, 1987) was a German engineer and pioneer in the development of electronic musical instruments.

Biography Harald Bode was born in 1909 in Hamburg, Germany. At the age of 18 he lost his parents and started studying, and graduated from the University of Hamburg in 1934. In 1935, he began his pioneering work in the field of electronic musical instruments, and with funding support provided by Christian Warnke, his earliest work was completed in 1937. an archetype of today's polyphonic synthesizer, was a four voice key-assignment keyboard with two formant filters and dynamic envelope controller. Eventually it went into commercial production by a factory in Dachau, and it became one of the earliest polyphonic synthesizer products, along with Novachord (1939) by Hammond.

The Melochord (1947–1949), developed by Bode, was extensively used by Werner Meyer-Eppler in early days of the electronic studio at Bonn University. Then in 1953 a Melochord, along with Monochord by Friedrich Trautwein, was specially commissioned by the Studio for Electronic Music of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR Studio in Cologne), also he served as AES session chairman on music and electronic for the fall conventions in 1962 and 1964; in 1974, he composed TV-advertising spots and gave live concerts. Also in 1977, Bode was invited as a chief engineer of the Norlin/Moog Music after Robert Moog left.

He died in North Tonawanda in 1987. Melochord (1947–1949) 37-key monophonic keyboard with dynamic envelope wave shaping, volume pedal controller, and transpose switches to cover seven octaves. Later a second keyboard was added to control the timbre. Concert Clavioline (1953) 6-octave model (by transpose buttons) of Clavioline (1947) originally developed by Constant Martin. (portable monophonic synthesizer based on vacuum tubes) Estey Electronic Organ model S and AS-1 (1954)

During his time as an executive of the Wurlitzer Organ Co.: (c.1951), and György Ligeti in his composition Glissandi (1957). After this, he chose to disregard such instruments in favor of sine-wave generators, which he used in producing Studie I (1953) and Studie II (1954). This was also true for the two works by Karel Goeyvaerts produced there, and for Seismogramme (1954) by Henri Pousseur.

Personal life He was the father of cinematographer Ralf D. Bode, and video artist Peer Bode.