Library Instrument
ANS synthesizer
A Soviet photoelectronic instrument that generates sound by scratching microtonal tracks directly onto rotating glass discs, read optically.
Built by Soviet engineer Yevgeny Murzin between 1937 and 1957, the ANS synthesizer is named for composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, whose sound-color ideas inspired it. It generates sound photoelectronically: microtonal tracks are scratched directly onto five rotating glass discs (144 tracks each, 720 microtones in total), which a light source and photocells then read and convert to audio — a form of drawn, graphical sound distinct from Oskar Fischinger’s or Norman McLaren’s film-based methods. Housed in a dedicated Moscow studio, it was used by composers including Alfred Schnittke, Edison Denisov, and Sofia Gubaidulina, and by Eduard Artemyev on Andrei Tarkovsky’s film scores, notably Solaris (1972); maintained for decades by engineer Stanislav Kreichi, it later drew Coil to Russia in 2002 to record the instrument, released as the CD ANS (2003) and the expanded box set COILANS (2004).