ANS synthesizer

The ANS synthesizer is a photoelectronic musical instrument created by Russian engineer Evgeny Murzin from 1937 to 1957.

The glass plate can then be scanned left or right in front of the photocell bank in order to transcribe the drawing directly into pitches.

The ANS was used by Stanislav Kreichi, Alfred Schnittke, Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina, and other Soviet composers.

Of particular note is Artemiev's score of Tarkovsky's Solaris in which the ANS was used to abstract, sci-fi effect akin to ambient music.

[1] After several years at the Theremin Center, the ANS (there is only one—the original was destroyed and this is the improved version) is now located in the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow.

An album of works by the composers mentioned above, called "Musical Offering" was released on Melodiya (C60 30721 000) in 1990—although the recordings date from the 1960s and 1970s.

[citation needed] In 2002, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a program about the ANS by Isobel Clouter as part of her Soundhunter series.

Written in Pixilang, the app is supported by Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Apple iOS and Android.

audio samples and play them in real time on a PC with a 3 GHz quad-core Intel i5 CPU, with any desired additional effects such as chorus, reverberation, etc.