Georges Jenny

Georges Jenny (c.1900–1976) was a French musician, poet, and electronic instrument builder. His best-known invention was an electronic keyboard instrument called the Ondioline (sometimes referred to as the Jenny Ondioline). It is considered a forerunner of the Synthesizer. The Ondioline is capable of making an array of sounds, and features a keyboard that produces a natural-sounding vibrato with side-to-side finger movements while depressing keys.

Jenny conceived the instrument as a low-cost alternative to the then-well known but expensive Ondes Martenot. The Martenot was used in serious music, but Jenny planned the Ondioline for a broader consumer market, including pop music. He began constructing the Ondioline around 1938, and when he started to commercially manufacture it in 1947, it was valve-based and contained a built-in amplifier. Like the Martenot, it had a lateral vibrato keyboard and a knee-lever to control volume.

For decades Jenny redesigned and manufactured new versions of the instrument at his Paris company, Les Ondes Georges Jenny (later known as La Musique Electronique). Jenny built the instruments by hand, but also packaged and sold the parts as a do-it-yourself assembly kit. He never licensed the instrument for mass production. Jenny gave public demonstrations of the instrument on radio and in newsreels.

The number of Ondiolines that were built and sold is unknown, with estimates ranging from 600 to over 1,000. To reduce manufacturing costs and keep retail prices affordable, Jenny often used poor quality components; as a result, the instruments required regular maintenance or they would become unplayable.

The instrument was introduced to a wider audience in the 1950s by electronic music pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey (who was also an early adopter of the Moog synthesizer). In 1951 (some sources cite 1949 or 1952), Perrey, at the time a medical student, heard Jenny demonstrate the Ondioline on a French radio broadcast. "With the audacity of youth he phoned the radio station and requested Georges Jenny's telephone number, which he was duly given," wrote historian Mark Brend. "Perrey then phoned Jenny himself, saying he liked the sound of the Ondioline but couldn't afford to buy one." Perrey offered to promote the instrument if Jenny would give him one for free. After a visit to the inventor's workshop, Perrey was loaned an Ondioline.

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