{"id":150878,"date":"2025-10-25T14:42:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T19:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/?p=150878"},"modified":"2025-10-25T15:00:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T20:00:44","slug":"the-hammond-novachord-the-worlds-most-versatile-musical-instrument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/content\/2025\/10\/25\/the-hammond-novachord-the-worlds-most-versatile-musical-instrument\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hammond Novachord, &#8220;The World&#8217;s Most Versatile Musical Instrument&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Hammond Novachord\" width=\"900\" height=\"506\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dcYUh3XJy4M?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>In his latest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@automaticgainsay\">Automatic Gainsay<\/a> video, synthesist and synth historian <strong>Marc Doty<\/strong> takes a look at the <strong>Hammond Novachord<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The Novachord is considered by many to be the first commercial polyphonic synthesizer, predating the mass-market polysynths of the &#8217;70s by thirty years.<\/p>\n<p>The instrument was not commercially successful, in part because of its complexity and cost, and in part because of the timing of its introduction, in 1939, at the beginning of World War II.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In his video, Doty looks at the history of the Novachord, and shares his personal experience in acquiring and owning a Novachord, back in 2000.<\/p>\n<p>Check out the video and share your thoughts on the Novachord in the comments!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Novachord is considered by many to be the first commercial polyphonic synthesizer, predating the mass-market polysynths of the &#8217;70s by thirty years.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/content\/2025\/10\/25\/the-hammond-novachord-the-worlds-most-versatile-musical-instrument\/\">Read More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Hammond Novachord, &#8220;The World&#8217;s Most Versatile Musical Instrument&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[1770,13162,271,30605,11696],"class_list":["post-150878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-keyboard-synthesizers","tag-hammond","tag-hammond-novachord","tag-history-of-electronic-music","tag-keyboard-synthesizers","tag-marc-doty"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/hammond-novachord-synthesizer-e1484203490808.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150879,"href":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150878\/revisions\/150879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.synthtopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}