# Boris Yankovsky ( Soviet, active 1930s ) ## Description Soviet sound engineer who split from Arseny Avraamov's Multzvuk group in 1932 to develop his own laboratory and technique of graphical/drawn sound — building a library of hand-drawn "spectral templates" (spectro-standards) that could be combined and manipulated to synthesize complex sounds, including a singing voice, using his own device, the Vibroexponator. ## Key Tags #visual-music #russian-avant-garde #drawn-sound #sound ## Essential Works - Vibroexponator - modified animation-stand apparatus photographing hand-drawn sound waveforms frame-by-frame onto the optical soundtrack ([120years.net](https://120years.net/the-vibroexponator-boris-yankovsky-russia-1932/)) - "Spectro-standards" (spectral templates) - a built library of drawn waveforms, analyzed and classified by timbre/formant, combinable to synthesize new complex and hybrid sounds ## Details Reasoned from the principle that a sound's timbre could be decomposed into a Fourier series of sine waves, graphically represented, and then re-synthesized: "I found the idea of synthesis while I was laboriously working on 'drawn sound'... The colour of the sound depends on the shape of the sound wave; Graphical representation of the sound wave could be analyzed and represented as the Fourier series of periodic functions" (quoted in Zakharine and Meise, 2013, p. 168–69). His method — analyzing spectra, classifying sounds by timbral features, and building a reusable library of drawn waveform "templates" — anticipates later additive synthesis, cross-synthesis, and the phase vocoder. From 1930–34, sound work by the Multzvuk group (which he was part of before 1932) produced over 2,000 meters of experimental soundtrack, including the films *Ornamental Animation*, *Marusia Otravilas*, and *Organ Chords*; the group's archive was destroyed in 1937. ### Concepts and Theories - [[Media Archaeology]] - recovers an early and technically sophisticated Soviet sound-synthesis lineage largely lost to mainstream histories of electronic music ### Creative and Technical Practices - [[Drawn Sound]] - developed a rigorous spectral/graphical method for synthesizing sound from hand-drawn waveforms ### Collaborators - [[Arseny Avraamov]] - member of Avraamov's Multzvuk group before separating in 1932 to found his own laboratory ### Institutional Affiliations and Associated Movements %% none yet %% ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography %% none yet %% ### Secondary Sources Bibliography [[Electrified voices - medial, socio-historical and cultural aspects of voice transfer|Electrified Voices]] - Zakharine, Dmitri, and Nils Meise, eds. *Electrified Voices: Medial, Socio-Historical and Cultural Aspects of Voice Transfer*. V&R unipress GmbH, 2013, pp. 168–70. Extensive account of Yankovsky's spectral-synthesis method and the Vibroexponator.