Geophone (musical instrument) Geophone (musical instrument) The geophone is a percussion instrument, invented by the French composer Olivier Messiaen for use in his large composition for piano and orchestra entitled "Des canyons aux étoiles…" ("From the canyons to the stars…"). It consists of a drum filled with thousands of small lead pellets, and is played by swirling it around slowly so that the noise of the pellets resembles the sound of dry shifting earth. Messiaen commissioned a Parisian instrument maker to construct one to his design, and he carried this instrument worldwide to early performances of the piece (which was given its first
EWI (musical instrument) EWI (musical instrument) EWI (from electronic wind instrument, pronounced "EE-wee") is a type of wind controller, an electronic musical instrument. It was invented by Nyle Steiner, who conceptualized the idea in the 1960s, and developed the first working models in the 1970s. The early models consisted of two parts: a wind controller and a digitally-controlled analog synthesizer in a rackmount box (which also houses the instrument's electronics). Japanese company Akai took over the instrument from Steiner and released several models (with his design help). The current top models, EWI4000S and EWI5000, contain a built-in digital synthesizer and don't require an