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German electronic music pioneer’s 112th birthday is celebrated with a Google doodle.

To commemorate Oskar Sala’s 112th birthday, tech giant Google has paid tribute to the German physicist and composer. The newest Google doodle features various musical instruments on display. Oskar Sala, who is regarded as the father of electronic music, was born on July 18, 1910, in the German town of Greiz. Sala is recognised for his contributions to the music business and the work he accomplished in creating sound effects for radio, television, and movies using a musical device called the trautonium, a forerunner to the synthesiser.

Sala was exposed to music at a young age because his mother Annemarie (1887-1959) worked as a singer and his father Paul (1874-1932) was an ophthalmologist who supported his musical ability, according to Google.

The spooky and weird bird noises that he also provided in several movies, including as Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ in 1962 and ‘Rosemary’ in 1959, are among of his most well-known compositions.

From the age of 14, Sala started composing music on instruments including the piano and violin. Sala worked to learn the trautonium after becoming enamoured with the instrument’s technology and limitless tone possibilities. According to the website, he inspired and advanced his academic work in music and physics.

At the University of Berlin, the German composer pursued a degree in physics while also broadening his knowledge of mathematics and the natural sciences.

The website adds that Sala’s perseverance and concentration allowed him to develop his own gadget, which he termed the mixture-trautonium. His instrument, the mixture-trautonium, was created in such a special way that it could play multiple sounds or voices at once and he produced music with a particular style.

The music composer has received numerous honours for his contributions to sound and music. He has interacted with many musicians and received recognition in movies and radio shows.

In 1995, Sala gave the German Museum for Contemporary Technology his replica of the original trautonium.

Oskar Sala has also built the Quartett-Trautonium, the Concert Trautonium, and the Volkstrautonium. His work in the field of electronic music has led to the creation of another field called subharmonics. Apart from all this, Sala also built his own studio at Mars Film GmbH (4th incarnation) in Berlin in 1958, where he produced electronic soundtracks for films like ‘Veit Harlan’s Different from You and Me’ (1957), ‘Rolf Thiele’s Rosemary’ (1959), and Fritz Lang’s ‘Das Indische Grabmal’ (1959).

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