Rocksichord

The Rocksichord (sometimes referred to as Roxichord) is an electronic keyboard invented in the 1960s to approximate the sound of the harpsichord. As its name suggests, it was primarily used in rock music (in the 1960s and 1970s), but it has also been used in jazz (by Call Cobbs, Jr. and Sun Ra) and contemporary classical music (in the work of Terry Riley).

The Rock-Si-Chord, as it was named by its manufacturer Rocky Mount Instruments (RMI),a division of Allen Organs Inc, was a solid-state instrument using a separate transistor oscillator (or a pair) per key, and was the first example of a type of instrument generally known as the electronic piano (contrast electric piano). Later RMI instruments also included piano sounds.

Composer George Crumb specifies the use of an electric harpsichord in his 1968 composition Songs, Drones, and Refrains of Death; however he does not specifically state that it was a Rocksichord, and it may possibly have been a Baldwin Combo Harpsichord, an electromechanical instrument dating from the same era.

Artists and groups using a Rocksichord

• Call Cobbs, Jr.
• Terry Riley (on his 1967 album A Rainbow in Curved Air)
• Stereolab (on their 2001 album Sound-Dust)
• Sun Ra
• Wilco (on their 2004 album A Ghost is Born)
• Quasi
• Sun Ra
• Rick Wakeman
• Dr. John
• Sam Coomes

See also

• Harpsichord