The Semantic has just appeared at the opening of the millennium : its inventer, Alain Daniélou, who died in 1994, was unable to see the realisation of this project, which he studied throughout his life.

A patent was taken out in 1936 for a similar instrument, on which Alain Daniélou and Maurice Martenot worked in collaboration. Several instruments were then realised during Alain Daniélou’s stay in India. In the seventies, the first electronic-based instrument was produced by André Kudelski and Claude Cellier in Switzerland. In 1983 Michel Geiss and Christian Braut started once more on this project, which has just materialised.

The Semantic is based on a scale that ignores the tempered system, producing 36 micro-intervals, or notes, to the octave.