Vermona ER 9

One rhythm engine, two forms

The ER 9 appeared in two related forms: beside the upper manual of Vermona’s ET 6-2 organ, and as a separate rhythm box with its own power supply. The distinction matters in the hands. The organ version presents five grouped level controls, while the freestanding box gives each of its nine instruments an individual voice level.

Sixteen rhythms that could be combined

Vermona supplied sixteen preset rhythms and invited the player to combine them by pressing more than one selector. Bass drum, tom, bongo, claves, snare, cymbal, hi-hat, cowbell and maracas form the sound set. Two lamps mark the downbeat and the beats that follow, returning the music to a visible centre when the machine starts again.

A matrix of pulses and percussion

A close inspection of a standalone ER 9 finds a diode-matrix rhythm system with individual instrument boards, IC-controlled start and stop, and shift-register timing. The details help make sense of the panel: every preset is a particular route through a small electronic rhythm engine, and every level control lets the player redraw its balance.

A first room for making beats

Producer AVION has recalled receiving an ER 9 as a child, connecting it to a small radio and spending a week filling cassettes with improvised rhythm experiments. That is a lovely account of what a preset box could become in a room: not just accompaniment, but an invitation to manipulate tempo, percussion and repetition until a personal sound appears.

Vermona heard again

The ER 9 later returned in Positron’s 2023 Vermona Vintage Edition, a project built with a range of the company’s instruments and effects. Alongside the surviving manual and the visible circuitry of existing machines, that release keeps the ER 9 in a living line of East German electronic music-making.

On record

• positron — VERMONA Vintage Edition (EP). Artist names ER9 among the instruments and drum sources for the EP. Source ↗
• AVION — Childhood cassette jams. AVION recalls recording ER9 jams after receiving the instrument on his twelfth birthday. Source ↗
• M.RUX — Vermonische Melodien. The release text calls the ER-9 M.RUX’s first instrument and the rhythmic backbone of the album. Source ↗
• CEEYS / Sebastian Selke — Concrete Fields. CEEYS credits Sebastian Selke with a Vermona ER-9 rhythm box on Concrete Fields. Source ↗
• Al Bird Dirt — Lost Home Recordings (1999–2009). Al Bird Dirt’s recalled cassette-era gear list names a Vermona ER-9 among the instruments used for Lost Home Recordings. Source ↗
• Tomáš Procházka / Federsel (B4-Handa Gote) — Pan Roman. The Pan Roman credits name Tomáš Procházka / Federsel on Vermona ER-9 alongside his electronic instruments and guitar. Source ↗
• Gert Emmens — Metamorphosis. Gert Emmens lists a Vermona ER9 among the old pre-MIDI instruments used for Metamorphosis. Source ↗
• Moduretik / Jan Jiskra — Jizvy Minulosti. Jan Jiskra lists a Vermona ER 9 among the equipment used for Moduretik’s Jizvy Minulosti, recorded in Prague during 2012. Source ↗