Oskar Sala, 91; Physicist and Composer Crafted ‘The Birds’ Sound Effects

Oskar Sala, 91, the German composer and physicist who produced the eerie bird sound effects for Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” died of undisclosed causes Tuesday in Berlin.

The bird cries were generated on a musical instrument known as a mixture-trautonium, whose design was improved by Sala. The instrument’s predecessor was the trautonium, which was invented in 1929 and billed as the world’s first electronic instrument.

The sounds produced by the mixture-trautonium are generated by saw-tooth oscillations of low-voltage neon lamps and can be varied with filters.

Born in the eastern German town of Greiz, Sala mastered the instrument and performed with the Berlin Philharmonic several times. The instrument--the precursor to the synthesizer--was often used in German TV commercials in the 1950s.

Sala donated his original mixture-trautonium to the German Museum for Contemporary Technology in Bonn in 1995.