This contribution deals with the generation of oscillations in dynamical systems of higher order. It briefly reviews electrical oscillators from a system theoretic viewpoint and then generalizes the ideas to control systems of (in theory) arbitrary finite dimension, which fulfill certain controllability requirements. Applications for the proposed method can be found in the control of underactuated mechanical systems because these are often heavily influenced by discontinuous effects of the actuators. Experimental results are shown for the inverted pendulum on a cart.