| Wendy Carlos was not the first to use electronic instruments
as a serious instrument, nor was Switched on Bach the first recording
of its kind, unless you define what "kind" very narrowly.
Electronic musical instruments as serious instruments written for
by serious composers go back to the 1920's. Nor did Carlos set
the
standard for modern synths. Modern synths are not voltage-controlled,
they are digital, and digital synthesis was perfected to a first-
approximation by MUSIC, written in FORTRAN for large mainframes
in the 60's, and revised many times. Max matthews I recall hurridly,
was responsible for rthat.
Electronic tape music of entirely electronic sounds probably debuted
in the late forties with works of John Cage. Vladimir Ussachevsky
and Otto Luening, as well as the Barrons in the fifties (the score
for Forbidden Planet was by the Barrons, I think 100% electronic)
followed quickly with adapted laboratory generators and the RCA
synthesizer, which used digital control of analog components.
Carlos was a late comer, a finnesser, an opportunist that saw a
popular music application for other people's techniques, and also
a developer in a young field, but not a first-timer, except for
first-time fame and wealth in electronic music, first-time public
relations success, first-time publicity coup.
You may as well say Philip Glass invented triplets, which I think
he
believes he did.
Tom
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I seem to detect rampant purism in our midst.
True, there was a considerable amount of activity from the 1920's
(Dr. Hammond was one of the earlier "electronic innovators" as you may
have realized) and 1930's. Musique Concrete was not perfected until
the 1950's (Cage, Babbitt, et al). Moog was working with many people
and Carlos was not the first that Dr. Moog worked with. Morton Subotnik
was not enthusiastic about attaching a keyboard to his oscillators;
he chose to work on one of Don Buchla's machines, which, although
somewhat esoteric by our modern keyboard-oriented standards, is
nonetheless pretty striking (Listen to "The Wild Bull", circa 1962).
Moog only perfected 1v/Octave as a standard. He did not invent it.
There was no patent on the 1v/octave standard and not everyone used
it (although A.R.Perlman and Moog were very consistent).
Sure, the rockers weren't into synthesizers back in the sixties.
neither was anyone else who mattered except true artists who fell
into the nether world of "avant garde". When I was in junior high
(1973) I did a paper on electronic music, it required quite a bit
of research to dig up enough material (especially for a 13 year
old). I remember a review I read in an old paper in the Boston Public
Library which raked Babbitt over the coals for one of his works,
basically the reviewer just didn't understand the music AT ALL.
Also, Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause did a lot of work back in the
early sixties. My very first non-kiddie album was "Ragnarok" by
Beaver and Krause, who, I found out much later, worked as closely
with Moog as Carlos did (they all had to, the first Moogs were about
as ornery as the original RCA tube stuff). If you haven't heard
the stuff, you missed something. But Beaver and Krause were far
from what you'd call mainstream rock.
In fact, Emerson (remember him?) started early on with Dr. Moog
(as early as 1969 they were talking about a bona-fide road-worthy
performance synthesizer). As I see it, he was about the first real
rocker who got the ball rolling. Commercial synthesizers weren't
really there until the Mini-Moog came along, of course I know about
Perlman's 2600 (and I still would buy one of those if I could find
one). But the 2600 didn't become roadworthy until 1972.
No, the synthesizer wasn't a rocker's toy until after 1972. Before
that, it lived in big places like universities and studios. I was
lucky enough to have been able to get real live training on
synthesizers by esoteric people like Roger Powell and Jim Michmerhuizen
when I was really a youngster. But Powell sold out and does sound
tracks now, and Michmerhuizen is probably unknown (he wrote the
original ARP 2600 into-to-e.m. course)... Such is life, the art
moves to new states.
So I can stop this rambling, I just wanted to make a point. Technology
moves along, and as the instruments got more accessable, people
who would otherwise have been playing b-3's got ahold of 10-kilo
Japanese versions instead. There is still some esoterica out there
although it's harder to hear it thru the din of a million people
playing Korgs, Rolands and the Y-word. That does not mean that the
million people are playing crap, or not. Nor does it mean that the
few who play esoterica are doing it well, are making a statement,
or are just being different for the heck of it. You listen to what
you want to, and I play what I want to.
/pjh
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Dan, the original Theremin was actually two plates mounted on a
chassis. The unit was made of tubes (no surprise) and had two extremely
high gain amplifiers, one which was actually an oscillator. It worked
by reacting to the presence of your bod, somewhat like what your
TV does when you walk around the room...
So you move one hand to change the frequency of the oscillator,
and the other hand to change the amplitude.
The ribbon controller you saw was a Moog ribbon controller. For
obvious reasons, it became easier to synthesize a theremin than
to lug around a chassis with two BIG transformers, two plates and
a load of tubes. Remember, even the beach boys went high tech.
/pjh
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