Generating and shaping new sounds by electronic means started in the 1950s and took off in the 60s
In this episode...
Suzanne Ciani Photo: Suzanne Ciani
The early development of analogue synthesizers: the Moog, the Buchla and others;
Raymond Scott;
Eric Siday;
The San Francisco Tape Music Center;
Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause, the go-to guys for Moog work in the 60s;
Wendy Carlos and Switched On Bach;
Morton Subotnick and Silver Apples of the Moon;
Suzanne Ciani and her work for advertising;
EMS, the Electronic Music Studio in London and its VCS-3 synthesiser: interviews with Peter Zinovieff and David Cockerell;
The great debate: should a synthesiser have a keyboard or not?;
In the early 70s, bands like Pink Floyd and Emerson, Lake and Palmer really start taking to the instruments;
And then in 1976 engineer Robbie Wedel works something out for producer Giorgio Moroder and they quietly revolutionise music with Donna Summer’s 'I Feel Love'.
Explore more of These Hopeful Machines
Written and presented by James Gardner, produced by Tim Dodd and James Gardner for Radio New Zealand.
Scroll down for handy links and a bibliography.
Grateful thanks for help in the production of Episode 4 go to:
Matthew Bate (director of the documentary What The Future Sounded Like), for the EMS demonstration disc; Suzanne Ciani, for the interview and the use of unreleased material from her 1975 concert for Radio WBAI New York; David Cockerell; Ian Helliwell; Brian Hodgson for providing us with a copy of the out-of-print ‘Wavemaker’ LP; Bernie Krause for the interview and for supplying us with the Beaver and Krause rendition of ‘California Dreamin’; Penny Lomax of the ABC’s ‘The Music Show’, for the Tristram Cary interview; National Public Radio (USA), for the interview with Bob Moog; Morton Subotnick; Don Worsham of The Media Preservation Foundation for supplying the Eric Siday recordings; Peter Zinovieff.
Links
- RCA Synthesizer
- Milton Babbitt on Electronic Music
- The Raymond Scott Archives
- A Raymond Scott fan blog
- Eric Siday Wikipedia article
- Matthew Bate's documentary film about EMS, 'What The Future Sounded Like'
- Red Bull Academy Interview with Peter Zinovieff
- Red Bull Academy Interview with Don Buchla
- The Buchla synthesiser now
- Red Bull Academy Interview with Bob Moog
- The Bob Moog Foundation
- The Moog company now
- Moog Foundation synthesizer timeline
- Moog Archives
- Moog celebrates the 50th Anniversary of its modular synth
- Monterey International Pop Festival
- Bernie Krause now
- Bernie Krause TED talk
- Suzanne Ciani
- Suzanne Ciani at Finders Keepers
- Morton Subotnick
- Wendy Carlos
- Wendy Carlos interview
- EMS synthesisers
- 'I Dream Of Wires', a documentary about modular synthesizers and their obsessive owners
- Antique telephone switchboards become modular synthesizer and sequencers
Bibliography
David Bernstein (ed.)
The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the avant-garde
University of California Press 2008
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520256170
Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco
Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer
Harvard University Press 2002
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674016170
Mark Vail
Vintage Synthesizers
BackbeatBooks 2000
http://www.amazon.com/Vintage-Synthesizers-Pioneering-Groundbreaking-Instruments/dp/0879306033
Mark Vail
The Synthesizer
Oxford University Press 2014
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780195394894.do
Mark Brend
The Sound Of Tomorrow
Bloomsbury 2012
http://minutebook.co.uk/sound-of-tomorrow/
