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[#196] SEKRET MACHINE MUSIC V: Bob Moog, Buch the Spook, and the Acid Dawn of the Synthesizer Age
🕑 Added 2024-06-15 00:44:16 +0000 UTCDimitri and Khalid begin their long strange trip through the book “Analog Days”, which chronicles the simultaneous development of the first two modular voltage-controlled synthesizers in the mid-1960s.
Topics include: East coast engineer Bob Moog’s fabulous “sanitizer” invention, west coast hippie NASA contractor Don “Buch the Spook” Buchla’s “musical cryptid”, the great keyboard vs. no keyboard debate, Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender getting Rockefeller funding for the Buchla prototype at the SF Tape Music Center, “Silver Apples of the Moon”, Ken Kesey, Turning On the Tape Music Center, the Buchla Box’s starring role at the 1966 Trips Festival, and more.
![[#196] SEKRET MACHINE MUSIC V: Bob Moog, Buch the Spook, and the Acid Dawn of the Synthesizer Age](https://img10.runfaps.com/storage/6/nw/yf/e9630c-019e83b4-5b99-7161-af9d-5e7991882d54.jpg)
Comments
ampgorky
In my library I have “wizard of op,” ed emberley - it is a children’s op art book, but it is groovy. Edmund white said they all thought op art would replace pop art* at one point, but that’s another story, etc.
ampgorky
The way sounds from a 303 make you feel are different than other Sounds- phenomenologically, subconsciously, etc.
Sam M.
Been enjoying these episodes, my great uncle worked on the Minimoog team but he's so reclusive I've only spoken to him once in my life. The team barely made money from their work and he ended up in Alaska off the grid. The "warmer" sound of the Model D is allegedly because he threw an incorrect resistor in the schematics without realizing it. One of his funnier anecdotes involves him having to rush-design a one-of-one Moog vocoder to avoid a state lawsuit which would've sunk the company due to it being undelivered 2 years past the commission date. It's apparently still floating around Europe somewhere.
William Brame
Buchla’s synthesis method is what birthed FM synthesis and Phase modulation synthesis, which are two of the foundational digital audio generation types.
Major Pisano
I was around this head silver bear ,.. he had this old bluebird bus he built, patches . Up in the top inside what was a 69 vw he had a spaced out synth den with moogs and keyboards and would launch his bus into synthspace,all night long . The Grateful Dead scene definitely hosted and kindled the psychedelic synth/rave scene, without a doubt in my experience..If you think sun ra sounds interesting, check out ras g . RIP . His sound was nuts .
RZ
It was Invocation of My Demon Brother - and I quite like the score. Performance (directed by Nicholas Roeg and Donald Cammel, not Ken Russel as suggested) has Anger vibes, but so does a lot of early 70s film on the experimental side.
laihall
Seriously, try and find a buchla video on YouTube that isn’t ambient and or drenched in reverb
laihall
Yuuuup
laihall
I’m a serge Stan partially because buchla gear has always been so fckn astronomically expensive. Love the interfaces and sounds from them but it’s so god damn satisfying listen to you guys dunk on him lolol
JAMed
I think the Jagger/anger connection is that mick did that shitty synth score for one of the lantern cycle films
Ltrsandnmbrs
A perfect example of an actually interesting and useful alternative to a keyboard is exactly what you guys have talked about, the Theremin and ANS, although the ANS is extremely complicated machinery, but theoretically anybody can still play it. And a theremin, LITERALLY anybody can play it, well or not, you still make music with it that invokes emotions in people.
Ltrsandnmbrs
The way Buchla thinks about synthesis and music overall is very similar to the modern modular and “gearhead” types these days. Sure you can definitely make interesting music and sounds with the equipment, but 95% of people who actually use a Buchla or modular, make extremely boring and flat end products. They don’t think about music, even experimental music or not even useful sounds or SFX, they make “wacky and crazy” shit but it literally is beeps and boops on a 4/4 grid. it’s very merry prankster/discordian shit, and it just is fucking boring lmao. Most of the most interesting and experimental musicians who make art that is enjoyable or interesting to listen to, use instruments.
