[sdiy] Fw: Re: New Buchla! [a nice story from the nord modular list]

[Cynthia Webster]

Thank You, 
It is a wonderful story!

(Please tell us more!)

Cynthia


on 8/31/04 7:57 PM, nN AAt     e     e at timexheater at comcast.net wrote:

> this was posted by Howard Moscovitz of http://www.electro-music.com ... it's
> a nice little story.
> 
>> I used to work for Don Buchla in 1972. My job, one of them, was wireing
>> up modules that looked exactly like these. What memories! Don had HUGE
>> Buchla 200 system set up in the main room of his factory with a quad
>> sound array. I would spend hours setting up self-playing patches (the
>> word "noodle" wasn't used in those days) on that system. There would be
>> sounds spinning around the room because there were modules that made
>> this kind of thing pretty easy to do. Sometimes the patches would play
>> for days in the background because nobody would mess them up (most
>> people that worked for Don at the time weren't musicians, at least not
>> electronic musicians. I think many of them were into guitars, banjos,
>> and rock music). Then, spontainoulsy,  Don would unplug everything in
>> order to patch in some new prototype he was working on. I was pretty
>> attached to those patches and it was painful to hear them be pulled
>> appart.. After he was finished testing, the synth would sit there for a
>> while and I'd get to build another noodle. When I would finish, he'd
>> stand and listen for a few minutes. Usually he would nod - he rarely
>> said anything. What fun. I dreamed of a way to save the patches though.
>> 
>> One day he came in with a new delay line module he made from newly
>> available bucket brigate memory chips. These were the first CCD chips.
>> The clock was of course voltage controlled. He messed around for a few
>> hours and called me over an said, "What do you think?". Well, all I
>> heard was some Beethoven playing. It sounded like Beethoven, pretty good
>> fidelity; I didn't see that there was anything to think. I said, "Oh,
>> well, I like Beethoven, I guess, but Bach is my favorite." Then he
>> pulled out a patch cord that was sweeping the clock with a sawtooth and
>> the pitch dropped several semitones. I about fell over. That was the
>> first time I had ever heard real-time transposition. It was an electric
>> moment for me. Suddenly all kinds of possibilities were created. I
>> congratulated him for being the first to develop this. He acted like ti
>> was not a was a big deal. This was years before Eventide or anyone had
>> this on the market. He is amazingly modest. I played with that module
>> for hours before he took it from me in order to hack it up for
>> improvments. He was working on circuits to make one violin sound like a
>> whole section. We were working on a project called the Electric Symphony
>> Orchestra, but that's another story.
>> 
>> Oh, sorry for going off down memory lane. This topic has a big impact on
>> me.
>> 
>> --Howard
> 
> http://electro-music.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=19518#19518
>