MOTM

Hi All !

Morton Subotnick has composed several pieces using such a system .  
Too early for cd tho, he used a stereo Nagra portable recorder .  
Several cv/gates would AM modulate sines by way of vca's .  The 
control voltages would be recovered using several BP filters, 
rectifiers and envelope followers .  The playback box (built by 
Buchla) would both interact with real time audio from the score 
played by the musician, and the cv's coming from the recorder .  I 
witnessed a performance for cello and box in the early 80's .  Can 
you say weird :)

Cheers .


Keep 'em oscillating :)


Hugo
=

hello all and,

thanks for this hugo

using amplitude modulation is a very interesting concept for what i'm planning...

i have a gig here in sheffield on may 30th, and was absolutely determined to use my MOTM, without messing around with midi

the current plot seems to be serious drum loops out one side of a CD and control signals out the other - original the control signals were just going to be trigger impulses, then i got the daft CV idea, but AM and an envelope follower seems the way forward

i'll get back to the list next week when i've had chance to mess around with this...

cheers

paul b

(oh boy, got reherse / get of my arse and finish cabinet / flyers / etc / why did i agree to this..?)

Morton Subotnick has composed several pieces using such a system .
Too early for cd tho, he used a stereo Nagra portable recorder .
Several cv/gates would AM modulate sines by way of vca's . The
control voltages would be recovered using several BP filters,
rectifiers and envelope followers . The playback box (built by
Buchla) would both interact with real time audio from the score
played by the musician, and the cv's coming from the recorder . I
witnessed a performance for cello and box in the early 80's . Can
you say weird :)

In a message dated 00-04-29 06:49:08 EDT, you write:

<<  The 
 control voltages would be recovered using several BP filters, 
 rectifiers and envelope followers .  The playback box (built by 
 Buchla) would both interact with real time audio from the score 
 played by the musician, and the cv's coming from the recorder .  I 
 witnessed a performance for cello and box in the early 80's . >>



hugo,
i saw a performance in the early `80`s at the smithsonian in washington, d.c. 
using this sort of set-up. subotnick called it "ghost electronics". the used 
the tape to store "events" as sounds and recover them as control voltages for 
performance control of spatio-location, etc.. when i saw him, he was actually 
using a bunch of serge envelope followers and quad vca matrix. as a serge 
owner at that time i was surprised and asked him about it after the concert 
and he told me that while he was perhaps the most well known buchla user in 
the world, buchla was hard to deal with and hard to get stuff from in a 
timely basis so this batch of stuff he had gotten from serge because of the " 
cultural similarity" of the system concepts.
best,
dave v.

In a message dated 4/29/2000 3:49:10 AM, hugo.haesaert@... writes:

>The playback box (built by 
>Buchla) would both interact with real time audio from the score 
>played by the musician, and the cv's coming from the recorder 

A recording instructor of mine (John Payne) at the time (early eighties) also 
taught at Calarts with Subotnick, and built Ghost boxes for him. I never 
actually knew how they worked (BP, AM), but I could easily imagine him using 
"off the shelf" components. Calarts did have a large Buchla at the time, and 
Serge got his start there in the mid seventies.

It was common to hear people disparage the music that Subotnick was making at 
this time as being inferior to his early analog pieces -- it was very 
different music of course since it had live traditional orchestral 
instruments, modulated by electronic instruments.
JB

In a message dated 00-04-29 16:17:59 EDT, you write:

<< It was common to hear people disparage the music that Subotnick was making 
at 
 this time as being inferior to his early analog pieces -- it was very 
 different music of course since it had live traditional orchestral 
 instruments, modulated by electronic instruments. >>



john,
when i saw him at the smithsonian, he was actually using the "ghost 
electronics" and one tape machine as "storage and control" and another with 
audio source material. "ghosting" mostly seemed to control a quad sound 
distribution system and he was tweaking controls on a real time basis.  i 
thought it was very good. different, yes, but quite interesting.
using that as inspiration, i messed around with some simpler versions of his 
"ghost electronics" concept and while perhaps less useful in a basement 
studio enviroment, i can see where it would have been real handy as a live 
performance element. 
best,
dave v.
p.s. - weird side note - back in the late sixties, subotnick taught at the 
university of maryland about 1/2 hour from where i lived. the real bummer is 
that by the time i found that out he was no longer there !  i have been lucky 
enough to have seen him 3 times however, twice during an elec. music event at 
v.c.u. in richmond, va. in, maybe 1977 or 78, and at the smithsonian a few 
years later, maybe `81 or `82.