SUBOTNICK: The First Buchla 100
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 4 июл 2017
- Excerpts from SUBOTNICK, a forthcoming documentary on avant-garde electronic music composer Morton Subotnick, now raising funds via Indiegogo: igg.me/at/subotnickfilm
In 1963, Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender, the two founders of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, commissioned Don Buchla to create one of the first modular electronic music systems.
The first Buchla 100 series system was completed in 1965, eventually moving to Mills College in 1966, where it remains today.
In April 2017, Subotnick and Sender returned to Mills College to meet with Prof. Maggi Payne, co-director of the Center of Contemporary Music, revisiting the original Buchla 100.
These machines should stay in their respective colleges. The universities have funded electronic music from the beginning and have done more to promote electronic music than anyone. i began my adventure on a Moog modular at the University of Buffalo and my daughter found her muse on a Buchla at Brandeis in Boston. Here are new generations experiencing the mojo of touching this Buchla, still ready to go. Universities and Colleges have supported this art form for generations; continuing to create in the discipline. My hat is off to them.
You must know that neither Subotnick nor Sender or Buchla wanted the machine to end up in Mills. They hated the idea that it would be institutionalised. But they did it out of financial pressures.
@@peterpeper4837 should be in a public music institution run by the state of California not a private college
Maggi Payne is a legend in her own right
YES indeed. Very creative and a big influence on so many people.
Omg! I almost passed out when I heard these milestone noises! I jammed with Morton in Santa Cruz calif! Thank you so much for this gift! Two giants! Surrounded by other lovers of this art form too! These are my local hero’s for sure and I use prime numbers to signal Ufos too! God thank you ssooooooo much! Peace 🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶🐕🐕👽👍🏻👽👽🔦🕺🔦🔦✌🏻👏🏻✌🏻👏🏻🛸🛸🛸🙏Christo
Fond memories! I was at the CCM at Mills in 1983/84. Before that at Soundwork Studio [And/Or Gallery] Seattle 1980/83. We had 3 cabinets of 100 series modules. I practically lived in that studio! What a wonderful instrument!
I cannot wait for this documentary!
Faaaaacking wonderful!!!! I have tears in my eyes
you are wonderful spirits if only the world still made such models
The first Buchla, period
Indeed!
still love it!!
Came here after searching form Silver Apples after reading an interview in Tape Op magazine..
cool stuff - like it great a graet musicians!!
$500 worth of parts, priceless historically!
At least it is now been shown in the wild : ) Toronto tomorrow ?
NYU, likewise, holds onto a prized Buchla 100 of their own. It's quite an amazing piece of machinery, one which, as a student there, I play with constantly during the academic year. Mort doesn't use it now; he prefers the 200e system we have to teach his students. He calls it the "Cadillac" of synthesizers, for it can create any sound (or function as any instrument) imaginable. It just goes to show that he's always been one to embrace the newest trends in technology as they grace the face of the earth.
Amazing documentary, by the way! I was actually speaking with him just before he went off with the film crew to capture this section of the documentary. He tells his students so many stories, but it's a whole other animal to really see these people and locations for one's own eyes.
Cool... though what you say about Mort refering to the 200e as the "Cadillac" of synthesizers isn't quite right. He uses a 200e now, but the model he refers to in that way (he usually calls it the "Stradivarius," actually) is the original Buchla 200 series, which he used extensively at CalArts.
Whoops! You're right about that…I reversed his use of the two terms. Indeed, the 200e is the "Strad" and the 200 the Cadillac. Having used both machines, it makes sense why he calls them so. 200 systems are particularly large, as is that car brand's, while the 200e ("Stradivarius") is a (usually) smaller, more finely-crafted instrument.
Actually, I still think you've got it wrong. I don't think Mort reveres the 200e all that much, to be honest. It works for his needs, and I'm sure he likes it, but from my understanding the 1 Buchla instrument that he considers to be perfection, the "Stradivarius," is the 200. Don't quote me on this, as I'm just going from what I've heard him say... but this is the impression I got
You're right that Mort is not particularly partial to the 200e. Today, he uses only seven or eight modules to form a "hybrid instrument" that interfaces with Ableton and his other MIDI controllers (like for his upcoming performance of "Crowds and Power"). The 200 was a mammoth machine that really stood on its own. It's entirely possible that he made a mistake in his wording with me; he gets a pass in my book because he's 84. In the end, I don't think it matters much what names he applies to which, for he's always looking forward to using the newest technologies, never clinging to only what worked in the past. That's one reason why this documentary is being made, after all! :D
Well said Jason!
Ramon is very important, his contributions to the SFTMC are huge. Bill Maginnis as well. The 1963 date is off by quite a ways, their "commission" date is also 1965 and the completion date is actually January 1966.
Yes, no doubt RE: Ramon and Bill.
Curious where you're getting your dates from? We're going off of what Mort has told us.
Interviews with Bill Maginnis, Ramon Sender, analysis of the Mills synth boards and the documents from the old SFTMC before Mills. I'm writing a piece on the Birth of the Buchla, it should be out within a few months.
Our interview w/Maginnis and Sender (from I Dream Of Wires - which was approx 2 hours long though only a short amount was used in the film) contradicts what you're saying. Not to state that you're wrong, but the dates mentioned are based on the dates we've heard first-hand from Subotnick, Maginnis, Sender.
As memories from 50+ years ago are not totally reliable, we can use artifacts and paperwork to check them. The funding for the Buchla project was approved and sent in July 1965 and then Don spent the next 5 months building the modules; he delivers a partial system to SFTMC in November 1965. Don finished the rest of the modules in time for the completed system in early 1966 at the legendary Trips Festival. These are solid dates. (Don spent many years before that building various electronic devices, but his first synthesizer is from 1965 and 1966.)
OK, but you're disagreeing with 1963 as a commission date... While the $ may not have been in hand, this is possibly the date when Don replied to SFTMC's ad, and discussions began in terms of Don building an electronic music instrument according to Mort & Ramon's needs - the commission.
the pleasure is all devine
💛
Great
This documentary still needs funding, people.
Close though: 95% now!
@@WaveshaperMedia How's it looking?
This looks fantastic. Was this ever released?
We've completed the film and it's been doing theatrical screenings over the past couple of years. Currently looking for a distributor to handle VOD/DVD release.
When will this be released on disc?
Some of my DNA is on those knobs!
Anyone else cringe when he put that water bottle next to it 🤦🏽♂️
“No food in the Electronic Music Lab.” - University of Washington model 100, 1974. (2 8-step and 1 16-step sequencers, 2 touch-pad boards)
Im sorry In the begining the sounds are scary sounds and sort of demonic very dark!
very twilight zone! in the end.
2:20 *immediately places water bottle in danger zone
Yeah there were probably a lot of students who got thrown out of there for that hahah.
Hello there - get that water bottle of the rig or get out!
yeah... $500 ;)
I really did not want to hear what it sounds like anyway. I'm just a tourist, a leche vitrine who likes to look.
Yeah good place for your water bottle
Seems too complicated, why wouldn’t they just want to play MicroKorgs? Much better sounds
Well for one thing, there were no Microkorgs, nor any commercially available synthesizers (with the exception of perhaps some of the earliest Moog modular components), available when this machine was made in the mid-1960s. Also, Subotnick specifically wanted an electronic music instrument that was not steeped in old traditions - he did not want it to have a keyboard.
Waveshaper Media haha I know I’m totally kidding
Firstly, they were not "progressive" liberals, so any kind of user-friendliness was not required. Secondly, they experienced overwhelmingly higher intelligence levels than average millennial today.
Oh, and they also reached far greater aesthetic maturity than MikroKorg users. With the exception of Hiromi Uehara, of course. But even she didn't seem to treat the MicroKorg too seriously. She was far more serious with the Nord Lead 2.
@@WaveshaperMedia He did not want it to have a keyboard because none of them can play music based in harmony, and that's the triple truth. No foul, but just saying.