"Our twenty-seventh winner of the Modular Pic of the Week contest goes to Atomic Shadow (photo credit Rod Mitchell), for his 'Lab b/w.'Atomic Shadow uses a variety of vintage and modern electronic equipment to craft unique sonic sculptures and broadcast them directly from yesterday's world of tomorrow.
For more info on Atomic Shadow, check out his record label's website: http://www.hollowsunrecords.co.uk
We'd like to give a big thanks and congratulations to Atomic Shadow for his submission!
This is the 27th week of a 30-week contest, and we are looking forward to many more modular photo submissions, so please keep 'em coming! For details on how to submit and what you can win, see this post.
For more info on the upcoming 'I Dream of Wires' documentary, be sure to see the trailer and IndieGoGo fund raising campaign here.
See the IDOW label for all posts pertaining to the film including the weekly contest winners."
Disclaimer: If you look closely you might notice something. It looks like a modular system, but there isn't a single traditional module or modular in the shot. The rules of the contest state "- Modular synthesizer hardware only. Semi-modular synth hardware is also acceptable as long as there is evidence of some cross-patching." Great shot aside, why did we opt to put this up? This system consists of sound generators that pre-dated the first modular synthesizers. It gives you a glimpse at what a pre-modular modular system might look like with modern gear. When asked why he submitted this shot when there is clearly no modular in it, Atomic Shadow replied: "I just thought I would send it in because I use it like a modular and it consists of oscillators, filters, and effects that allow me to chop and gate the oscillators and process them in various ways. I have 4 tube driven sine oscillators, one of which also makes a square wave and two solid state sine/square oscillators. By patching them together with various effects and guitar pedals I am able to pitch shift, harmonize and modulate things. The tape machines are my sequencers and the JP8080 mostly gets used as a noise generator.
The rig is similar to any electronic music lab from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The proto- modular."
For those not familiar with the history of synthesis, before the advent of synthesizers as we know them today, including vintage modulars, people often used tape and oscillators to produce experimental electronic sounds and compositions. These tools led to the creation of the Buchla system, and to some extent the first Moog modular. There is some debate on the original purpose of each, and you may have heard of the East vs. West Coast paradigms on synthesis. In short, the Buchla on the West Coast was highly influenced by Mortin Subotnick who wanted a system to compliment his other tools for more atonal sound generation and exploration typical of musique concrete, while Moog on the East Coast was highly influenced by Herb Deutsch who lead to the use of the traditional keyboard as the interface into producing more tonal music. I recommend the book Analog Days for the history of some of this. There is some debate on the glamorization of the time and some have claimed factual inaccuracies, but it is well worth reading. For a list of more tonal focused electronic instruments throughout history see http://120years.net/. Regarding Buchla and atonal sound generation equipment prior to traditional synthesizers, here's a snip from Wikepedia: "The original Buchla Music Box was the brainchild of Don Buchla and came from a commission by composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick. First built in 1963, this synthesizer was composed of several 'modules' that generated or modified a music event. Each box served a specific function: oscillator, filter, sample and hold, etc. This would have an effect on the pitch, timbre, amplitude and spatial location of the sound. The idea was to allow musicians and composers to create sounds suited to their own specifications. Previously, one had to utilize either discrete audio generators such as test oscillators or via musique concrète, recorded sounds from natural sources. Although it was a fresh and exciting idea and an excellent way to get new sounds, this was very time-consuming and arduous. The Buchla Box allowed musicians to bend and manipulate sound all in one device. This would lead to the many kinds of electronic instruments available today."
Atomic Shadow's system harkens back to these days and incorporates modern day synthesizers with it, all without traditional modular gear. It's a bit fascinating when you think about it.
Wonderful shot in that the b&w cammoflages the modern non-modular stuff. In the fairly detailed description above one thing that's omitted which I think really is at the core of the first synthesizers is control voltage. The ability to interface a collection of components into something that could fairly be called an instrument and then automate changes in sound that would have likely needed to be made individually and likely manually.
ReplyDeleteA minor historical point, but Musique Concrete and tape based work dates back from the years after WWII with the availability of tape recorders, so by the 60s you couldn't say it was that fresh an idea by then. What was, was the creation of an integrated instrument that was more than a collection.
"Regarding Buchla and atonal sound generation equipment" - ?? Obviously electronic music instruments existed for decades before and RCA had coined the term Synthesizer back in the 50s for their units. Bob Moog would say the idea of making a flexible instrument to create a wide range of sounds and hopefully improving in terms of control on a studio full of various individual generating and processing units "was in the air at the time". Neither Buchla nor Moog had a tonal or atonal agenda. What did happen is Moog became a commercial operation sooner and sold a keyboard style interface that proved extremely popular. Buchla consciously avoided a readymade standard black and white keyboard for years.