Donald Buchla created his first electronic instruments in 1960 in response to a commission from the avant-garde composer Morton Subotnik. Subotnik was searching for a replacement for the large complex electronic music studios of the day where most ‘serious’ avant-garde music was composed and recorded: for example RAI studio Milan and WDR Studio Köln, Germany and GRM Paris, France . These studios consisted of multiple individual oscillators, processor units, filters and mixers that, with the help of trained technicians (each of the studios had its own unique system), could be manually patched together. The advent of transistor technology allowed much of this process to be miniaturised into a single portable, standardised version of the electronic music studio but restaining the modular, patchable approach:1Trevor Pinch, Frank Trocco (2004), Analog Days, Harvard University Press.
2The Modular Electronic Music System, (1960), San Francisco Tape Music Center, 2.The offspring of a technology which is itself but half a century old, electronic music is in its infancy. Instruments specifically designed for its production have been crude and generally unavailable. Therefore, the basic objectives for development of the Modular Electronic Music System were:
1. The achievement of direct, immediate control of musical parameters. Instruments should be played in real time, eliminating such note-forming routines as: set frequency – start recorder – stop recorder – measure – cut – splice – repeat, etc.
2. Compatibility of all equipment, Rules for interconnecting equipment to be straight-forward and consistent. Interfacing with external equipment (recorders, tuners, microphones, etc.) should be readily accomplished.
3. Fully transistorized circuitry, employing conservative design and high quality components. Reliable operation with minimal maintenance must be realized.
4. A special requirement for the system was that the equipment be lightweight and portable, thus making feasible its use in the composer’s home, the concert hall, and on tour.
5. Without compromising other design objectives, cost should be low. Power supplies and cabinetry should be common to several unity, and modular construction should be employed to permit economical system expansion.
With a $500 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation Buchla started building his first modular synthesisers in 1963 at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, the hub of experimental and electronic music at the time, founded by composers Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender and used by artists such as Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, William Maginnis and Tony Martin. Buchla’s early synthesisers were experimental in design reflecting the experimental music they were intended to produce. Buchla’s designs utilised many unique and unusual features such touch sensitive and resistance sensitive plates. One of Buchla’s innovative inventions from this period was the first analogue sequencer.
Buchla Associate’s first production model synthesiser was the Buchla Series 100 or ‘Buchla Box’ (or ‘Electronic Music Box’ as Buchla preferred ): a keyboardless modular synthesiser. The Buchla Box was manufactured in 1966 through a licensing deal with CBS/Fender – a deal that quickly stalled as CBS/Fender pulled out citing a lack of but (who soon closed the deal, seeing no future in electronic instruments).
The Series 100 was an innovative electronic instrument with a logically laid out, intuitive front panel allowing the user to patch and route modules with patch cords (To avoid confusion, the Series 100 uniquely, and unlike the Moog Modular, used separate patch cords for output and control voltages allowing the patching of multiple control voltages with stack-able ‘Banana’ patch cords) designed primarily with the electronic music composer in mind . The manual control of the instrument reflected the concerns of the time around microtonality and the limitations of the tempered scale keyboard; Buchla, very much in the ‘serious’ experimental music camp designed the instrument to be set up and run to produce a continuous piece; more of an electronic music studio than an instrument per-se. The composer could trigger and manipulate multiple parameters using an array of pressure sensitive touch pads or ‘Kinaesthetic input ports’ to free themselves from the constraints of a standard keyboard:
3Don Buchla https://moogfoundation.org/remembering-synthesizer-innovator-don-buchla-1937-2016/ retrieved 06-08-2021“They [the ports] were all capacitance-
sensitive touch- plates, or resistance- sensitive in some cases, organized in various sorts of arrays…I saw no reason to borrow from a keyboard, which is a device invented to throw hammers at strings, later on, for operating switches for electronic organs and so-on. A keyboard is dictatorial. When you’ve got a black and white keyboard there it’s hard to play anything but keyboard music – And when there’s not a black and white keyboard you get into the knobs and the wires and the interconnections and timbres, and you get involved in many other aspects of the music, and it’s a far more experimental way. It’s appealing to fewer people but it’s more exciting”
Donald Buchla
One of the main innovations of the series 100 was the inclusion of one of the first analogue sequencer modules ; Three sequencers were fit into the first Buchla synth, two with eight stages, the third with 16
” There were three voltage-controlled outputs for each stage. I used to cascade two sequencers so that they would run simultaneously, giving you six voltages per stage. One voltage would control pitch, another spatial location, the third amplitude. Then one, which was really clever, would control the pulse generator that was controlling the sequencer, so that you could determine the absolute rhythm. You could literally program a very complex rhythm over a long period of time, for example, by running five stages against 13.'”
Morton Subotnick
Modules of the ‘Buchla Box’ :
Module Number | Description |
M.101 | wooden case for 25 modules |
M.106 | six channel mixer |
M.107 | voltage-controlled mixer |
M.110 | Dual Voltage-controlled Gates |
M.111 | Dual Ring Modulator |
M.112 | 12 touch-controlled voltage sources (capacitive keyboard) |
M.114 | 10 touch-controlled voltage sources (capacitive keyboard) |
M.115 | power supply |
M.123 | Sequential Voltage Source (8-step sequencer) |
M.124 | patchboard |
M.130 | Dual Envelop Generator |
M.132 | wave-form synthesizer |
M.140 | timing pulse generators |
M.144 | Dual Square-wave Generator |
M.146 | Sequential Voltage Source (sequencer, 16 step X 3 layer) |
M.148 | Harmonic Generator |
M.150 | Frequency Counter |
M.156 | Dual Control Voltage Counter |
M.158 | Dual Sine / Sawtooth Oscillators (VCOs) |
M.160 | White Noise Generator |
M.165 | Dual Random Voltage Source or ‘Source Of Uncertainty’ |
M.170 | Dual Microphone Amplifier |
M.171 | Dual Instrument Pre-amplifier |
M.175 | Dual Equalizer / Line Driver |
M.180 | Dual Attack Generator |
M.185 | Frequency Shifter |
M.190 | Dual Reverberator |
M.191 | sharp cut-off filter |
M.192 | dual low pass filter |
M.194 | bandpass filter |
M.195 | octave formant filter |
M.196 | phase shifter |
The Series 100 was followed by the Buchla Series 200 Electronic Music Box in 1970. The ‘Buchla Box’ was much used during the Acid Test psychedelic happenings of the Haight-Ashbury era by rock groups such as the Grateful Dead (“and later, provided the sounds for R2D2 in the film series Star Wars” – corrected – see comments section).
Around this time affordable mini-computers became available and Buchla created the first digitally controlled analogue synthesiser, the Buchla 500 series in 1971. This was followed by the ‘Buchla Music Easel’ in 1972 Touché (1978), the Buchla 400 (1982), the Buchla 700 (1987). More recent products have included MIDI controllers and re-vamped versions of the Series 200.
References:
- 1Trevor Pinch, Frank Trocco (2004), Analog Days, Harvard University Press.
- 2The Modular Electronic Music System, (1960), San Francisco Tape Music Center, 2.
- 3Don Buchla https://moogfoundation.org/remembering-synthesizer-innovator-don-buchla-1937-2016/ retrieved 06-08-2021
Thank you for this project.
A small typo error on the Buchla Page: the name is Ken Kesey, not Ken Kessey.
Thanks Kim,
Fixed!
Sad to say, but Don passed away September 16, 2016 at age 79 after a battle with cancer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/arts/music/don-buchla-dead.html
Don left quite a legacy! He will be missed for sure…
Here is a rare test recording of the even rarer Buchla 400T shortly after returning her to life…
https://soundcloud.com/hideaway-studio/buchla-400-awakens
Subotnick has mentioned a $500 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in interviews but I’ve never heard or a $200K grant. An online inflation calculator says that $200K would have been the equivalent of $1,628,439 USD in 2017, whereas $500 would be just over $4,000 in 2017 and this sort of figure seems much more likely. I’d welcome a source for the $200K figure if you have one but I don’t think it’s correct.
agreed with Erik – it looks like a $500 grant according to several sources i’ve looked at.
It was $500 to build the first Buchla, and the $200,000 Rockefeller Grant was to move the Tape Music Center to Mills College.
Wasn’t R2D2 sound design done by Ben Burt on an ARP2600?
I think you are right!
Sources conflict on the dates, but the 1970 date in the heading is way too late. I think 1965 would be a conservative choice.
1962 or 1963: founds Buchla and Associates in Berkeley
1965: delivers the Buchla Modular Electronic Music System to the San Francisco Tape Music Center
1966: Buchla Modular Electronic Music System (aka Series 100?) moved to Mills College
1966-1969: delivers a “Buchla Box” to Ken Kesey, sales of additional Series 100 units to Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and others
1969: Series 100 licensed to CBS
1970: Series 200
1971: Series 500
1972: Music Easel
https://musicologynow.org/dont-call-it-a-synthesizer-remembering-donald-buchlas-modular-electronic-music-system/
http://studioinnocenti.blogspot.com/2012/11/don-buchla-electronics-genius.html?m=1
https://www.memsproject.info/ken-keseys-buchla-box-and-the-prototype-panel
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/arts/music/don-buchla-dead.html
The composer Ernst Krenek was owner of a Buchla 100 (1966/67), which is now part of an exhibition in Krems, Austria. It was restored in 2017 and is still used for artistic work. More infos here: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/iQVB4cbm5MtTUg?hl=de