Watch Composer Wendy Carlos Demo an Unique Moog Synthesizer (1989)

She’s labored with Stan­ley Kubrick *and* “Bizarre Al” Yankovic, and helped Robert Moog within the devel­op­ment of his epony­mous syn­the­siz­er. Wendy Automotive­los can also be one of many first excessive professional­file trans­gen­der artists–credited as Wal­ter Automotive­los for Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange however hav­ing tran­si­tioned to Wendy by the point of The Shin­ing, wherein only some of her items had been used.

On this temporary clip from a 1989 BBC episode of Hori­zon, Automotive­los, accom­pa­nied by her two cats, explains how she makes use of ana­log synths to cre­ate elec­tron­ic fac­sim­i­les of actual devices–on this case cre­at­ing an approx­i­ma­tion of a xylo­telephone, sculpt­ing a sine wave till it feels like a mal­let on wooden.

The seg­ment additionally exhibits Automotive­los oper­at­ing one of many orig­i­nal Moog synths, in regards to the dimension of a fridge and look­ing like an previous tele­telephone change­board with a key­board connected. By plug­ging and unplug­ging a collection of cables, she demon­strates, the sine wave is decon­struct­ed from its orig­i­nal “pure” however harsh sound. Lat­er ana­log synths had been addi­tive, not sub­trac­tive, she explains. (It’s one of many few occasions I’ve seen previous tech defined so properly and so fast­ly.)

Together with work­ing with Bob Moog, Automotive­los stud­ied at Colum­bia-Prince­ton Elec­tron­ic Music Cen­ter alongside­aspect two pio­neers of ear­ly elec­tron­ic music: Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luen­ing, each of whom would make very chal­leng­ing com­po­si­tions and musique con­crete.

However Wendy selected each the clas­si­cal and pop­u­lar path, cre­at­ing the Switched on Bach collection that fea­tured 18th cen­tu­ry music performed on the Moog synth and oth­ers. It might lead her to Kubrick and A Clock­work Orange’s idio­syn­crat­ic rating and much more suc­cess. Aside from her rating for Disney’s Tron, now very a lot beloved by followers, Automotive­los turned to extra per­son­al, sound­scape work lat­er. And in 2005, if you could find a replica, she put out a mul­ti­ple-CD set of all her sound­observe work that Kubrick nev­er used for The Shin­ing and oth­ers.

The descrip­tion of the whole Hori­zon episode has a tech­nofear theme: “In Paris, Xavier Rodet has taught a com­put­er to sing Mozart; in Inexperienced­wich Vil­lage, Wendy Automotive­los syn­the­sis­es a clas­si­cal con­cer­to from elec­tron­ic tones…In Aus­tralia, Man­fred Clynes reck­ons he has dis­cov­ered a uni­ver­sal human lan­guage of emo­tion. To show it he cre­ates really feel­ings on tape. What’s left for human per­type­ers to con­tribute?”

This professional­gram was a minimum of a decade after the primary sam­pling key­board, so the anx­i­ety is both late or over­hyped. Nevertheless it additionally sounds famil­iar to our cur­hire con­cerns over AI (as seen in these very internet pages!). Synths nev­er changed human instru­ments, however it did cre­ate extra synth play­ers. AI gained’t change human deci­sion mak­ing (prob­a­bly), however it can cer­tain­ly cre­ate extra AI professional­gram­mers.

Be aware: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this put up appeared on our web site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Glenn Gould Sing the Reward of the Moog Syn­the­siz­er and Wendy Automotive­los’ Switched-On Bach, the “Report of the Decade” (1968)

Wendy Automotive­los’ Switched on Bach Turns 50 This Month: Be taught How the Clas­si­cal Synth Report Intro­duced the World to the Moog

The Scores That Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Wendy Automotive­los Com­posed for Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing

Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Wendy Automotive­los Demon­strates the Moog Syn­the­siz­er on the BBC (1970)

What the Future Sound­ed Like: Doc­u­males­tary Tells the For­received­ten Sixties His­to­ry of Britain’s Avant-Garde Elec­tron­ic Musi­cians

Ted Mills is a free­lance author on the humanities.