Don Buchla, Electronic Music Maverick, Has Died

Aw man. My condolences to Don's family and friends.

I only met Don once, many years ago when my high school buddy Will Hegarty was visiting the Bay Area. Will had an audio electronics company called Tangent, and we went up to Don's house in Berkeley to talk shop. He was a great host, much fun to visit and to play with the neat instruments he was building.

On the way there we stopped at a recording studio in San Francisco on a cold call. No one was at the front desk, so we wandered around looking for someone to talk to. We ended up in the coffee room, and Art Garfunkel walked in. Really nice guy too. We chatted a bit, and Art asked us if we wanted to listen while he recorded a song.

That sounded like a very fine idea! Art brought us up to the control booth and he went down to record. We got to listen to part of the song, until his producer Roy noticed us, stopped everything, and practically shouted into the talkback mic, "Art! Who are these people?" Art said, "It's OK, Roy, they're cool."

Well, that didn't work. Roy threw us out the back door and we headed on our way to Berkeley.

After that minor humiliation, it sure was nice to get to hang out with Don!

>> “A keyboard is dictatorial,” he said. “When you’ve got a black-and-white keyboard, it’s hard to play anything but keyboard music.” <<

Hence the cello interface and the alternative controllers.

My piano teacher once said that when she rehearsed with a string quartet they would tend to drift back to intervals like a natural fifth unless she was actually playing alongside with the equal temperament adjusted fifth.

Din is Noise is another approach to getting out of the midi/pitch class universe

http://dinisnoise.org/

I just discovered Buchla as thing two days ago with this concept album:

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/22300-sunergy/

There's not enough people like this around anymore :(

Below are some videos[1][2][3][4] of Buchla instruments being played, taken from the thread about Buchla's passing on Muff Wiggler[5], the largest modular synthesizer forum in the world.

[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhtar8FlgzU

[2] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYNSm0jojnY

[3] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UKY9UYt5iE

[4] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDNZPzSaYKo

[5] - https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=168381

He created amazing devices. iirc he invented the analog (knob driven) sequencer.

More info for those interested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchla_Electronic_Musical_Inst...

One artist who makes heavy use of Buchla's synths is Alessandro Cortini (live keyboardist for Nine Inch Nails).

He does ambient stuff, but I prefer his SONOIO project, which is more poppy and has vocals. Here's a cool song made 100% on the Buchla 200. I was hooked by the unique sound the first time I heard it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0jA3R6CnF4

His work remains incredibly influential today in the current renaissance of modular synthesizers--a number of important eurorack designers (e.g., Make Noise) take a lot of inspiration from the West Coast style of synthesis.

Sad news.