Buchla Lightning
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Buchla Lightning
The Buchla Lightning is the second in a series of MIDI controllers developed by Don Buchla. It consists of two independent hand-held electronic wands and a box unit that enable a player to initiate sounds and to manipulate those sounds spatially. Description The basic concept behind Buchla Lightning (1, 2 and 3) is that you program the unit to assign certain MIDI events/messages to wand gestures. These MIDI messages become sounds as determined by the user. You perform these gestures while holding one wand in each hand. There is a separate box/unit that picks up the gestures you make with the wands and then the sound is produced. In technical terms. The two wands emit infrared light that is detected by optics. The optics (photo-sensors) "see" the wands to determine two-dimensional location and whether the button on the wand is depressed. By analyzing location information in real-time, the Lightning can determine acceleration and direction changes and turn these gestures into MIDI ...
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MIDI Controllers
A MIDI controller is any hardware or software that generates and transmits Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) data to MIDI-enabled devices, typically to trigger sounds and control parameters of an electronic music performance. They most often use a musical keyboard to send data about the pitch of notes to play, although a MIDI controller may trigger lighting and other effects. A wind controller has a sensor that converts breath pressure to volume information and lip pressure to control pitch. Controllers for percussion and stringed instruments exist, as well as specialized and experimental devices. Some MIDI controllers are used in association with specific digital audio workstation software. The original MIDI specification has been extended to include a greater range of control features. Features MIDI controllers usually do not create or produce musical sounds by themselves. MIDI controllers typically have some type of interface that the performer presses, strikes, ...
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Don Buchla
Donald Buchla (April 17, 1937 – September 14, 2016) was an American pioneer in the field of sound synthesis. Buchla popularized the "West Coast" style of synthesis. He was co-inventor of the voltage controlled modular synthesizer along with Robert Moog, the two working independently in the early 1960s. Biography Buchla was born in South Gate, California on April 17, 1937, and grew up in California and New Jersey. He studied physics, physiology, and music at UC Berkeley, graduating in 1959 as a physics major. Buchla formed his electronic music equipment company, Buchla and Associates, in 1962 in Berkeley, California. He was commissioned by composers Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender, both of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, to create an electronic instrument for live performance. Buchla began designing his first modules for the Tape Music Center in 1963. With partial funding from a $500 Rockefeller Foundation grant made to the Tape Music Center, Buchla assembled his modules ...
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Wand
A wand is a thin, light-weight rod that is held with one hand, and is traditionally made of wood, but may also be made of other materials, such as metal or plastic. Long versions of wands are often styled in forms of staves or sceptres, which could have large ornamentation on the top. In modern times, wands are usually associated with stage magic or supernatural magic, but there have been other uses, all stemming from the original meaning as a synonym of rod and virge. A stick that is used for reaching, pointing, drawing in the dirt, and directing other people, is one of the earliest and simplest of tools. History It is possible that wands were used by pre-historic peoples. It is mentioned that 'rods' (as well as rings) were found with Red Lady of Paviland in Britain. It is mentioned by the author in ''Gower - A Guide to Ancient and Historic Monuments on the Gower Peninsula'' that these might have been wands and are depicted as such in a reconstruction drawing of the burial o ...
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Infrared
Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around 1 millimeter (300 GHz) to the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum, around 700  nanometers (430  THz). Longer IR wavelengths (30 μm-100 μm) are sometimes included as part of the terahertz radiation range. Almost all black-body radiation from objects near room temperature is at infrared wavelengths. As a form of electromagnetic radiation, IR propagates energy and momentum, exerts radiation pressure, and has properties corresponding to both those of a wave and of a particle, the photon. It was long known that fires emit invisible heat; in 1681 the pioneering experimenter Edme Mariotte showed that glass, though transparent to sunlight, obstructed radiant heat. In 1800 the astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered ...
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Lê Quan Ninh
Lê Quan Ninh (born Paris, 1961) is a French percussionist active in contemporary music and free improvisation. He began studying piano at the age of 7, but turned towards percussion as a teenager. When he was 16, he entered the National Conservatory in Versailles. During this time he discovered free jazz. After graduating, he taught percussion for 3 years at a conservatory in Bondy, France while performing with contemporary music, dance, and theater groups often using self-taught techniques and found objects in his improvisation. In the 1980s Ninh collaborated with Daunik Lazro, Michel Doneda, Serge Pey, Peter Kowald Peter Kowald (21 April 1944 – 21 September 2002) was a German free jazz and free improvising double bassist and tubist. Career A member of the Globe Unity Orchestra, and a touring double-bass player, Kowald collaborated with many European ..., Butch Morris, and Nicolas Peskine's ''Compagnie du Hasard''. In 1992 Ninh founded the ''Association L ...
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Canadian Electroacoustic Community
Founded in 1986, La Communauté électroacoustique canadienne / The Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) is Canada's national electroacoustic / computer music / sonic arts organization and is dedicated to promoting this progressive art form in its broadest definition: from "pure" acousmatic and computer music to soundscape and sonic art to hardware hacking and beyond. Among the objectives, as written in the Bylaws of the corporation, are the "support, development, production, distribution of information, materials, works... for the ea/cm community in Canada... with continuing special concern for the younger generation of individuals and women in this community. The CEC recognizes and supports the principle of sexual equality, and also, the equal status of English and French." The CEC endeavours to foster a broad, diverse, and inclusive community of electroacoustic practitioners, raise the profile of electroacoustics in the Canadian arts milieu, and to promote Canadian electr ...
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Buchla Thunder
Buchla Thunder is one of many in the family of MIDI controllers consisting of tactile control surfaces, which are manipulated by hand. Developed by electronic instrument designer Don Buchla in 1989, Thunder is a musical instrument controller with an array touch sensitive keys. Keys 1 to 9 respond to pressure and keys 10 to 25, with the feather graphic respond to both pressure AND location. Thunder's software — known as “STORM” — allows assignment of any key's touch, pressure and/or location to any MIDI controller number or note number on any MIDI channel. Keys can also be assigned to start and stop “Riffs" that might be programmed as part of the preset. (“Riffs" precede and are similar to “clips” in Ableton Live.) Early versions had LEDs and photodiodes on a circuit board below a reflective drum membrane. It sensed the velocity of the taps as well as tracked X, Y, and pressure of each finger on the membrane. Later versions used capacitive technology to sense t ...
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Marimba Lumina
Marimba Lumina is a MIDI controller developed by American engineer Don Buchla that lets a musician play music via a control surface based on the layout of a marimba. Joel Davel and Mark Goldstein were the co-developers of the design and implementation of the hardware and software. The defining characteristic is its use of RF technology for the recognition of location along the key/bar and recognition of each of four mallets as a potentially unique input—allowing it to play stylistically conventional or unconventional music. The curved 4-1/3 octave Marimba Lumina "Gold" was first introduced in 1999 and played by Buchla “associate” Joel Davel at the Bell-Atlantic Jazz Festival in New York City. Later versions introduced in 2000 and 2001 were produced in collaboration with Nearfield Multimedia and include a 3.5 and 2.5 octave range. Performers known for playing the Marimba Lumina include Joel Davel of the Paul Dresher Ensemble, Vessela Stoyanova of Bury Me Standing and Goli, ...
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Theremin
The theremin (; originally known as the ætherphone/etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist). It is named after its inventor, Leon Theremin, who patented the device in 1928. The instrument's controlling section usually consists of two metal antenna (radio), antennas which sense the relative position of the thereminist's hands and control oscillation, oscillators for frequency with one hand, and amplitude (Loudness, volume) with the other. The electric signals from the theremin are amplifier, amplified and sent to a loudspeaker. The sound of the instrument is often associated with wikt:eerie, eerie situations. The theremin has been used in movie soundtracks such as Miklós Rózsa's ''Spellbound (1945 film), Spellbound'' and ''The Lost Weekend (film), The Lost Weekend'', Bernard Herrmann's ''The Day the Earth Stood Still (soundtrack), The Day the E ...
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Buchla Synthesizers
Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments (BEMI) was a manufacturer of synthesizers and unique MIDI controllers. The origins of the company could be found in Buchla & Associates, created in 1963 by synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla of Berkeley, California. In 2012 the original company led by Don Buchla was acquired by a group of Australian investors trading as Audio Supermarket Pty. Ltd. The company was renamed Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments as part of the acquisition. In 2018 the assets of BEMI were acquired by a new entity, Buchla U.S.A., and the company continues under new ownership. Company origin Buchla's first modular electronic music system was the result of a San Francisco Tape Music Center commission by composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick in 1963, who later allotted $500 from a Rockefeller Foundation grant to Buchla in 1964. Subotnick envisioned a voltage-controlled instrument that would allow musicians and composers to create sounds suited to their own specificati ...
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