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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 ...
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South Gate, California
South Gate is the 19th largest city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, with . South Gate is located southeast of Downtown Los Angeles. It is part of the Gateway Cities region of southeastern Los Angeles County. The city was incorporated on January 20, 1923, and it became known as the "Azalea City" when it adopted the flower as its symbol in 1965. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 92,726. In 1990, South Gate was one of ten U.S. communities to receive the All-America City Award from the National Civic League. History Native Americans South Gate was in the traditional cultural territory of the Gabrielino. Gabrielino villages or archaeological sites are rumored to have existed at the South Gate Park and at the old City Hall site at the intersection of Post Street and Victoria Avenue. The village of Tajauta was located on the border of South Gate, Lynwood, and Watts. Land grants Among the early Spanish settlers was one of California's firs ...
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Microprocessor
A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circuitry required to perform the functions of a computer's central processing unit. The integrated circuit is capable of interpreting and executing program instructions and performing arithmetic operations. The microprocessor is a multipurpose, clock-driven, register-based, digital integrated circuit that accepts binary data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and provides results (also in binary form) as output. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic, and operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary number system. The integration of a whole CPU onto a single or a few integrated circuits using Very-Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) greatly reduced the c ...
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Analog Sequencer
An analog sequencer is a music sequencer constructed from analog (analogue) electronics, invented in the first half of the 20th century. Raymond Scott designed and constructed some of the first electro-mechanical music sequencers in the 1940s. The first electronic sequencer was invented by Raymond Scott, using thyratrons and relays. Incidentally in 1951, computer music was started from the music sequencing, and later its applicable fields were expanded into the music composition and sound generation. However, the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer in 1957 was still indirectly controlled via punch-tape system similar to piano rolls, a kind of mechanical sequencer. Also, in earlier electronic music, artists used sound-on-film technology to generate sound waves as well as control sequences of notes. At its most basic, an analog sequencer consists of a bank of potentiometers and a "clock" (pulse generator) connected to a sequencer, which steps through these potentiometers one at a t ...
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Merry Pranksters
The Merry Pranksters were comrades and followers of American author Ken Kesey in 1964. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called '' Furthur'', organizing parties, and giving out LSD. During this time they met many of the guiding lights of the 1960s cultural movement and presaged what are commonly thought of as hippies with odd behavior, tie-dyed and red, white, and blue clothing, and renunciation of normal society, which they ironically dubbed The Establishment. Tom Wolfe chronicled their early escapades in his 1968 book '' The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'', and documents a notorious 1966 trip on ''Furthur'' from Mexico through Houston, stopping to visit Kesey's friend, novelist Larry McMurtry. Kesey was in flight from a drug charge at the time. N ...
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Ken Kesey
Ken Elton Kesey (September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in 1957. He began writing ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' in 1960 after completing a graduate fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University; the novel was an immediate commercial and critical success when published two years later. During this period, Kesey participated in government studies involving hallucinogenic drugs (including mescaline and LSD) to supplement his income. After ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' was published, Kesey moved to nearby La Honda, California, and began hosting happenings with former colleagues from Stanford, miscellaneous bohemian and literary figures (most notably Neal Cassady) and other friend ...
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Further (bus)
''Furthur'' is a 1939 International Harvester school bus purchased by author Ken Kesey in 1964 to carry his " Merry Band of Pranksters" cross-country, filming their counterculture adventures as they went. The bus featured prominently in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book ''The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'' but, due to the chaos of the trip and editing difficulties, footage of the journey was not released as a film until the 2011 documentary ''Magic Trip''. History Kesey traveled to New York City in November 1963 with his wife Faye and Prankster George Walker to attend the Broadway opening of '' One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'', which was based on his 1962 novel. Kesey also saw the 1964 New York World's Fair site under construction. He needed to return to New York City in 1964 for the publication party for his novel ''Sometimes a Great Notion'', and hoped to use the occasion to visit the Fair. This plan grew into an ambitious scheme to bring along a group of friends, turning their adventur ...
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New Interfaces For Musical Expression
New Interfaces for Musical Expression, also known as NIME, is an international conference dedicated to scientific research on the development of new technologies and their role in musical expression and artistic performance. History The conference began as a workshop (NIME 01) at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in 2001 in Seattle, Washington, with the concert and demonstration sessions being held at the Experience Music Project museum. Since then, international conferences have been held annually around the world: Areas of application The following is a partial list of topics covered by the NIME conference: * Design reports on novel controllers and interfaces for musical expression * Performance experience reports on live performance and composition using novel controllers * Controllers for virtuosic performers, novices, education and entertainment * Perceptual & cognitive issues in the design of musical controllers * Movement, visual and physi ...
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Analog Synthesizer
An analog (or analogue) synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Trautonium, were built with a variety of vacuum-tube (thermionic valve) and electro-mechanical technologies. After the 1960s, analog synthesizers were built using operational amplifier (op-amp) integrated circuits, and used potentiometers (pots, or variable resistors) to adjust the sound parameters. Analog synthesizers also use low-pass filters and high-pass filters to modify the sound. While 1960s-era analog synthesizers such as the Moog used a number of independent electronic modules connected by patch cables, later analog synthesizers such as the Minimoog integrated them into single units, eliminating patch cords in favour of integrated signal routing systems. History 1900–1920 The earliest mention of a "synthetic harmoniser" using electricity appears to be in 1906, cre ...
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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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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 MID ...
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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 ...
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Buchla 100 Series At NYU
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 specifica ...
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