Synthesizers

During the glasnost period when many forgotten biographies were rediscovered and rewritten, one of the most bizarre finds was the Soviet-American inventor and pioneer of electr(on)ic music, Lev Sergeevich Termen (aka Léon Theremin, 1896-1993). Termen, “the secret link between sci-fi films, the Beach Boys, and Carnegie Hall,” whose “electronic musical instrument took the world by storm in the 1920s and '30s” — several decades before the rise of electronic popular music — had been forgotten for 50 years in the East and West.

Today, technology develops autonomously; we embrace its progression, its efficiency, as it propels our culture at breakneck speed toward a future that's hard to see clearly. Technology has infiltrated commerce, education, government and art of record production through many key contributions. One seminal technological contribution to music making was the synthesizer. It remains a conduit for creation for many musicians and producers, acting as a vehicle of sound exploration. In many cases, the synthesizer facilitated the musician or producer to take a more functionary role within the art of record production by simply becoming a controller, allowing the synthesizer to become the primary compositional voice. This paper explores the 'what if' principle through Brian Eno's 1975 album ​ Discreet Music. Here, creation, collaboration and connectivity are skillfully distributed between man and machine. ​ Discreet Music masterfully employs an EMS Synthi AKS synthesizer that once set into operation by Eno, creates soundscapes with little or no intervention on the performers part apart from occasionally alternating the timbre of the synthesizer. It examines the roles of collaboration, invention, innovation within technology that helped Eno bypass traditional record production mechanisms. Furthermore, the paper highlights Eno's contribution to notions of control within electronic music production, his influence within generative music making and questions current creative utopias that allow toward the control over every imaginable parameter within electronic music making through MIDI and automation.

It had nothing to do with trying to find new sounds...

Concerned with the control of “musical time,” and the realization that we could hear so much more. A sentiment that would culminate serial composer, Milton Babbitt influenced a variety of other Experimental Music Composers and premier electronic music genres. He dreamt of an era where we could differentiate so much more and discriminate exponentially more than we could expect performers or ensemble to accommodate. “The hand is seldom faster than the ear.” –  Milton Babbitt, April 2000

The properties of the arpeggiator bring forth a creative process that marries production, composition, improvisation and performance in a manner that inspires the musician/producer, helped define the aesthetics, creative process, and social function of electronic music as a whole, while grounding that music in an association with traditional African-American music and notions of futurism simultaneously.

The arpeggiator’s impact on aesthetics is explored, demonstrating how automation and repetition combine to inject mechanical aesthetics into music, reflecting society’s immersion and fascination with automation and futuristic technology while redefining the creative process of the musician.

This paper establishes that the arpeggiator is more than just a series of knobs on a synthesizer that manipulate sound or act as a facilitator for performance. Rather, by
referencing my creative process and compositions within the context of belonging to the lineage of African-American music, this paper will demonstrate how the arpeggiator is representational of electronic dance music’s overall essential qualities.

El diseño y construcción de instrumentos musicales se ha desarrollado de múltiples formas a través del tiempo, muchos de estos instrumentos han evolucionado hasta llegar a consolidarse de tal modo que se satisfagan las necesidades del compositor e intérprete. En el caso particular de los instrumentos informáticos, es decir aquellos que usan tecnologías electrónicas y digitales, la evolución se ha desarrollado a una gran velocidad si se compara con el recorrido evolutivo de un instrumento clásico de los empleados actualmente. Este documento aborda principalmente el contexto de los instrumentos musicales informáticos desde un análisis que comprende referentes históricos, desarrollos de las últimas décadas, tecnologías usadas en el campo, además de el análisis del compositor, intérprete e instrumento desde el contexto informático. Dicho análisis aborda con detalle el sistema Ableton-Launchpad desde la realización de un estudio de caso que permitió cuestionar, tomando como base una serie de entrevistas realizadas en el proceso, diferentes elementos en cuanto a su diseño, la relación de los elementos que lo conforman y el entendimiento de este como instrumento o no; además de analizar su pertinencia desde la mirada de distintos autores y campos artísticos musicales o sonoros.

When they were creating and releasing their most influential albums in the mid to late 1970s, Kraftwerk were far from the musical mainstream - and yet it is impossible now to imagine the history of popular music without them. Today, Kraftwerk are considered to be an essential part of pop's DNA, alongside artists like the Beatles, the Velvet Underground, and Little Richard. Kraftwerk's immediate influence might have been on a generation of synth-based bands (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, the Human League, Depeche Mode, Yello, et al), but their influence on the emerging dance culture in urban America has proved longer lasting and more decisive. This collection of original essays looks at Kraftwerk - their legacy and influence - from a variety of angles, and demonstrates persuasively and coherently that however you choose to define their art, it's impossible to underestimate the ways in which it predicted and shaped the future.

NB1: The downloadable pdf file is a longer and corrected version of the book chapter. References section and www links updated in 4 November 2014.

NB2: Some brand new stock copies of the book still available from me. Price including worldwide shipping is 25.00 €.  Payment by PayPal or bank transfer (within the EU) only.

The use of digital tools to produce, reproduce and listen to the music have revolutionized the traditional relationships between composer (or musician), performer, producer and listener. In this paper, I try to draw up the historical development of digitalization of the three phases that articulate the music experience (production, reproduction, listening) today, with some considerations about the aesthetic implications related to these processes. 1. Premessa La pervasività della dimensione digitale è uno dei tratti specifici della contemporaneità, la quale, da tale pervasività, è stata plasmata in molti suoi aspetti. L'esistenza quotidiana si sviluppa lungo percorsi di-gitali più o meno impervi, più o meno comprensibili, dei quali si ha più o meno consapevolezza. Si tratta del risultato di un'evoluzione, dura-ta alcuni decenni e ancora in corso, che ha visto intersecarsi e so-vrapporsi linee di ricerca diverse, molte delle quali convergenti verso due obiettivi principali: la smaterializzazione e la rapidità dei processi, producendo una profonda e radicale trasformazione nel rapporto uomo-uomo e uomo-mondo. Le nuove tecnologie, di fatto, affermano e confermano l'uscita da un doppio paradigma del XX secolo, quello che intende la tecnica come un mezzo per supplire alle carenze adattive umane e quello che concepisce la tecnica come protesi o come appendice, in qualche 1 g.fronzi@hotmail.com.

The illustrated booklet describes and introduces projects presented at ‘The Bible in Translation’ exhibition of visual and sound works, the School of Art Gallery, Aberystwyth University, February 16 – Mar 20, 2015, and on a double CD of the same name and associated websites of sound works released by the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales in 2016.

'The Bible in Translation' is the third project in 'The Pictorial Bible' series (following 'Settings of the Psalms', 2000 and 'Seal up the Vision and Prophecy', 2007) and the second project in The Aural Bible series (following 'R R B V E Ǝ T N Ƨ O A', 2015). The project investigates ways in which texts from, commentaries upon, and cultural articulations of, the Judaeo-Christian Bible can be transformed into visual and aural representations. The printed, spoken, and heard word is subjected to a hermeneutical process that deploys systems of codification, excision, and redaction, and techniques of collage, superimposition, and abstraction. By these means, the source material yields significances, connections, and resonances that are not ordinarily evident. The objective is to produce an ‘anti-image’: one that is shaped and delimited as much by Judaeo-Christianity’s theology of God’s invisibility, aniconicism, and the exigencies of scripture (as understood by Calvinist exegesis) as by formal and abstract visual values.3 Thus, in keeping with the Protestant principle of the primacy of Scripture, the biblical texts serve as the terminus a quo for the visual and aural artefacts.

While being the primary mode of interaction with mainstream digital musical instruments, the knob has been greatly overlooked in its potential for innovation. In this paper, we aim to open up the thinking about new possibilities for the knob. Based on an analysis of the background of the knob and the relevant theory on interaction, three directives are formulated to guide the design of a new breed of knobs. Six prototypes are tested through an AttrakDiff questionnaire and Discourse Analysis. It is shown that the proposed new breed of knobs has stronger hedonic qualities than knobs of mainstream digital musical instruments, though the pragmatic quality appears lower. The strongest improvement is seen in stimulation, an important factor in enticing investment to play, and as such, more expressive control. Through using three directives, a new generation of knobs can be made that would improve the expressive affordances of digital musical instruments.

Introduzione alla figura di Paolo Ketoff e ad aspetti tencici, estetici e storici della produzione del Synket, il primo sintetizzatore portatile prodotto in Europa per l'American Academy in Rome nel 1965. Con l'epistolario di Paolo Ketoff comprendente, tra gli altri, carteggi con John Eaton, John Cage, Franco Donatoni.

Pertti Grönholmin artikkeli ”Musiikkityöläisten elektroninen puutarha. Kraftwerk-yhtyeen Kling Klang -studio myöhäismodernina utopiana” keskittyy 1900-luvun jälkipuolen vaikutusvaltaisimman saksalaisen pop-yhtyeen studion kehitys- ja merkityshistoriaan. Grönholm tarkastelee Kling Klang -studiota suhteessa 1900-luvun alkupuolen käsityksiin tekniikan ja taiteen yhteydestä sekä suhteessa luovien edelläkävijöiden muodostamiin kollektiiveihin, etenkin saksalaiseen Bauhaus- ja neuvostoliittolaiseen Vhutemas -taidekouluun. Kraftwerk paitsi inspiroitui 1920-1950-lukujen modernismista musiikissa ja kuvataiteissa, myös tavoitteli jonkinlaista utooppista tilaa ja yhteisöllisyyttä omassa toiminnassaan. Tai ainakin tällaisen kuvan yhtyeen perustajat halusivat antaa; studio ei ollut Kraftwerkin jäsenille vain treenikämppä ja äänistysstudio, vaan ”elektroninen puutarha”, jossa muusikot yhdessä musikaalisten koneiden kanssa kasvattivat ideoita, teoskonsepteja, kuvia, ääniä, melodioita ja rytmejä. Grönholm kuvaa toistaiseksi huonosti tunnetun Kling Klang -studion kehitysvaiheita ja pohtii sitä, miten studio vastasi yhtyeen jäsenten odotuksia ja ihanteita ja miksi konseptin luomisvoima ehtyi 1980-luvulla.

Στη σημερινή εποχή, τα παιδιά μεγαλώνουν σε ένα ψηφιακό περιβάλλον το οποίο διαμορφώνει τις μουσικές εμπειρίες τους. Οι παραδοσιακές ωστόσο μουσικοπαιδαγωγικές μέθοδοι, έχοντας σχεδιαστεί πολλές δεκαετίες πριν, δεν ενσωματώνουν νέες τεχνολογίες και την χρήση ηλεκτρονικών ήχων ή οργάνων στο περιεχόμενό τους, με αποτέλεσμα ένα βασικό τμήμα των μουσικών προτιμήσεων των παιδιών να μην εκφράζεται. Κατά καιρούς, έχουν σχεδιαστεί εικονικά όργανα, η πλειονότητα των οποίων αποτελεί μία αναπαράσταση ακουστικών οργάνων, χωρίς μουσικοπαιδαγωγικές ορίζουσες ή να λαμβάνουν υπόψη τις δυνατότητες της σύγχρονης τεχνολογίας. Σκοπός του παρόντος άρθρου αποτελεί η παρουσίαση του Synth4kids, μίας πρωτότυπης μουσικής διαδικτυακής εφαρμογής, για παιδιά 5 έως 8 ετών. Πρόκειται για ένα εικονικό συνθεσάιζερ προσανατολισμένο στη μουσική διδασκαλία-μάθηση, ενσωματώνοντας στοιχεία από το περιεχόμενο των παραδοσιακών μουσικοπαιδαγωγικών μεθόδων (Dalcroze Eurhythmics, Kodály Method, Orff Schulwerk). Η εφαρμογή είναι συμβατή με όλα τα λειτουργικά συστήματα, αξιοποιώντας τους αισθητήρες των συσκευών tablet και προσφέροντας νέες κιναισθητικές εμπειρίες. Μπορεί να χρησιμοποιηθεί σε συνδυασμό με ακουστικά όργανα παρέχοντας διευρυμένες δυνατότητες για ηχητικό πειραματισμό, ανάπτυξη αυτοσχεδιασμού και γνωριμία των παιδιών με τις αρχές της ηλεκτρονικής μουσικής.

When people use a new technique, they are often unable at first to bring out its strengths and take advantage of its unique characteristics because they unwittingly limit the ways they use it to conform to their past experience.  Our attempts to realize the musical potentials of microcomputers are often molded by concepts we have inherited from three of its predecessors: written instrumental music, analog synthesizers, and large mainframe computer music systems.

This paper discusses the work of the Prisma project, which happened between 1984 and 1987 and whose main purpose was to introduce synthesizers and MIDI technologies to the tradition called música popular brasileira (‘Brazilian popular music’; the anacronym ‘MPB’ is widely used as well) as a significant purpose of their work, by making extensive use of state-of-the-art technology and introducing electronic sounds (including sound effects) and music sequencers in their studio and onstage performances. Unlike those involved in the making of funk carioca in Rio de Janeiro and technobrega in Northern Brazil some years later, most of the Prisma participants were established professionals who had been working with acoustic or electromechanical instruments for a decade or more when the project started. Since electronic musical instruments were rare in Brazil in the eighties and MPB comprised a long-standing controversy about musical Brazilianness (including the use of imported electric and electronic instruments) and a portion of Prisma’s music was influenced by the use of technology in the studio and onstage as much as borrowing from experimental electronic music and electronic dance music, it proposes a question: can the music recorded and performed during the project be called a hybrid or does it integrally belong MPB? Looking for an answer, it refers to ethnomusicological works and literature on hybridity in popular music to explore the antagonism between electronic music and tradition in Brazilian music in the seventies and eighties.

Karlheinz Stockhausen embraced the potential of electronic music to generate new timbres and acoustic typologies early in his career. After first experimenting with magnetic tape in works such as Gesang der Jünglinge (1955) and Kontakte (1958–60), he later embraced other synthesis technologies for the production of large-scale spatial electro-acoustic works such as Sirius (1970) and Oktophonie (1990–91). His interest in technological advances in sound design and sound diffusion also managed to penetrate his highly evolved Klavierstücke.

A system for providing ultra low phase noise frequency synthesizers using Fractional-N PLL (Phase Lock Loop), Sampling Reference PLL and DDS (Direct Digital Synthesizer). Modern day advanced communication systems comprise frequency synthesizers that provide a frequency output signal to other parts of the transmitter and receiver so as to enable the system to operate at the set frequency band. The performance of the frequency synthesizer determines the performance of the communication link. Current days advanced communication systems comprises single loop Frequency synthesizers which are not completely able to provide lower phase deviations for errors (For 256 QAM the practical phase deviation for no errors is 0.4-0.5°) which would enable users to receive high data rate. This proposed system overcomes deficiencies of current generation state of the art communication systems by providing much lower level of phase deviation error which would result in much higher modulation schemes and high data rate.

Presented as part of the School of the Arts and Media, UNSW Seminar series, October 2018

The Australian sampler and synthesiser Fairlight CMI was released to market in 1979, and went on to shape much of popular culture, adopted by music icons such as Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Stevie Wonder and Herbie Handcock, and was used in soundtracks including Liquid Sky, Full Metal Jacket, Tron and The Never-Ending Story. Although its impact on the cultural landscape is formidable, this tells us little of what it means to have a relationship with this machine as it stands now. So, celebrating the recent restoration of UNSW’s own Series II Fairlight CMI, today’s seminar explores both the lineage of and encounter with this instrument from the peripheries of its reception.

Nicole Saintilan contextualises this instrument in relation to the constellation of machines that surround the Fairlight CMI. Isabella Loong presents her new work Circuit and explores Fairlight composition through the lens of Kate Bush. Adam Hulbert reconsiders the implications of the Fairlight’s notorious two-second ‘orchestra stab’ presets.

"[per abstract esteso in italiano, v. sotto]

My Ph.D. research focuses on the interactions between electroacoustic avant-garde music and the production of sound and music for films in Italy during the 1960s. I contribute to shed new light on the electronic activity of well-known composers such as Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota, as well as on the activity of less-known pioneers of Italian electronic experimentation, namely composers Gino Marinuzzi jr. and Vittorio Gelmetti, and sound engineer Paolo Ketoff; I underline the intense activity of American composers resident in Rome at that time such as John Eaton and Musica Elettronica Viva, through the survey of new documents regarding the foundation of the tape lab of the American Academy in Rome. I track the origin and the role of two of the first European synthesizers, Fonosynth and Synket, fundamental both for Italian cinematic sound production and electronic avant-garde.

La mia tesi di dottorato di ricerca analizza da una duplice prospettiva storica ed estetica le  interazioni tra la musica elettroacustica e il cinema in Italia negli anni ’60. È strutturata in quattro capitoli ai quali segue una sezione di appendici documentarie.
Il primo capitolo, dedicato alla ricostruzione storica dell’ambiente musicale e cinematografico di Roma negli anni ’60, ruota intorno alla difficoltà di individuare, relativamente all’esperienza elettroacustica, un confine netto tra aree d’azione rispettivamente dell’avanguardia e della committenza messa in atto dal cinema nei confronti del mondo musicale. Si arriva a ipotizzare una sostanziale comunanza di radici tra post-produzione cinematografica e sperimentazione per quel che riguarda l’introduzione e lo sviluppo delle tecnologie elettroacustiche, che nella fattispecie sono individuate in due sintetizzatori artigianali – il Fonosynth e il Synket – progettati e realizzati dal compositore Gino Marinuzzi jr. e dall’ingegnere Paolo Ketoff.
Il secondo capitolo, attraverso l’analisi delle funzioni che i sintetizzatori rivestono nelle pratiche di sonorizzazione cinematografica romana, porta in evidenza i tratti fondamentali del dibattito che investe questioni generali della riflessione musicale dell’avanguardia romana di quel periodo (dinamiche di organizzazione del suono, concetto di rumore, rapporto suono/sorgente, concetto di spazio sonoro) e li mette in collisione con il parallelo processo di ripensamento del suono filmico. Viene analizzata la significativa esperienza teorica e compositiva di Vittorio Gelmetti.
Il terzo capitolo pone la questione del travaso di stilemi elettroacustici dal medium musicale al medium cinematografico, individuando alla base una trasposizione da un “livello di cultura”  alto a uno medio (Eco 1964).*  Viene ridiscussa e superata la nozione di cliché che lega il suono elettroacustico cinematografico a situazioni topiche narrative di tipo fantascientifico e/o di devianza psico-sociale, per compiere un excursus storico sull’affermazione, nell’immaginario cinematografico, di “tropi sonori” legati all’introduzione del suono fonografico dall’inizio del Novecento agli anni ’60.
Il quarto capitolo individua le caratteristiche drammaturgiche e semantiche che il suono elettroacustico assume nel cinema italiano degli anni ’60, rilevando come esso funzioni generalmente come elemento di dinamismo, configurando momenti d’instabilità narrativa tra opposti poli situazionali. Esso si pone semanticamente in relazione feconda con una categoria filosofica particolarmente rappresentativa del sistema socio-culturale degli anni ’60, decodificata da Jean Baudrillard: l’automatismo.  La parte finale formula proposte di percorsi critici e analitici, isolando quattro esperienze autoriali che rappresentano altrettante vie di sviluppo di una triangolazione instauratasi tra ricerca scientifica (in particolare campo cibernetico), sperimentazione musicale e rappresentazione cinematografica.
L’apparato documentario racchiude, tra le altre cose, una lunga intervista al tecnico del suono Federico Savina, memoria storica della postproduzione cinematografica italiana e un catalogo ragionato delle musiche per film di Gino Marinuzzi jr.

* Umbero Eco, "Cultura di massa e 'livelli' di cultura", in Id., "Apocalittici e integrati. Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa", Milano: Bompiani, 1964."

Since the beginnings of western media culture, sound synthesis has played a major role in articulating cultural notions of the fantastic and the uncanny. As a counterpart to sound reproduction, sound synthesis operated in the interstices of the original/copy correspondence and prefigured the construction of a virtual reality through the generation of novel sounds apparently lacking any equivalent with the acoustic world. Experiments on synthetic sound crucially intersected cinema’s transition to synchronous sound in the late 1920s, thus configuring a particularly fertile scenario for the redefinition of narrative paradigms and the establishment of conventions for sound film production. Sound synthesis can thus be viewed as a structuring device of such film genres as horror and science fiction, whose codification depended on the constitution of synchronized sound film. More broadly, sound synthesis challenged the basic implications of realism based on the rendering of speech and the ...

The history of early electronic music in Italy in the 1950s and 1960s is usually associated with the constitution of the Studio di Fonologia in Milan, where key-figures of the international avant-garde scene such as Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna and Luigi Nono operated. Although the production of the Studio was deeply interweaved with the demands for ‘functional’ music for radio and television by the RAI (the national broadcasting company that had supported and hosted the Studio’s constitution), the development of electronic sound experimentation in contemporary Italian cinema followed a parallel and partially autonomous path, for it was tied to the activity of composers and postproduction companies gravitating around Cinecittà in Rome.

My paper presents the results of my research on the Fonosynth, a pioneering handcrafted modular synthesizer, whose role was crucial in establishing the vocabulary and conventions of electronic film-music and in reconfiguring the sound ‘production chain’ of early 1960s’ Italian cinema. Developed between 1958 and 1962 by composer Gino Marinuzzi Jr., the Fonosynth’s characteristic sonic nuance can be tracked in several films and television programs in which Marinuzzi participated either as the main composer or as an added postproduction figure. Drawing on the study of archival files (including Marinuzzi’s personal collection of tapes) and on a series of interviews which I conducted with direct witnesses, I analyse the variety and recurrence of the synthesizer’s sound patterns in films, and interpret them as a new layer of the cinematic imagination in response to the mutating technological scenario of the period.

Graphical interpolation systems provide a simple mechanism for the control of sound synthesis by providing a level of abstraction above the engine parameters, allowing users to explore different sounds without awareness of the underlying details. Typically, a graphical interpolator presents the user with a two-dimensional pane where a number of synthesizer presets, each representing a collection of synthesis parameter values, can be located. Moving an interpolation cursor within the pane results in the calculation of new parameter values, based on its position, the relative locations of the presets, and the mathematical interpolation function, thus generating new sounds. These systems supply users with two sensory modalities in the form of sonic output and visual feedback from the interface. A number of graphical interpolator systems have been developed over the years, with a variety of user-interface designs, but few have been subject to formal user evaluation. Our testing studied ...

Since the beginnings of western media culture, sound synthesis has played a major role in articulating cultural notions of the fantastic and the uncanny. As a counterpart to sound reproduction, sound synthesis operated in the interstices of the original/copy correspondence and prefigured the construction of a virtual reality through the generation of novel sounds apparently lacking any equivalent with the acoustic world. Experiments on synthetic sound crucially intersected cinema’s transition to synchronous sound in the late 1920s, thus configuring a particularly fertile scenario for the redefinition of narrative paradigms and the establishment of conventions for sound film production. Sound synthesis can thus be viewed as a structuring device of such film genres as horror and science fiction, whose codification depended on the constitution of synchronized sound film. More broadly, sound synthesis challenged the basic implications of realism based on the rendering of speech and the ...

While being the primary mode of interaction with mainstream digital musical instruments, the knob has been greatly overlooked in its potential for innovation. In this paper, we aim to open up the thinking about new possibilities for the knob. Based on an analysis of the background of the knob and the relevant theory on interaction, three directives are formulated to guide the design of a new breed of knobs. Six prototypes are tested through an AttrakDiff questionnaire and Discourse Analysis. It is shown that the proposed new breed of knobs has stronger hedonic qualities than knobs of mainstream digital musical instruments, though the pragmatic quality appears lower. The strongest improvement is seen in stimulation, an important factor in enticing investment to play, and as such, more expressive control. Through using three directives, a new generation of knobs can be made that would improve the expressive affordances of digital musical instruments.

Pierre Jodlowski est un compositeur magnétique autant qu’aimanté (qui aime comme la Mante Religieuse, j’imagine) à Toulouse qui attire à lui d’autres tant compositeurs qu’interprètes pour une musique electronisée qui défriserait un grizzly des Montagnes Rocheuses, sans parler d’un Yéti de l’Himalaya. Il ne le fait pas exprès mais il le fait bel et bien. Il croise de nombreuses traditions, en particulier dans la galaxie jazz, avec la musique minimaliste américaine et une électronique déphasée, déjantée et même dévoyée pour produire un monde musical qui dérange les méninges, un peu, mais surtout déstabilise les hormones de quiconque en a encore quelques-unes en réserve. Il faut toujours avoir quelques hormones chez soi.

In den Tier- und Wissenschaftsfilmen Jean Painlevés verwischen die Grenzen zwischen Empirie und Poesie, zwischen Traum und Wirklichkeit. Wie die Surrealisten ins Unbewusste eindringen,  dringt er in die exotisch bunte Welt der Meeresgeschöpfe vor, bestaunt ihr Geschlechts- und Fortpflanzungsverhalten, zeichnet mit Jazz und elektronischer Musik die "aquatic gestures" nach.

At the crossroads of sounds of the past and the future. The adoption of synthesizers into Finnish rock and pop in the 1970's and 1980's. (Article in Finnish only)

Abstract in English

In Finnish popular music, the adoption of electronic musical instruments, such as synthesizers, drum machines, sequencers, samplers, computers and musical software progressed slowly and was a complicated process until the early 1990's. Compared with Swedish, German and British pop and rock the electronic instruments remained longer in the margins of rock and pop rock. Regardless of the breakthrough of synths and drum machines in certain styles, such as progressive rock, funk and disco, synth pop and hip hop, the majority of Finnish bands and artists shunned synthesizers until the mid-1980's. Only after the waves of hip hop, house, techno and euro dance in the late 1980's and early 1990's, synthesizers were widely accepted as ‘normal’ and equal rock instruments.

In this article, I focus on the adoption of music technology among Finnish rock and pop musicians of the 1970's and 1980's. I have interviewed three electronic musicians from three different generations. Esa Kotilainen (b. 1946), Pekka Tolonen (b.1957) and Tommi Lindell (b.1966) have all witnessed several turns in the emergence of electronic musical instruments. They have also experienced various changes regarding the accessibility and acceptability of synthesizers. In Finland, they are known as the early adopters and intensive users of the musical electronics.

In the first section of the article I ask, when and how electronic musical instruments became more popular in Finland and how they were adopted and used in progressive rock, new wave, synth pop, goth rock and mainstream pop. I also frame an overview on the adoption of synthesizers in Finnish pop and rock. The section also parallels the developments with Finnish schlager (in Finnish: iskelmä) and disco, where synthesizers were intensively used by a handful of composers and producers in the late 1970's and early 1980's. In this section, I primarily utilized published interviews and magazine articles supplemented with a small selection of musical release reviews and synthesizer advertisements.

The next three sections follow my observations and conclusions which primarily stem from the interviews with three above-mentioned musicians. I also utilize some additional interviews with other musicians. I inquired how the interviewees encountered electronic instruments, how they have used their instruments and how the early adoption of synthesizers has contributed to their understanding of sound and music. Furthermore, we discussed on the impact of the electronic instruments on their musicianship, career and the regeneration of their professional image. Regarding the ‘synthesizer turns’ in the history of Finnish pop and rock I invited the interviewees to recall the response displayed by their fellow musicians, producers and the audience.

In the concluding section, I sum up my observations. One of them is that in Finland electronic musical instruments seem to gain in popularity in jumps which coincide not only with international pop trends but also with some major technological developments and the waves of marketing. This is not unexpected by any means, but it makes an interesting case in Finland. While the more advanced and more affordable synthesizers of the period 1980–83 marked the final breakthrough of electronic instruments in Western pop and rock, in Finland only a couple of tens of musicians adopted synthesizers as their primary instruments. Furthermore, in Finland only a handful of fully or almost fully electronic bands emerged in the early 1980's. All of them remained short-lived. Only some of the most popular teeny pop bands of the early and mid-1980's adopted synthesizers as their main keyboards.

The accelerated marketing cycles of synthesizers provoked suspicion among some Finnish musicians; synthesizers could be left aside as novelty gimmicks and earmarks of a momentary trend. One reason for denouncing the ‘synths’ in the 1980's mainstream rock may have been the developing ‘Suomi-rock’ (Finnish rock), a down-to-earth, nationally and locally rooted style which got a heavy dose of influence from Finnish folk and the long tradition of Finnish schlager. One extra reason for a rocker in keeping off synthesizers was the extensive use of electronic musical instruments in Finnish light pop and schlager in the early 1980's. However, in the late 1980's it became audible that synthesizers had survived and were welcomed in the margins of rock, pop and especially within the emerging new styles of electronic dance music.

In 1989, Forrest Warthman, an engineer/technical writer based in Palo Alto, attended a concert of Merce Cunningham Dance Company at UC Berkeley. Not knowing much about experimental music that was the Company’s trademark, Warthman was nonetheless struck by a musician who sat amidst a myriad of electronic devices, manipulating them in an intricate manner. This was David Tudor, a long-time musician for the Cunningham Company, who was once hailed as the foremost pianist of new music (most notably as the performer of John Cage’s works), but had left his instrument to become a composer of electronic music in the late 1960s. During the intermission Warthman approached Tudor and proposed to build a computer system that would integrate the proliferation of his electronic devices. Tudor was intrigued. Over the course of next three years, the initial plan of an integrating computer turned into something quite different: a synthesizer which operated on an analog neural-network chip (80170NX) recently developed by Mark Holler at Intel. Tudor subsequently used this ‘neural-network synthesizer’ to create his last major work “Neural Synthesis.” This paper presents a detailed study of Warthman’s instrument and Tudor’s composition, based on interviews with Warthman and others related to the project, analysis of Tudor’s notes stored at the Getty Research Institute, and examination of the actual synthesizer archived at Wesleyan University. It surveys the peculiarities of the neural-network synthesizer in relation to Tudor’s well-known dislike for commercial synthesizers and von Neumann computers. Through an analysis of Tudor’s distinct approach to the synthesizer, which incorporated a curious use of a thermal noise in the circuitry that Warthman had initially attempted to remove, the paper explores the nebulous line between the ‘instrument’ and the ‘composition,’ against the backdrop of an idiosyncratic goal that Tudor had set for his music since the early 1970s: “to discover an instrument as a natural object.”

Prolific organist and pianist Korla Pandit achieved televisual fame from 1949 through the 1970s with shows such as Korla Pandit’s Adventures in Music (1949-1951), and enjoyed several revivals until his death in 1998. An eponymous website now serves as a meeting point for his cult following. Timothy Taylor is the only scholar to have published about Pandit, and his first footnote dismisses as urban legend one of the most fascinating stories about him – Pandit’s ability to hypnotize suburban housewives as he played the organ and piano onscreen, staring intently into the camera and thus into homes across the country. However, an article by R.J. Smith published two years later in Los Angeles Magazine revealed the untruth of a greater premise Taylor himself, along with the rest of the country, had taken for granted. Pandit had not been born to a Brahmin priest and a French opera singer in New Delhi as was commonly believed. He had been born John Roland Redd to black parents in Columbia, Missouri.

The stories we tell ourselves about Korla Pandit in an era of online streaming television are as important as the genealogical facts of his heritage and “evidence” of his cultural significance. Such stories show us how we position ourselves relative to race, mass media, gender, and belief in the twenty- first century. Like “imagined propaganda” that Allied civilians claimed to hear on the radio during World War II that was never actually broadcast, these stories reflect what we want to believe back at us – which was Pandit’s trick all along. Amidst utopian political rhetoric of a postracial society, increasing interest in the cultural implications of new media, popular images of economically and sexually liberated women, and urban revival and suburban decay, we imagine our self-awareness in sharp contrast to a not-so-distant past in which the mystical exotic still had supernatural power, a gullible media sensationalized false racial difference, naïve audiences were blind to the mediated nature of television, and white suburban housewives were enthralled by what we would just as soon dismiss as camp today. The case of Jose Alvarez, the famed spiritual “channeler” of Carlos sensationalized by the mass media, will blur the sharp contrast between post-World War II and post-Gulf War America that Pandit stories uphold. Starting the late 80s, Alvarez convinced thousands of people live and on television that he was “channeling” the 2,000-year-old spirit of Carlos, when in fact he was improvising the role of a Hispanic-sounding character. Pandit, forbidden by his director to speak onscreen, won his own believers without a word (and died claiming he was over 2,000 years old). The desire of Alvarez’s and Pandit’s audiences to believe in a truly extra-ordinary ethnic Other helped both performers succeed.