Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |
Subject: Dead Media Working Note 10.8
Dead medium: the Mark II RCA Sound Synthesizer
From: kadrey_AT_well.com (Richard Kadrey)
Source: Peter Esmonde and Howard Mandel on the Discovery
website. (((Sadly, an attempt to verify this text now
receives the all-too-common "URL Not Found On This
Server," a serious structural drawback to web-based
research. Still, the material is of value and seems
rather better than the standard superficial coverage found
in most popular books on early electronic music. ==
bruces)))
RCA engineers Harry Olsen and Herbert Belar began research
on a "sound synthesizer" in the 1940s. Their goal: to
create a machine that could churn out pop hits! The RCA
engineers spent the first years of research analyzing the
songs of Stephen Foster in a futile attempt to get the
machine to compose new tunes. If nothing else, their early
research shows just how wrongheaded scientific attempts to
reproduce the creative process can be.
Older and wiser, Olsen and Belar finally demonstrated
their first synthesizer in 1956; like a player piano, it
used punch-coded paper tape to generate a series of
familiar sounds. A much-improved second machine == the
Mark II RCA Sound Synthesizer == could produce virtually
any waveform. Its components (which filled an entire room)
were completely modular, so users could reconfigure the
bulky system as they pleased. The engineers enjoyed
playing renditions of everything from "The Old Folks at
Home" to Bach fugues on the oversized unit, but Milton
Babbitt's extraordinary synthesizer compositions showed
that the Mark II could do more than crank out old
favorites.
The bulky RCA contraption remained the only
synthesizer in existence until the mid-1960s, when
engineer Robert Moog designed and constructed a modular
system of voltage-controlled oscillators, amplifiers,
filters, and sequencers. The Moog synthesizer sparked a
slew of arcane, psychedelic works == and changed how
commercial and art music, soundtracks, and scores would
sound forevermore.
By the late 1960s, the new electronic vocabulary
grew tired. What first seemed like an "infinitude of
possibilities" began to look like a high-tech dead end.
The novelty was wearing off.
1996 Discovery Communications, Inc
Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |