Dead
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Subject: Dead Media Working Note 10.9
Dead medium: the Mark II RCA Sound Synthesizer
From: kadrey_AT_well.com (Richard Kadrey)
Source: Peter Forrest
http://www.musicians-net.co.uk/Mix/Analogue.html
Electronic Music Synthesizer
Mark I:1952 - 1957
Mark II:1957 - early 70s.
Users included: Milton Babbitt, Luciano Berio, Charles
Wuorinen (1970 winner of the Pulitzer Prize with a piece
called "Time's Encomium").
* As much a digital sequencer as an analogue synthesiser,
it was designed by Harry Olson and Herbert Belar at the
RCA lab in Princeton.
* Mark I had 12 fixed tuning-fork-based oscillators in
equal temperament, whose frequency could be divided down
to produce different octaves. Originally, tracks were
recorded onto disc (up to six at once, replayed by six
styli). The whole thing took up seven tall 19" racks.
* Mark II had an additional twenty-four variable
oscillators, and took up ten 19" racks. It used a multi-
track tape machine to record completed tracks.
* Both machines used punched paper rolls to program the
synthesiser/sequencer in binary code, with four columns of
dots for each parameter giving sixteen possibilities ==
the first column being worth 1, the next 2, the next 4,
and the last 8. There were control sections for Frequency,
Octave, Envelope, Timbre and Volume. The paper roll, 38 cm
wide, moved at about 10 cm/sec, and could cope with
sixteen holes in 10 cm == making a maximum bpm of 240.
Longer notes were composed of individual holes, but with a
mechanism which made the note sustain through till the
last hole.
* Attack times were variable from 1 ms to 2 sec, and decay
times from 4 ms to 19 sec.
* High and low pass filtering was available, along with
noise, glissando, tremolo, and patchable resonance and
attenuation sections, both giving millions of possible
settings.
* In 1959, the Mark II was moved to the Columbia-Princeton
Electronic Music Center.
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 |