RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer at Columbia U. CMC

Over the past couple of days I posted some pictures of the Buchla Series 100, and mentioned to at least one person that my photos of the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer at the Computer Music Center are much better than the one on Wikipedia, I was requested to post them.

So here are a few that happen to be accessible without going into my archives. In other words, they are on my laptop computer rather than stored on a remote drive at home. These were taken about a year ago, when I was at the CMC for a shoot that included the pictures here, and those I posted yesterday of the Buchla Series 100.

Rumor has it that the last time someone switched it on, the power in Prentis Hall went off. I can believe it, but I don't think it was because of a short or a defective tube or expired capacitor, or any such thing, but rather the machine reaching out from the past to make sure it stays dormant until such time as its power to inspire is needed again. I can imagine the aroma of ionized dust that would've filled the room.

Pictured with the machine are three awesome folk: Brad Garton, director of the CMC; Terry Pender, assoc. director of the CMC; and Douglas Repetto, director of research at the CMC. They are all outstanding artists, excellent teachers and nice folk.

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Buchla Series 100 synthesizer at the CMC

After yesterday's post, I saw on a friend's Facebook that there's a Kickstarter campaign for a Buchla Documentary. Terrific and coincidental! If ever the work of someone now not so well remembered deserves to be documented on film, it's Don Buchla.

So, I dug through my archives and found these photos taken about a year ago at the Columbia University Computer Music Center of their Buchla Series 100 Modular Electronic Music System, feature Brad Garton and Terry Pender at the controls.

Now, I'm not going to tell you the biography of Don Buchla, nor share a chronology of the musical instruments he and his company created. You can get that information elsewhere. I'm just going to share a couple or six pictures of the Buchla Series 100 in all of its knob and socket glory, complete with patch cords dangling here and there. 

 I guess you could start to search the web for lots more details on these devices, and learn about what made them special, about the difficulties of using them and their limitations, but these are the electronic music equivalent of a Sopwith Camel compared to today's F-35. And as that WWI biplane, shot its share of Fokker's out of the skies,  the Buchla shot down a lot of preconceptions about how to make musical sounds

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Miller Puckette at the Computer Music Center at Columbia Univ. 2/28/2013

I've been bad. Now I'm going to try to be good. I've fallen behind on all the projects I meant to post and I don't have a good excuse, just a lot of good photos waiting to be selected, edited and displayed.

Anyway, Miller Puckette is both a musician who works with technology and a technologist who woks with music. He marries the two and makes things worth listening to. As it turns out, he's worth listening to even when he's not making music but talking about it.

Here's a link to the event at the Computer Music Center. He's under the rubric "Miller Puckette @ CMC". There's no permalink.

I took a few photos of him and some of the people who were there to hear him. My apologies to Brad Garton and Terry Pender, who were sitting right in front of me, so I couldn't get shots of them.

Eric Lyon was there. If you know who he is, he's in New York City for a few months: go hear his music. If you don't know who he is, that's an even better reason to go hear him.

 If you know anything about the history of music synthesizers, you might recognize the Buchla synthesizer back there. I don't know how many of them there still exist but there's a rumor about special coatings used in the ones with the red panel. I feel good that I got it into these pictures.

Oh yeah, the 

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There was a women's clothing store located in the building that dominates the west side of Madison Ave. between E. 41st and E. 42nd Streets. It's gone now. Today more gone than yesterday. It was what they call a "pop-up" store - meant only to exist at that location for a brief time before fading from memory.

A few photos taken on Madison Ave. in the winter, in the evening.

This is something new for me - well, different anyway. Shooting in dim and low light conditions isn't exactly new. Pushing it on myself is. There's no doubt I want to explore the textures that show up in the image - the noise, the softening of outlines, the blending of the shadows, the background and the foreground. The details seem mysterious.

Thoughts appreciated.

a meetup with Karen Lillis: the small press librarian @ The Sidewalk Cafe , NYC

Saturday Afternoon at the Sidewalk Cafe - a meetup with Karen Lillis: the small press librarian.

The notice went out: Karen Lillis was in town, and if anyone wanted to say hi, talk literature, the current state of small press publishing an the difference between living the literary life in Pittsburgh vs. NY, show up at 4PM or so at the bar at Sidewalk Cafe in the East Village.

They've got a great happy-hour at the Sidewalk, and the bartender at that time of the day is Lindsay, a professional at her job, who can mix a very tasty Manhattan while keeping the bar in order.

About seven or eight people came by, most but not all Unbearables. The conversation was lively and ultimately drew in several bystanders, curious about this lively bunch of folk.

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