His inventions were prized for the flexibility and richness of the sounds they produced and the possibilities they suggested. Mr. Buchla disliked the term “synthesizer,” which suggested to him a synthetic imitation of existing sounds. The instrument was named the "Buchla 100 series Modular Electronic Music System," and was installed at the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1965 and moved to Mills College in 1966. Subotnick completed his first major electronic work, Silver Apples Of The Moon, with another unit that Buchla had built and shipped to New York.
He was best known for the many devices he designed for his own company, Buchla and Associates. But in a far-ranging career, he also helped build (and sometimes ran) the Grateful Dead’s sound system in the 1960s, worked on NASA projects and devised early transistorized hearing aids and navigation devices for the blind.
On the East Coast, Mr. Moog built synthesizers that could be played from a keyboard, a configuration that working musicians found familiar and practical. Mr. Buchla, in San Francisco, wanted instruments that were not necessarily tied to Western scales or existing keyboard techniques. To encourage unconventional thinking, his early instruments deliberately omitted a keyboard.
“A keyboard is dictatorial,” he said. “When you’ve got a black-and-white keyboard, it’s hard to play anything but keyboard music.”
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| Buchla 200. |
While the modules of Moog synthesizers had straightforward names out of electrical engineering — oscillators to generate tones, filters to modify them — Mr. Buchla’s instruments had modules with more colorful names, like Multiple Arbitrary Function Generator, Quad Dynamics Manager and, for his random-voltage noise generator, Source of Uncertainty. The Buchla 200 series Electric Music Box replaced the previous model in 1970 and represented a significant advance in technology. Almost every parameter can be controlled from an external control voltage.
In the mid 1970s, Buchla became the first synth manufacturer to experiment with computer control. The result, the System 500, used a very expensive PDP-11 minicomputer (microprocessors were not commercially available yet), and was largely confined to academic institutions. This became something of a trend for Buchla, and the relative lack of exposure for Buchla instruments in popular music resulted Buchla's name being much less known to the public than competitors such as Moog and ARP. Throughout the '70s and early '80s, Buchla continued to release groundbreaking synths which were something of a trade secret for electronic-music insiders, although some Bay Area musicians did use Buchlas in more accessible music, Suzanne Ciani being one example. Because of this, Buchla often did not receive his due at the time for his efforts.
Buchla never really got on board with digital synthesis methods, so as analog lost popularity in the late '80s, he withdrew from synth design and turned to designing alternative MIDI controllers. A series of devices named Thunder, Lightning, Wind, etc., allowed performers to generate MIDI data using hand and body gestures. A collaboration with Bob Moog brought about the Piano Bar, released in 2002 and sold by Moog (and still in production). During this period, Buchla also became interested in the possibilities of applying electronic-music technology to enhancing human communication and aiding handicapped people. He developed a number of mobility and communication aids, and also worked on physiological telemetry systems for use in hospitals and aerospace applications.
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