So there I was at 9, my first chance to go out and buy an LP with my own money, and I bought Switched-On Bach by Walter Carlos (I was an odd kid). I'd heard it at a friend's house and fallen in love with it - it's a painstaking labour of love, Bach's music played on a Moog synthesiser back when there were no sequencers or polyphonic synths, so each note in a chord had to be recorded on a separate track, tuning the instrument between each take, to build up this amazing layered weird sound.

A year after I bought this, in 1972, Walter had reassignment surgery and became Wendy Carlos. I now have a boxed set of CDs of her music, which includes tracks of her talking about how the music was built up. Kind of a hero(ine) of mine, so I just thought I'd write about her today, since I'm listening to this album right now . It has come to matter more to me over the years since I found out she'd transitioned.

Snap.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that you are me from a parallel universe - one in which I didn't transition until later in life, because I also bought that album at about the same age.

Ditto!!

I too bought the original LP.  I played it until the grooves were almost worn through.

Her music pointed me on exploring music using synthesis.  I hand built my own moog-like syth.  I have admired her regardless of her transition.

She, unfortunately, feels that her transition was sensationalized and has nothing to do with the community.

-Sandy

Excuse my ambiguous sentence structure there, Sandy - I meant that over the years, it has come to matter more to me that she transitioned - not that her music has come to matter more to me because she transitioned - her music has always meant a great deal to me, especially once I realised what labour it took to create it. She turned me on to Bach, and that's something I can never be grateful enough for.

She made the mistake of doing an early in-depth interview that ended up focusing on her surgery and so on, which she then really regretted. I can respect her privacy after that, it must have taken her by surprise how much the media focused on all that (or she wouldn't have done the interview in the first place).

I actually wrote to her a few years ago, but never got a reply. It was a bit of a cheeky letter, I admit, as I'd bought her "millennium edition" of Switched-On Bach, which she'd redone using then-modern synths, and was mentioning that I'd spotted a mistake in the Sinfonia - which was then repeated later on, because she'd obviously cut-and-pasted the passage in a sequencer! So much for the infallibility of digital tech, pff. I adore the old, fat sound of the analogue Moog, and her out-there choices of sounds for some of that album were very brave, I think. And they really work, too.

No problem there Yoxi.  I understood your meaning.

I am attracted to Bach more than just about any of the other classical composers because of the mathematical elegance to his music.  Being a computer geek I could understand the nuance of his composition just by looking at it.  Some of them are beautiful to just look at.

And as I delved into the construction of my synth, it dawned on me how incredibly difficult it would be for me to replicate anything the Wendy had done.  This was still in the days of vinyl and of course no internet, so I did not have any insight to what Carlos or Moog had done other than the odd magazine article.  As a result a lot of my experiments were just trial and error.

I too sent a note to Ms. Carlos through her website some time ago thanking her for her pioneering achievements and how she had been an inspiration to me both in music and as an example of how someone can not only survive transition, but thrive.  I never received any acknowledgement either.  But it was something I had to say.

-Sandy

Oh wow, did this thread just 'ding' an old memory bell! In my crowd, we were enamored with Walter/Wendy, Moog synths (all the old synths, really), and the musical architecture of Bach.

I am having a hard time conjuring up the sound, haven't listened to it in 30+ years. Will have to dig it up on Rhapsody and have a walk down memory lane!

While we're on the subject of re-arranged Bach, do you guys and girls remember the Swingle Singers??  LOL!!

Swingle - a name to conjur with!

The other night when I worked with Devo they had an original model Moog Voyager, we just drooled looking at it.  Analog synths rocks.

And I remember the Swingle Singers, you can get the Bach/Mozart as a special priced two disc set.

I used to have Korg MS10, MS20 and MS50 - I miss their transistorised unpredictabilities! My brother has a Nord, and it's all just too clean and digital (and like being in the Space Shuttle cockpit). Something about actual patch leads brings out the kid in me (I loved my friend's EMS back in the day, too).

All the cool kids have the Nord thing going on, I set up more Nords than any other keyboard anymore.  And hey, I'm not complaining, it's not like I miss the "we've got a Fender Rhodes and a B-3" days.  Though I do love their sound.  Though nothing is worse than having to move a grand piano (baby grand but still) up to the second floor, then up a 45 degree ramp to the stage, lift it up onto a riser deck, so that some unnamed keyboard player (from Phish) could use it for 1/2 of one song.  I kept pushing that think thinking "if only there were a way to emulate the sound of a piano or something"

My brother's making some amazing sounds, with the Nord and Reason and some mac granular thingammyjig (he loves rhythms that self-mutate, and so do I) - it's just too steep a learning curve for me, I like my sounds more direct these days (hence it's all about voice and hand percussion for me). But I still like the knobs and patch leads .

I think that's great for studio work, but the Nord can take all the presets for the entire show right off the computer, makes it a lot easier, no dead air.

Oh, he's doing all that too - this is just for when he's recording on his own and uses that setup so he can play other instruments at the same time.

Heh, I "mended" his Nord the other month - he thought the power supply had blown, and was busy researching a new PSU board for it when I pointed out that the inline fuse was blown .

Aw, this is just the music discussion niche for me.

Like Wendy, I work in just intonation and have also covered Bach: http://michzimmerman.bandcamp.com.
I used to play a Korg EA-1 in a rock band in my early 20s and am currently trying to build an instrument similar to a B-3 (though it will hopefully be much more portable).

I'm only 31, so my first introduction to Wendy was in the book Vintage Synthesizers, where she's frequently mentioned in the Bob Moog story.  I actually had no idea she was trans until much later, when I started looking into artists who work in just intonation.

They make highly portable single keyboards for the Hammond, it's the speaker that's the key.

  I still got the cassette I bought in 1972 with Walter Carlos on it.  I bought it at the Navy Exchange.  I still like the Moog synthesizer music!  She was interviewed about a year or so afterward in Playboy or Esquire magazines.   Thanks for the memory!
  Joelene