At the 2012 NAMM Show, several interesting announcements were made about electronic music legend Don Buchla, above, and the future of his electronic music instruments:

• His company, Buchla & Associates, has been acquired by a group of investors, who are creating a new company Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments. Buchla wil be the Chief Technology Officer of the new company. The organizational change will bring design, manufacturing, sales and marketing resources to Buchla. The intent is that, by freeing Buchla from some of these areas, he’ll be able to spend more time to ‘introduce more innovations in music technology’, expand the Buchla product line into new areas and make his instruments available to a wider range of musicians.
• Buchla also introduced a new modular synthesizer, the Buchla Skylab. The Buchla Skylab is a compact and slightly more affordable configuration of the Buchla 200e modular line.
• Finally, Buchla announced that, after 50 years of not making a keyboard for his synthesizer, that there will finally be a Buchla Keyboard controller. The Buchla Keyboard is currently in early stages, but don’t plan on it being a standard control keyboard. Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments expects to release a keyboard design that is as different from other keyboard controllers as its modular synthesizer is from other modulars.