It’s hard to imagine how different the world of electronic music would be without Wendy Carlos, who switched on the world with her Switched On Bach, scored Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, created the sound of the digital world Tron and explored alternate tunings in several influential albums.

Before Brian Eno brought ambient music to a mass audience in the mid to late 70s, Carlos released 1972’s Sonic Seasonings, which combined ambient environmental sounds with synthesized ones.

Carlos has created some of the most influential electronic works of the last 40 years.

If you haven’t heard much of the work of Wendy Carlos, some good places to start are her Switched-On Brandenburgs, Switched On Bach 2000 and her soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange.

via Sabine

This video demonstrates recreating the classic Walter/Wendy Carlos synth sounds of A Clockwork Orange, with Propellerhead Reason’s Subtractor software synthesizer.

via seeyouintheeighties:

here is my attempt at remaking the MOOG sound from the clockwork orange film, in reason 3 with a subtractor synth, its basically arco strings through phaser fx unit and a little chorus… comment and let me know if i got it right

(Bach) Switched Off Bach / Invention #4 / SH-1000 vs SH-2000

via btpro:

The Joy of the Preset-Synthesizer. First battle is Roland SH-1000 vs SH-2000!I like Preset-Synthesizer. An engineer made sound with analog technology at the time without the sampling technology.It was often that I heard a sound different from the displayed name in them.

I often thought “Is this the sound of the piano?”.

But I can imagine a desperate face of the engineers who are going to make a genuine sound with an analog circuit.

It is very exciting/humorous for me.

Roland SH-1000 is Japanese first synthesizer and SH-2000 is Preset-synthesizer for organist.I

love them!

Please enjoy!

This video marries the audio from a 1967 Moog 900 Series modular synthesizer demo record, which featured Walter/Wendy Carlos, with video of a Moog modular synthesizer.

via jafafah0ts:

A rare vintage demo record for the Moog 900 series synths, released by Moog when they were in Trumansburg, NY.

Music by Wendy Carlos of Switched On Bach fame, narration by Ed Stokes.

There are apparently two versions of this demo record in existence. This one, presumably the first version, with duplicate content on both sides, and a second with excerpts from Switched on Bach on the reverse,

Sunday Synth Jam: This is a very nicely realized switched on realization, in the style of Wendy Carlos, of J. S. Bach’s Gavotte from Orchestral Suite no. 4 in D.

via syntesen:

Yet another “switched-on bach” project in the style of Wendy Carlos. This time, a wonderful dance from the fourth Orchestral Suite, the Gavotte. In 4/4 time, but with the emphasis on the 3rd beat of the measure, rather than the 1st, the Gavotte was a royal court favourite in the francophile countries of the Baroque period.This piece marks the beginning of my “Soft Synth Odyssey”, realizing different tracks with different software synthesizers. To start out on familiar ground, this track was realized with the Arturia Moog Modular V2 emulation synthesizer, recorded in Ableton Live.I hope you enjoy it.-David

The tracks include Walter (Wendy) Carlos’ Dialogues for Piano and Two Loudspeakers (1963):

Liner Notes:

This recording of electronic music presents the works of four authors who come from four different countries with quite varied musical backgrounds. Two of them have considerable knowledge of electronics which stems from a formal engineering training in one case, and from a high degree of practical experience in the other. Diversity of styles is in evidence, as each composer’s style is his own concern. The common experience for these composers has been the use of technical resources at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and the investigation of specialized methods for the evolution and transformation of recorded sound materials, conducted in my course at Columbia and further demonstrated in private sessions by technicians. This work is done in Studio 106, located in McMillin Theatre on the campus of Columbia University in the same room where the older Columbia University Tape Studio was housed. The present studio has been considerably expanded in recent years and has become a part of a complex of three studios and a small laboratory established under a Rockefeller Foundation Grant given to Columbia and Princeton Universities in 1959.

With the notable exception of the very unique possibilities offered by the RCA Sound Synthesizer located in Studio 318, the standard and specialized equipment of the Center is devoted to the production of sound materials by “Classical” methods, common to all electronic music studios. Thus, materials (of either purely electronic or non-electronic origin) recorded on tape, may be subjected to manipulation by tape speed variation, electronic filtering, several types of frequency modulation, artificial reverberation, etc. Tape cutting and splicing by hand still occupies a good deal of time in preparing the sound patterns and arranging them in longer sequences. Techniques are available to create certain types of rhythmic patterns and timbre variations by semi-automatic methods, but the materials thus produced are of limited usefulness. Much time in classroom discussion is devoted to the structural considerations which we believe to be quite challenging and of paramount importance in the electronic music medium, rich as it is in unusual timbres and opportunities for the realization of complex rhythms.

It is hard to imagine that there is much occasion any more for claiming that electronic music is “dehumanized” in its content. Electronic music simply undertakes to express, by different means, human situations, ideas, and emotions.
Vladimir Ussachevsky
Professor of Music
Columbia University

I love this great vintage Moog video – Micky Dolenz, by far the cutest of the Monkees, sings Daily Nightly. This is thought to be the first time a Moog was used on a pop record.

Not sure who’s playing the drums and the bass – but Dolenz plays the third Moog modular off the assembly line. Dolenz was in line right behind Walter (Wendy) Carlos and Buck Owens.

We all know what Carlos did with the Moog – but what about Buck Owens?

via idolator

Note th

Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing vs Title Music from A Clockwork Orange by Wendy Carlos…as imagined by Phil RetroSpector.

Almost works for me – but it’d be better without the Marvin Gaye!

Ghostly Swim, a free 19-song collection, explores the Avant-Pop style that the Ann Arbor/New York City label has been been championing for the past 9 years. Ghostly Swim features artists like Matthew Dear, Dabrye, Tycho and Aeroc and features new signings like UK cult band The Chap and NYC producer Michna.

The free collection also includes friends of the label like School Of Seven Bells, and Detroit’s Deastro, Milosh (Plug Research), FLYamSAM (Warp’s Flying Lotus and SAMIYAM), and Dark Party (Mush).

Read more to preview the tracks:

Note the quirky tune Carlos Walter Wendy Stanley.

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Edhardt is back with an impressive Wendy Carlos-style take on Bach:

“Here are some experiments I did in trying to mimic the style of Walter/Wendy Carlos’ synthesizer technique and style of timbres. Carlos was using a 1960’s era patchable modular Moog synthesizer with a different architecture than that of the Alesis Andromeda synthesizer. Each one has some advantages and disadvantages over the other but both use analog circuitry.

This video includes excerpts from 3 different Bach pieces. All are played by hand on a velocity sensitive keyboard, most of it one monophonic passage at a time, and overdubbed onto multi-track.”

You can preview the Moog demo below.

The Microgroove 10″ vinyl disk was produced, composed and realized by Walter Carlos, as a Trans-Electronic-Music-Production.

The disk is dated, but provides an interesting historical perspective on the state of electronic music in 1968.