Don Buchla
Donald "Don" Buchla (born April 18, 1937 in South Gate , California - † September 14, 2016 ) was an American developer and manufacturer of electronic musical instruments . He is considered a pioneer in synthesizer history .
Life
Buchla studied physics , physiology and music . In 1962 he founded Buchla and Associates , an electronic musical instrument company in Berkeley . In collaboration with the avant-garde musicians Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick , the founders of the San Francisco Tape Music Center , Buchla began developing an electronic sound generator for live performances. Thanks to funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, he was able to complete his first modular synthesizer in 1963, the Buchla Series 100 . Buchla's device dispensed with a conventional keyboard and was controlled via touch-sensitive touchpads and rotary controls. In 1966 Buchla started selling, but was defeated by the more commercially successful Moog synthesizers . In 1969, Buchla sold his Buchla Series 100 to the CBS , which took the series off the market soon after, because it was "no commercial use" recognizable.
In 1970 Buchla introduced the Buchla 200 series Electric Music Box , which was manufactured until 1985. It followed in 1971 with the Buchla Series 500, the first digitally controlled analog synthesizer and the Buchla Series 300 with microprocessors . In 1972 Buchla introduced The Music Easel ( easel = easel), a small portable "all-in-one" synthesizer. The Buchla 400 , released in 1982, had a display . In 1987 the MIDI capable Buchla 700 appeared .
From the 1990s Buchla concentrated on the production of alternative MIDI controllers like the Buchla Thunder with touch sensors, the controller Buchla Lightning ( Lightning I , 1991 Lightning II , 1995), in the form of a fluorescent tube, by means of infrared - Motion works and Marimba Lumina a kind of electronic marimbaphone .
With the renewed interest in analog synthesizers from the 2000s onwards, Buchla and Associates presented a revised version of the 200 series that was digitally controlled, now referred to as the 200e .
Don Buchla gave a lecture at NIME-05, the fifth New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference in Vancouver , accompanied by a large retrospective of the numerous instruments he and his team have created over the years.
In 2002 he received the SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award .
Buchla's son Ezra Buchla is a founding member of the Los Angeles-based experimental punk band The Mae Shi .
Web links
- Buchla and Associates (English)
- Interview with Don Buchla , Red Bull Music Academy, Toronto 2007 (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Don Buchla, Influential Synthesizer Designer, Dead at 79 , ww2.kqed.org/arts
- ↑ Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments - The History of Buchla. Buchla and Associates, accessed June 1, 2010 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Buchla, Don |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Buchla, Donald (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American instrument maker |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 18, 1937 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | South Gate , California |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 14, 2016 |