And it could sing!
Even before I understood what a computer was, I knew it could be used to make music. In 1968, my high school library had an AV section, with listening booths containing turntables. The holdings, albeit limited, contained a new album called Switched-On Bach, by Walter/Wendy Carlos. My normal chair in the music classroom put me due south of the row of clarinets, so I had a firm grasp on “analog” and its limitations. This was different. It was digital.
There was a second album, containing an other-worldly digitized voice, with a rendition of Bicycle Built For Two; it didn’t impress me much. I wanted notes, preferably ones that I could compare to a written score. Switched-On provided that foundation.
Now, things changed in the next five decades. A lot. I found my own marriage of music and computers, but the idea of synthesizers remained a Grail, of sorts. When I purchased a Casio VL-Tone (which provided primitive ASDR parametrics), the idea of creating and modulating a waveform started to have meaning. And things continued to change.
So here I am, in a Braver New World, where for a few hundred dollars I can have a Moog of my own. Not sure that I need one, but the desire to understand the terminology is still strong. I’ve been reading, and listening, and I’m starting to feel comfortable with technology that is older than some of my siblings. I have to bridge the gap between noise and music; this is one more approach. And the clarinet can remain a memory of times before my digital renaissance.
