Saturday, February 19, 2011

Film day







In or around 1974, I was gathered up with my class and we walked single-file into one of the "pods" (don't ask, it was the 70s) to see a film-strip.

They lugged out the screen, projector and in minutes we were viewing a bizarre musical score on what looked like a sci-fi monstrosity of wires, keys and switches.

An old engineer and a young musician were describing making electronic music and played some really funky Bach pieces. Of course these were Bob Moog and (then) Walter Carlos.

The film was a few years old and was describing the engineering of the Moog synthesizer. I was absolutely enthralled. I had been playing trumpet for a few years and had never thought that anything interesting could come out of a machine like this, and lets face it, patch cables are cool!

More than anything, I think that film got me hooked on the idea of electronic music. It would be years before I would really have a chance to make some myself but I knew I wanted to try it. Shortly after that experience, I bought "Switched on Bach II" on 8-track so that it never had to end.

The only way that film could have had more of an impact would have been if they had shown us all A Clockwork Orange.


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