by Hannah M.G. Shapero
In the summer of 1969, the summer of Woodstock, my father, mother, and I toured Europe. We didn't have the actual Buchla synthesizer with us, but we did have the tapes of our "Improvisations" series, and my artist mother had a suitcase full of small works of art to show.
Our first stop was at an art center near Copenhagen, Denmark, where longtime friends of our family had remodeled a country estate into a complex of art studios, exhibition space, and residences. This idyllic spot was called "Decenter," a name that suggested "eccentric" or "decentralized." My mother set up her show in their whitewashed rustic art gallery, and a simple tape recorder and speakers was our concert sound system.
Our hosts invited dozens of their friends, the art elite of Denmark along with many American and other expatriate visitors. The sounds of Brandeis' Buchla and my father's piano riffs filled the old farmhouse with modern noise. The guests appreciated it, and our "opening" was a merry occasion.
Within a week, we were again on the road, heading toward London. Mutual musical friends had put us in touch with an electronic musician in that city, and his studio would be one of our destinations. The London-based musician was named Peter Zinovieff, of Russian descent, who was lucky enough to be independently wealthy and had financed his own electronic music setup.
Zinovieff's studio was located in back of his home in an "artsy" section of London named Putney, on the moist bank of the Thames river. Originally, Zinovieff had been a geologist, and his house was still filled with rock samples. But he had become interested in not only electronic music but computers, and so his studio was more than state-of-the-art, it was ahead of its time. It was what was then known as a "third-generation" studio - because it used computers.
At that time, when electronic music was still "primitive," we used to classify studios as "first," "second," or "third" generation. The first generation was like Brandeis' old electronic studio: it used oscillators and old sound testing equipment, along with sound modifiers and tape manipulation devices, all cobbled together in a custom-built array. The second generation was like Brandeis' current studio: it used pre-made synthesizers such as the Buchla and Moog, along with more sophisticated tape and sound preparation. But it was still "analog," with no computers.
The "third generation" music studio had what was just coming into use as the most modern equipment: not only synthesizers, but computers. In 1969, the desktop and laptop machines which we now take almost for granted existed only in fantasies. Computers were big, bulky, wall-covering monsters with banks of mysterious lights and blank grey faces and tiny, black- and-white screens.
We were impressed; Peter Zinovieff had TWO computers. He used these avant-garde machines to generate and shape sounds, and he played us some of his own music. He was also involved in the generation of musical and verbal patterns with his computers, in a kind of "word-play" program. There in London, we of the second generation were looking at the first wave of the third.
Another week of touring, and we were again in an electronic music studio, this time at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands. Again, my father and I were impressed at their computers - another "third generation" in continental Europe. Utrecht had been an electronic music center since the '50s, where Dutch composers like Henk Badings had produced pieces that still hold up today. Now the Nederlanders were still on the crest of the wave. They also had a piece of equipment which made this Buchla-user envious: a 100-note sequencer. I had to make do with sequences of only 16 notes, but these musicians could come up with a sequence that seemed like real music with its long melodies, rather than the short mechanical rows I had to work with. Another feature of this big sequencer was that it could be run so fast that the 100 notes blended into one single note, which could be "programmed" into any tone color by changing the settings on those 100 steps.
Our family continued south through the continent, traveling like Deadheads in our Volkswagen camping bus, staying each night in a different suburban campground along with hippies, Germans, Australians, and other international travelers. By mid- July we were in Rome, where we relinquished our muddy campgrounds for a borrowed penthouse apartment belonging to a musician friend of ours.
We spent the rest of the hot, dry summer in Rome, and there were plenty of musicians to visit, along with a well- established electronic music studio. Rome was filled with expatriate Americans, including many artists of all media. Our musical contacts were connected with the American Academy in Rome, where for 100 years worthy Americans had come after receiving fellowships to study or create art there.
Our electronic musicians, including American composers Johnny Eaton and Jimmy Leong, had set up their studio in an old apartment building in downtown Rome. Their sound system was big and powerful, able to send forth thunderous bass tones. We played our "Improvisations" for them, and we heard their music as well. The centuries-old building shook ominously each time the music got loud; the Italian stucco walls had never heard sounds such as these.
The synthesizer this group used was the work of another man of Russian origin named Paul Ketoff. Ketoff was a Russian expatriate who had created a small synthesizer, somewhat along the lines of the Moog, which he called the SynKet (after SYNthesizer and KEToff). This machine, which could fit on a desktop, had a tuned keyboard and was adapted for live playing, unlike the Buchla. It produced less of a variety of sounds than the Buchla, but it was more manageable, without the annoying tangle of patchcords to lose or drop.
I was quite taken by the SynKet and attempted to learn to play it, in the short time I had with it. In fact, my diary entry for the 20th of July 1969 contained a series of notes about the features of the SynKet. That was at the top of the page....but a bit of other news also made that page, namely the first human landing on the moon. One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind; but first, the SynKet.
Reluctantly we left the avant-garde musical expatriates of Europe, and sailed back to America on an ocean liner, our Volkswagen bus in the ship's hold. And yet after my senior year in high school was done, in 1970, our family again returned to Europe. This time it was for a whole year, in between my high school and college years. My father was Composer in Residence at the American Academy in Rome, where he served as mentor to the composers living and working there. We found the SynKet, now set up in a cluttered music studio in the basement of the Academy's main building. Mr. Ketoff and his men had abandoned it, and my notes recall tersely that "it didn't work too well."
My year in Rome was one of cultural and religious awakening. My interests diverged from electronic music as I fell under the ancient, rich spell of the Eternal City. By the time I returned home to the United States in 1971, my attention had swerved far away from electronic music. To no one's surprise, I entered Brandeis University as a student. Though I visited my old territory at the Buchla studio, it was now filled with music students, and I no longer had the time, or the inclination, to continue making electronic music.
But my career in electronic music was not over. Two years later, I would enter the world of the other major synthesizer, at Moog Music, Inc., not in romantic Rome but in prosaic Buffalo, New York.
Next and last installment:
"Minnies and Pollies: My work at Moog Music, Inc."
Hannah M.G.Shapero
8/10/97