My family were slightly bemused by my excitement on Xmas morning when I opened a parcel to find a copy of the Illustrated Compendium of Musical Technology by Tristram Cary, co-inventor of the VCS3 synth. I'd asked my mother for a copy, and she found one second-hand. It's my new geek bible, a 542-page encyclopedia of lore, full of diagrams and flowcharts. It's great because Tristram Cary really, really knows what he's talking about. The ten pages on oscillators don't just explain what they do, but how they do it. And because he came into electronic music from a classical, avant-garde angle (he founded the Royal College of Music's Electronic Music Studio in 1967), there are no endless chapters on 303s, 808s, SL-1200s and those same old stories from Detroit and Chicago. Instead, there are entries on things like magnetic hysteresis, Helmholz resonators, graceful degradation and swarf (the little ribbons of plastic spat out by a vinyl cutting head). I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys this site. I suspect Faber and Faber were expecting something with a bit more popular appeal when they published it in 1992, and perhaps it failed to find many buyers at £45 so fell out of print. Fortunately, it's not too hard to find - UK Amazon
have a few copies second hand. Thanks, Mum!
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