Thanks to Peter for discovering
this - undoubtedly the coolest synth cake ever made (unless you know better). It's a EMS VCS3 (check out the silver Vernier dials, the joystick and the matrix panel full of candles!), that was made for the 80th birthday of
Tristram Cary, one of the founders of EMS, who helped invent the
VCS3. He's had a very cool career. He was a naval radar officer in WWII, when he started thinking about music made with tapes and electronics.
After the war, he studied and made a living as a composer. He did music for film & tv, working on
early Dr Who episodes and Quatermass and the Pit. In 1967 he founded the Electronic Music Studio at the Royal College of Music. In the '80s he moved to Australia and continued composing and wrote the great-sounding-but-very-expensive
Illustrated Compendium of Musical Technology. He's now 80, and his neice has
a blog, which is why we can all see his cool birthday cake... More on Tristram
here. (And more synth cakes
here)
Thank you for picking up on Tristram's Birthday Party, it was a very cool occasion unfortunately I'm not the best writer and I can't do him justice music wise but I can say he is a fasincating interesting man and exceptionally talented.
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday Mr.Tristram Cary!!
ReplyDeleteBless you and may you have another 80 years. Thank you for all you have done for us.
Not quite as cool..
ReplyDeletehttp://www.firstpaloalto.com/mt/images/OrganCake400300.jpg
did you guys know the original Dr. Who soundtrack was created by using test signal synthesizers and recording a pure tone to tape... then later all the various tones were cut together via tape editing.. you know, with a razor blade
ReplyDeletetalk about tedious
RE: Doctor Who theme - I think there's a Delia Derbyshire appreciation entry on this blog somewhere. Likewise David Vorhaus, her collaborator in White Noise .. who was much more synthesizery of the two.
ReplyDeleteYes, here you go:
ReplyDeleteDelia
David
Delia was actively anti-synth. I think she thought that they made making weird noises too easy.
It's true, the VCS3 did make wierd noise making very easy. First time I got my hands on one was at Middlesex Poly in the studio run by this guy - Hugh Davies. Despite being a Derek Bailey 'fan' at the time, I didn't know who Hugh was and missed an opportunity to get to know a fascinating character. I still think the VCS3 got it right in ways that no other synth has since. One great trick was to set up a modulated drone and 'play' the patch panel by inserting and removing pins - fun!
ReplyDeleteThinking back, didn't I once see Tristram Cary give a performance of Fredric Rzewski's Les Moutons de Panurge? Oh me memory's not what it was!
ReplyDeleteAnyway,I didn't know till now that Tristram Cary is a son of Joyce Cary who wrote a very funny book, 'The Horse's Mouth'. Made into one of my all-time favourite films with Alec Guinness - 'I see feet - everywhere'!