Ronald Meij Maker · 1 d ago
Fourteen, roughly in order of when it happened. It runs from a two hundred ton tonewheel organ in 1897 to Chowning explaining, himself, how FM got out of Stanford and into a DX7. In between: the theremin, the ondes Martenot, the Trautonium, the tape studios in Cologne and Paris, the Radiophonic Workshop at Maida Vale, Moog and Buchla pulling in opposite directions, and the Prophet-5 arriving with a memory in it. If you watch one, make it the Chowning talk. If you watch two, add the 1965 BBC footage of Delia Derbyshire, which is three minutes and is the whole craft in miniature. 01 The Synthesis of Synthesis - The Telharmonium moogfoundation Cahill's tonewheel additive machine of 1897, which is where the whole story starts and which weighed two hundred tons. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV34h-YCMbE 02 Science Sounds Strange: Ether Waves, Espionage, and the Theremin's Odyssey || Radcliffe Institute Harvard University A public lecture on the theremin: the physics, Leon Theremin's life, the espionage, and how the instrument reached music. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mznvxLxMGOY 03 AMIS 2022: The Ondes Martenot: A Brief History and Contemporary Design Trajectory. 1928-2022 National Music Centre A conference paper tracing the ondes Martenot from Maurice Martenot's 1928 instrument through its later generations. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JFZrGWXsp0 04 The Curious Case of the Trautonium and the Early Years of Electronic Music American Academy in Berlin The Berlin instrument of Trautwein and Oskar Sala, in English, set in the context of early electronic music. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyl5unZMxuU 05 Cosmic Tape Music Club - Pierre Schaeffer: Defining Musique Concrete & Acousmatic Listening The Galaxy Electric Schaeffer at the Paris radio studios, what musique concrete actually meant, and the idea of acousmatic listening. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioMFcy-Ul3Y 06 WDR Electronic Music Studio (1 of 5) Andres D. Archive film about the Cologne studio of Eimert and Stockhausen. A re-upload rather than an official channel, so it may not last. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttanIwyblOU 07 Pioneers Of Sound: The story of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop The Vinyl Factory The Workshop at Maida Vale and the tape and oscillator techniques its composers had to invent for themselves. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW8TdMgSxaQ 08 1965: How DELIA DERBYSHIRE made the DOCTOR WHO theme I Tomorrow's World I Music I BBC Archive BBC Archive The original 1965 broadcast in which Derbyshire shows how the theme was built from test tones and tape. From the BBC's own archive. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsRuhCflRyg 09 Bob Moog talks Moog records, early synths and instrument design | Red Bull Music Academy Red Bull Music Academy Moog himself on his early instruments, the records made with them, and how he thought about designing an instrument. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp7aQTxdIFg 10 Moog vs Buchla: The Control Voltage Race | Astonishing History of Synths Ep. 3 Reverb The two modular systems developed in parallel, and the different ideas about control voltage behind them. The east and west coast split. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uFKlsyzVlI 11 SUBOTNICK: The First Buchla 100 Waveshaper Media Morton Subotnick on the first Buchla 100, built for the San Francisco Tape Music Center. www.youtube.com/watch?v=FktvuWA1ngc 12 The History of the Prophet Synthesizer Alex Ball Sequential Circuits and the Prophet-5: the arrival of a polyphonic synth you could actually store a patch in. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruh0B5QKBMs 13 Dr. John Chowning - The History of FM Synthesis | Knobcon 2019 Under the Big Tree Chowning's own account of finding FM at Stanford and what happened once it was licensed. The chain that ends at the DX7. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpysRrYXxg4 14 Bright Sparks Documentary - A Side GForce Software Feature length documentary on the British and American synthesiser pioneers and what they built. A B side exists as well. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXWgBEiNhs Every link in this channel was checked against YouTube itself: the title and the channel name under each one are what YouTube returns for that video, not what anybody remembered. That check earned its keep more than once, because a search result is quite happy to hand you a title that belongs to a different video. What could not be done is watch them all. So the line under each link comes from the verified title and channel, not from having sat through it. If one turns out not to be what it says, reply and it comes off the list. Same if a link dies, which they do.