createdigitalmusic‘s Peter Kirn goes retro to celebrate the 50th anniversary of either the first music synthesizer or the first failed automatic lounge music generator.
Before the likes of Bob Moog made electronic music accessible even to non-geeky rock-and-rollers, there was the RCA synthesizer. RCA’s Mark I was a three-ton behemoth the record honchos at RCA Victor hoped would automatically churn out lounge music. It didn’t, so Columbia and Princeton grabbed a successor and profs like Milton Babbit used it for electronic serial music. (No big record hits; sorry, RCA.) Significantly, it also fired up Otto Luening, one of Moog’s first customers.
In 1955, specs like these were state-of-the-art: 12 vacuum-tube oscillators, punch-paper keyboard input for scoring sounds, and a built-in lacquer disc cutter for recording. Real-time was out—the first Moog was a decade away—and digital would have to wait until Max Mathews’ recorded a 17-second composition on the IBM 704 mainframe in 1957. But the RCA did herald the future in 1955. Babbit and experts on the synth’s history will gather to reminisce and spin some of the old tunes Thursday in Princeton; details on that event and more on the RCA at createdigitalmusic.
