Don Buchla

Donald "Don" Buchla ( born April 18, 1937 in South Gate, California ) is an American designer and manufacturer of electronic musical instruments. He is considered a pioneer of synthesizer history.

Life

Buchla studied physics, physiology, and music. In 1962 he founded in Berkeley Buchla and Associates, a company for electronic musical instruments. In collaboration with the avant-garde musicians Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick, the founders of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, Buchla began with the development of an electronic sound module for live performances. Thanks to funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, he was able to finish 1963 with the Buchla Series 100 his first modular synthesizer. Buchlas device renounced a conventional keyboard and was controlled via touch-sensitive touch pads and knobs. 1966 Buchla began with the sale, but subject to the commercially successful Moog synthesizers. 1969 sold his Buchla Buchla Series 100 to the CBS, but soon re- took the series from the market because it " no commercial value " was apparent.

In 1970, before the Buchla Buchla 200 series Electric Music Box, which was produced until 1985. This was followed in 1971 with the Buchla Series 500 of the first digitally controlled analog synthesizer and the Buchla Series 300 with microprocessors. In 1972, Buchla Music Easel The front ( easel easel = ), a small portable "all-in -one" synthesizer. The 1982 published Buchla 400 had a display. In 1987, the MIDI -enabled Buchla 700

From the 1990s Buchla concentrated on the production of alternative MIDI controller such as the Buchla Thunder with touch sensors, the controller Buchla Lightning ( Lightning I, 1991, Lightning II, 1995 ) in the form of a fluorescent tube, which works with infrared motion detector and the Marimba Lumina a kind of electronic marimba.

With the renewed interest in analog synthesizers from the 2000s Buchla and Associates presented a revised version of the 200 series, now referred to as 200e.

On the NIME -05, the fifth New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference in Vancouver, Don Buchla gave a lecture, accompanied by a major exhibition of the many instruments that he and his team have created over the years.

Buchlas son Ezra Buchla is a founding member of the experimental punk band The Mae Shi from Los Angeles.