An Homage to Don Buchla From a Musician's Perspective via Todd Barton

"Don Buchla’s love of music and engineering is legend. Countless engineers, designers, scientists, and synthesizer builders have spoken of Don’s design genius.

I, as a composer/performer, would like to offer my perspective on Don’s musical genius. It seems to me that he has imbued his instruments with musicality. The deeper I delve into his modules the more an innate sense of this musicality arises. By musicality I mean the elegant, evocative, gestural and dynamic way his circuits shape, sculpt and massage sound. It is 'musical' in the largest sense of the word, a frame so big that it can hold all styles of music past, present and future. In Don’s own words:

'I try to design in such a way that things are pretty wide open in a modular system. I don’t expect any compositional style.'

How can a circuit be “musical”? As a composer I want an instrument that gives me single, fingertip control over many sonic parameters. Not unlike the continuous variable fingertip control a violinist has over the many parameters of his or her instrument."

Read the full post complete with demos from Todd Barton here.