Analogue - and digital studio's-equipment and laboratories

[Roland Kuit]

Maybe it is nice to see on where and on what kind of equipment the old pioneers were working. As a start:

Studio für Elektronische Musik, Lawo PTR, WDR, Cologne

Lawo is an international company based in Rastatt, Germany, specializing in the manufacture of digital mixing consoles and other professional audio equipment. It was founded in 1970 by Peter Lawo[citation needed], and is currently run by his son Philipp. The company is notable for supplying the audio mixing equipment for the 2012 London Olympics and Nine Network, and for sports events in Asia, North America and Australia.

The first developments of Peter Lawo were driven by the needs of composers of Electronic Music like Karlheinz Stockhausen. To Stockhausen's specifications Peter Lawo built an apparatus called "module 69 B" which was used to perform Stockhausens composition Mantra. The success of this production led to the founding of the Experimentalstudio of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation of the Südwestfunk in 1971. Together with the first director of this studio, Hans-Peter Haller, Peter Lawo developed the Halaphon. (The name resulted from the names of the developers: HA(ller)-LA(wo)-PHON). This machine became famous when being used in all the later works of composer Luigi Nono.

Later, Peter Lawo developed mixing consoles for Karl Heinz Stockhausen.

The Lawo PTR at Studio für Elektronische Musik, Cologne
His composition Octophonie was produced in the "Studio for Electronic Music" of the German Public Broadcaster "WDR" (Westdeutscher Rundfunk). For the production of this composition, the automatic recall of very fast fader movements was used[4] - which was made possible by Lawo's hybrid mixing console PTR ("Programmierbare Ton Regie" = programmable audio control).(wiki)

[Roland Kuit]

The Institute for Sonology, Utrecht, the Netherlands

The institute was founded at the University of Utrecht in 1960 under the name STEM ("Studio for Electronic Music") as a successor to the former studio for electronic music at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven. In 1964, Gottfried Michael Koenig became the studio's artistic director. The studio grew under Koenig's leadership, and in 1966 an annual international electronic music course was founded which exists to this day.

In 1967 STEM was renamed as the "Institute of Sonology". International attention increased in 1971 with the purchase of a PDP-15 computer which was used to develop programs for algorithmic composition and digital sound synthesis. During the early years of the institute a series of landmark programs were developed there, including Koenig's Project 1, Project 2, and SSP, Paul Berg's PILE, Werner Kaegi's MIDIM/VOSIM, and Barry Truax's POD.

In 1986, the institute was moved to the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, hosting the International Computer Music Conference there during its inaugural year.

Current research focuses on algorithmic composition, live electronic music, historical reconstructions of electronic and computer music (including György Ligeti's Pièce électronique Nr. 3 and Edgard Varèse's Poème électronique), field recording, sound installations, and sound spatialization. Alongside the annual one-year course, the institute offers Bachelor's and Master's degrees.(Wiki)

This was my place

[Roland Kuit]

The studio for Sonology(BEA5),
now at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, the Netherlands.
And a little picture of the famous 3rd octave filter.

[Roland Kuit]

Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM)

Following the emergence of differences within the GRMC Pierre Henry, Philippe Arthuys, and several of their colleagues, resigned in April 1958. Schaeffer created a new collective, called Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) and set about recruiting new members including Luc Ferrari, François-Bernard Mâche, Iannis Xenakis, Bernard Parmegiani, and Mireille Chamass-Kyrou. Later arrivals included Ivo Malec, Philippe Carson, Romuald Vandelle, Edgardo Canton and François Bayle (Gayou 2007, 207).

GRM was one of several theoretical and experimental groups working under the umbrella of the Schaeffer-led Service de la Recherche at ORTF (1960–74). Together with the GRM, three other groups existed: the Groupe de Recherches Image GRI, the Groupe de Recherches Technologiques GRT and the Groupe de Recherches Langage which became the Groupe d’Etudes Critiques (Gayou 2007, 207). Communication was the one theme that unified the various groups, all of which were devoted to production and creation. In terms of the question "who says what to whom?" Schaeffer added "how?", thereby creating a platform for research into audiovisual communication and mass media, audible phenomena and music in general (including non-Western musics) (Beatriz Ferreyra, new preface to Schaeffer and Reibel 1967, reedition of 1998, 9). At the GRM the theoretical teaching remained based on practice and could be summed up in the catch phrase ‘do and listen’ (Gayou 2007, 207).

Schaeffer kept up a practice established with the GRMC of delegating the functions (though not the title) of Group Director to colleagues. Since 1961 GRM has had six Group Directors: Michel Philippot (1960–61), Luc Ferrari (1962–63), Bernard Baschet and François Vercken (1964–66). From the beginning of 1966, François Bayle took over the direction for the duration of thirty-one years, to 1997. He was then replaced by Daniel Teruggi(Wiki)

[Roland Kuit]

Studio di fonologia del 1955 della sede Rai di Milano

The Studio di Fonologia Musicale was founded by Bruno Maderna & Luciano Berio at Milan Radio, in Italy, in 1954.

Designed by Alfredo physical Lietti , was officially opened in June 1955 at the hands of musicians Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna and remains active until February 28, 1983 , when the technician Marino Sugars retires.
The first composition designed to convince managers Rai was to open the Studio City Portrait of a text by Roberto Leydi , music by Luciano Berio and Bruno Maderna .
The firm was founded primarily for two purposes: the production of experimental electronic music and the realization of comments and soundtracks for radio and television.
Berio drew ideas and information watching America ( intrigued by tape music of Ussachevsky and Luening ) and France ( through his friendship with Schaeffer and the Club d'Essai ) ; Maderna brought the contributions from the study of Cologne through his friendship with Stockhausen and Meyer- Eppler , and summer courses at Darmstadt .

http://youtu.be/BKiddiPyDsE

[JoPo]

Wasn't GRM who made the amazing 'GRM tools' plugins ?
http://www.inagrm.com/grmtools

[Roland Kuit]

Those plugins are Digital
But yes, in a later stage.

[dawman]

I would never leave...
That's beautiful.

Thanks

[Roland Kuit]

Electronic Music Studios (EMS)

Is a synthesizer company formed in 1969 by Peter Zinovieff, Tristram Cary and David Cockerell.

The partners had wide experience in both electronics and music. Cockerell, who was EMS' main equipment designer in its early years, was a gifted electronics engineer and computer programmer. In the mid-1960s Zinovieff (who originally qualified as a geologist) had formed the pioneering electronic music group Unit Delta Plus with Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Cary was a noted composer and a pioneer in electronic music—he was one of the first people in the UK to work in the musique concrete field and built one of the country's first electronic music studios; he also worked widely in film and TV, composing scores for numerous Ealing Studios and Hammer Films productions, and is he well known for his work on the BBC's Doctor Who, notably on the classic serial The Daleks.(Wiki)

The studio as it was circa 1970. The studio was originally built in a shed at the end of the garden of 49 Deodar Road, Putney, overlooking the River Thames.

[Marco]

Hey this look like mine, but all packed in 45 shark dsps

But the black telephone is a Samsung S5

[Roland Kuit]

Hey this look like mine, but all packed in 45 shark dsps
But the black telephone is a Samsung S5

I think without the designers of these electronic music studios our DSP based synthesis would have a different face and sound.

[Roland Kuit]

The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (CMC)
at Columbia University is the oldest center for electronic and computer music research in the United States.
The Center was founded in the 1950s as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.

The CMC is housed on 125th Street in New York City. It consists of a large graduate research facility specializing in computer music and multimedia research, as well as a number of composition and recording studios for student use.

The forerunner of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center was a studio founded in the early 1950s by Columbia University professors Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening, and Princeton University professors Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions. Originally concerned with experiments in music composition involving the new technology of reel-to-reel tape, the studio soon branched out into all areas of electronic music research. The Center was officially established with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1959 which was used to finance the acquisition of the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer from its owner, RCA.

The flagship piece of Center equipment, the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer, was delivered to the Center in 1957 after it was developed to Ussachevsky and Babbitt's specifications. The RCA (and the Center) were re-housed in Prentis Hall, a building off the main Columbia campus on 125th Street. A number of significant pieces in the electronic music repertoire were realized on the Synthesizer, including Babbitt's Vision and Prayer and Charles Wuorinen's Time's Encomium -awarded the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Music. In 1961 Columbia Records released an album titled simply Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, which was produced principally on the RCA synthesizer.
The staff engineers at the Center under Peter Mauzey developed a large variety of customized equipment designed to solve the needs of the composers working at the center. These include early prototypes of tape delay machines, quadraphonic mixing consoles, and analog triggers designed to facilitate interoperability between other (often custom-made) synthesizer equipment. The Center also had a large collection of Buchla, Moog, and Serge Modular synthesizers.

By the late 1970s the Electronic Music Center was rapidly nearing obsolescence as the classical analog tape techniques it used were being surpassed by parallel work in the field of computer music. By the mid-1980s the Columbia and Princeton facilities had ceased their formal affiliation, with the Princeton music department strengthening its affiliation with Bell Labs and founding a computer music studio under Godfrey Winham and Paul Lansky (see Princeton Sound Lab).

The original Columbia facility was re-organized in 1995 under the leadership of Brad Garton and was renamed the Columbia University Computer Music Center.(Wiki)

[Marco]

Yes we would have pianos with strings inside a big case and a Keyboard to hit the string make them swinging

Btw Roland, where do you have these pic from?

[Roland Kuit]

Yes we would have pianos with strings inside a big case and a Keyboard to hit the string make them swinging
Btw Roland, where do you have these pic from?

Knowing the history of electronic music is knowing where to look for on internet.
In my book SoundLab I, The Electronic Studio, I created the chapter "History".
When teaching synthesis to young people, I noticed the lack of this by students.
Synthesis alone WON'T DO it for you.
And starting from Tangerine Dream, Jarre, Kraftwerk is not enough.

[Roland Kuit]

Unit Delta Plus(EMS extention)

In 1966-67, Zinovieff, Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson ran Unit Delta Plus, an organisation to create and promote electronic music which was based in the studio Zinovieff had built in a shed at his house in Putney.[7][8]

EMS grew out of MUSYS, a synthesiser system which Zinovieff developed with the help of David Cockerell and Peter Grogono which used two DEC PDP-8 minicomputers and a piano keyboard.[9] In 1969, Zinovieff sought financing through an ad in The Times but received only one response, £50 on the mistaken premise it was the price of a synthesiser. Instead he formed EMS with Cockerell and Tristram Cary.

Jon Lord of Deep Purple described Zinovieff as "a mad professor type": "I was ushered into his workshop and he was in there talking to a computer, trying to get it to answer back". Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco, in their history of the synthesizer revolution, see him rather as aristocratically averse to "trade".(Wiki)

[53E7]

I LOVE this thread! What cool looking studios! Keep the pictures coming. Thanks for sharing.

[Roland Kuit]

Bell Laboratories
(also known as Bell Labs and formerly known as AT&T Bell Laboratories and Bell Telephone Laboratories) is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, United States. It previously was a division of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T Corporation), half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.

Bell Laboratories operates its headquarters at Murray Hill, New Jersey, and has research and development facilities throughout the world. Researchers working at Bell Labs are credited with the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the UNIX operating system, the C programming language, S programming language and the C++ programming language. Seven Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.(Wiki)

[Roland Kuit]

The Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music

Originally set up in 1963, the Ghent University in Belgium has a full fledged studio designed for electronic music, called IPEM, or the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music. Initially designed to be a creative studio, it has also become a research institution.
In 1963, the BRT (Belgian Radio and Television) set up a studio for electronic music in cooperation with the State University of Ghent, with the intention of operating it as both a creative studio, and a research institution. The first director was Flemish composer Louis De Meester, and one of the first instruments developed was a sine wave generator by Hubert Vuylsteke. His assistant, an engineer called Walter Landrieu, (who built one of the first sequencers in Europe) also invented an instrument that used electronic tubes to generate eight octaves derived from a single base frequency.

470 compositions were realised at IPEM between 1963–1987. It is still operational, housed in the University building Technicum, in the same place it was founded.

[Roland Kuit]

IEM — Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (Graz)

It all started in 1965, when Heinz Hönig, assistant lecturer for Jazz Praxis at the Academy for Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz under the direction of Erich Marckhl, applied for a travel authorization to the Studio Elektronischer Musik at the WDR in Cologne, with the annotation: “study trip for the realization of the planned development of an Institute for Electronic Music at the Academy.” Most likely, this trip was equally determining for the future direction of the IEM in general and its dissociation from existing institutions in Austria, all of which were mainly dedicated to recording engineering in a Tonmeister sense.

Consequently, Heinz Hönig, being already well known as an expert for electronic, was entrusted with the development of the institute. In February 1966, the Institute of Electronic Music (aka “die Elektronik”) was launched and become effective, retroactively as of 1st October 1965.

From the beginning, the key task of scientific research was accompanied by the plan to establish a “course of Electronic Music.” However, it took several years, until the first electronic music compositions could be realized — mainly due to funding issues. Basic courses were held and students were offered the possibility to realize their own works within the courses “Einführung in die Elektronische Musik” (“An introduction to Electronic Music”) and “Praktika Elektronischer Musik” (“Internships in Electronic Music”).

In the beginning, the main research focus was on the development of studios, in order to be able to create works using tape cutter technologies using tape recordings and oscillators. These technologies were extended in order to implement rotating sounds and transformations using ring modulators.

Most of the equipment needed had to be developed and assembled in-house.

In the first phase, from the beginnings until 1972, the institute concentrated on “music for tape,” which was followed (until about 1977) by a focus on “voltage-controlled synthesizers.” The highlight of this period was the Hönig 78 synthesizer. At the time of writing, this apparatus is still partially functional and is currently on display at the Technisches Museum in Vienna.

Hönig 78 voltage-controlled synthesizer
Hönig 78 voltage-controlled synthesizer. Photo © IEM.

Gösta Neuwirth worked and taught at the institute starting in 1968. He left both the academy and Graz after a strong dispute concerning “Neue Musik” in 1978, but his ideas and approach to the composition of electronic music continued to play an important role.

During the next phase, starting in 1978, it became evident that despite the existence of hardware sequencers, computers were becoming indispensable. Since mainframe computers were unaffordable, micro-controllers (KIM, later SYM) could be adapted using 12-bit digital-analogue converters.

Former student Helmut Dencker contributed as programmer and developer by focusing on computer music languages and developing the EMC (Electronic Music Compiler). Composers could now run composition algorithms directly on the synthesizers using an easily understandable syntax and without having to know any higher programming languages. It was a distinct feature of this system to be able to handle and program longer structures — which were then taught in the course “Computermusik.”

In 1984, the institute’s move into the “Wilder Mann” at the Jakomini square in Graz heralded the beginning of the era of MIDI-controlled digital synthesizers.

Andrzej Dobrowolski, who was then professor for composition in Graz, and his students influenced the artistic development until Dobrowolski’s death in 1990, developing an independent æsthetic of electronic music based on a strict, polyphonic “Tonsatz” that was often generated algorithmically.

During this phase, a first computer music studio was established and was based on sound editors and sequencer programs running on Atari computers. Due to the growing interest of students and guest composers, this production studio was soon to be accompanied by a teaching studio. A few years later this setup was expanded to include a small concert room for electronic music.

When Robert Höldrich and Winfried Ritsch joined the IEM, the institute entered a new phase, gradually becoming an institute for digital signal processing using computer music workstations (NeXT with IRCAM workstation). The focus shifted to real-time applications in computer music at festivals and concerts. New works of computer music were mainly developed with guest composers.

Besides this, the institute worked closely with the Graz University of Technology (TUG). This collaboration was mainly driven by the development of the interdisciplinary and inter-university study area of “Toningenieur” (sound engineering), which concentrated on the technical and scientific aspects of sound engineering and acoustics — a unique feature in Europe.

This development opened the new fields of sound research, multi-channel reproduction and musical acoustics — leading to “and Acoustics” being appended to the name of the institute. Owing to the huge success of the Toningenieur studies at the Graz University of Music — which has evolved from a branch of the electro-technology study into a separate branch of study — the supervision of this area became the main educational focus of the IEM.(by Winfried Ritsch and IOhannes m zmölnig)

[Roland Kuit]

CSIRAC

CSIRAC (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Automatic Computer) was the first computer built in Australia and the fourth stored-program computer in the world. It ran its first test program late in 1949, and it played music not too long after, making it the first computer in the world to play music. CSIRACs story, and that of the music is fascinating and entertaining. CSIRAC was a serial computer, meaning that the bits of a computational word were pased around serially, not in parallel. This, and another other decisions about its design were primarily for simplicity as CSIRAC was initially considered to be a prototype of a more comprehensive machine. CSIRAC had a speaker which was used as a diagnostic aid to follow a program (it had no display other than a raw view of bits in the memory), because raw pulses from the serial buss could be sent to the speaker. A loop of these was typically called a blurt and was often used to signify the end of a program. In 1950 or 1951 CSIRAC was used to play music, the first known use of a digital computer for that purpose. Geoff Hill was the programmer to first achieve this, and he came from a musical family and had perfect pitch - it would have been natural for him to ponder if he could coax a steady tone from CSIRAC's speaker to make music. This music was never recorded (although it almost happened), but it has been accurately reconstructed as described in the book The Music of CSIRAC mentioned below, and it can be heard via the links at the bottom of this page. There is information about CSIRAC on several sites: Wikipedia, The University of Melbourne (music pages are here), CSIRO, National Treasures, and Melbourne Museum (which has CSIRAC on display).

It is important to note that the early attempts at making computers play music did not use a digital-to-analog converter (DAC), or pre-calculated synthesis waveforms which are standard today. The developments initiated by Max Mathews and John Pierce have the distinction of being the first musical use of a DAC, as well as going beyond what was previously the playback of standard or popular melodies, to investigating the very rich musical possibilities offered by the computer. Thus it is Mathews and Pierce, whose work led to the great musical consequences and advances of computer music, who are the rightful fathers of the genre. This in no way diminishes the significance and achievement of programming CSIRAC to play music from 1951.(http://www.doornbusch.net/CSIRAC/)