Programming and Meta-Programming The Electro Organism

1974

Editor's note: I’m a huge fan of Don Buchla’s instruments and approach to synth design. I played a Buchla 100A from the San Francisco Tape Music Center that wound up in the BEAMS lab at Brandeis. I’ve since gotten back into hardware synthesizers, and while I have a more chaotic Eurorack setup, I still love and appreciate the sound and beauty and total work of art of the Music Easel.

This is much more than an operating manual for the Buchla Music Easel instrument, it’s also a trip, and a piece of technical and music writing.

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Programming and Meta-Programming The Electro Organism: An Operating Directive for the Music Easel

by Allen Strange

x1974 by Buchla and Associates. Permission hereby granted to duplicate and distribute by any means.

This manual is designed to provide the reader with the information necessary to realize the potential of the Music Easel – a truly performable electronic musical instrument. The performer will discover that the Music Easel is a ‘kit’ of wide-range parameters which may be interrelated and controlled to define various musical events and structures. Here presented is a logical, step-by-step exposition of the available parameters, their operational ranges, and their modes of control.