In 1959 a more practical tape recorder was substituted.
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The eventual output of the machine was was monitored on speakers and recorded to a lacquer disc, where, by re-using and bouncing the disc recordings, a total of 216 sound tracks could be obtained. The the sound was manually routed to the various components – a technique that was adopted in the modular synthesisers of the 1960’s and 70’s.
#1952 RCA VICTOR RADIO SERIES#
The sound itself was generated by a series of vacuum tube oscillators (12 in the MkI and 24 in the MkII) giving four voice polyphony which could be divided down into different octaves. Structure of the RCA MkII RCA Synthesiser structure On the Mark II, High and low pass filtering was added, along with noise, glissando, vibrato and resonance, giving a cumulative total of millions of possible settings. Attack times were variable from 1 ms to 2 sec, and decay times from 4 ms to 19 sec. Longer notes were composed of individual holes, but with a mechanism which made the note sustain through till the last hole. The paper roll moved at 10cm/sec – making a maximum bpm of 240. Despite the apparent crudeness of this input device, the paper roll technique allowed for complex compositions The paper role had four columns of holes for each parameter – giving a parameter range of sixteen for each aspect of the sound. The keyboard punched holes in a pianola type paper role to determine pitch, timbre, volume and envelope – for each note. Paper-punch input of the RCA Synthesisir Punch paper terminals of the RCA MkII The ‘instrument’ was basically an analogue computer the only input to the machine was a typewriter-style keyboard where the musician wrote a score in a type of binary code. The resulting RCA Mark I machine was a monstrous collection of modular components that took up a whole room at Columbia University’s Computer Music Center (then known as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center). Paper punch roll showing parameter allocation The RCA electrical engineers Harry Olson and Hebart Belar were appointed to develop an instrument capable of delivering this complex task, and in doing so inadvertently (as is so often the case in the history of electronic music) created one of the first programmable synthesisers – the precursors being the Givelet Coupleux Organ of 1930 and the Hanert Electric Orchestra in 1945. The project’s side benefit also explored the possibility of cutting the costs of recording sessions by automating arrangements and using electronically generated sounds rather than expensive (and unionised) orchestras basically, creating music straight from score to disc without error or re-takes. In the early 50’s RCA initiated a unusual research project whose aim was to auto-generate pop ‘hits’ by analysing thousands of music recordings the plan being that if they could work out what made a hit a hit, they could re-use the formula and generate their own hit pop music. In the 1950’s RCA was one of the largest entertainment conglomerates in the United States business interests included manufacturing record players, radio and electronic equipment (military and domestic – including the US version of the Theremin) as well as recording music and manufacturing records. Pictured: Milton Babbitt, Peter Mauzey, Vladimir Ussachevsky. The RCA Mark II Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center at Columbia’s Prentis Hall on West 125th Street in 1958.
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