FIFTEEN YEARS AGO IN EM

Nov 1, 2001 12:00 PM, Steve Oppenheimer

           
 

Once in a while, you get an opportunity to talk with someone special, someone whose work transforms lives. In the November 1986 issue, Freff got a rare and precious interview with one of the greatest electronic musicians of all time, Wendy Carlos — and he made the most of it.

In 1986, 18 years after Switched on Bach put electronic music on the map for practical purposes, Carlos was preparing to release Beauty and the Beast. She was poised to stretch our ears with her amazing microtuning explorations. After a long introduction, Freff and Carlos had an in-depth discussion of her latest work. In addition to analyzing her compositions and discussing microtuning, Carlos offered sage advice about the importance of setting limits within which to create art rather than getting lost in a sea of possibilities.

Complementing the Carlos interview were four applications features about alternate tunings. David Doty started the ball rolling with an explanation of Just intonation. Robert Rich followed with advice about using Just intonation with MIDI synthesizers, especially the popular and affordable Sequential Six-Trak and Casio CZ-101.

Alan Gary Campbell took over from there, explaining the sound-production technology behind various electro-acoustic and electronic instruments. Campbell then described how to retune those keyboards to Just and Mean Tone tuning.

Vanessa Else's “Opening the Door to Music Math” explained the math required to understand scales and tuning. Else included tuning tables and interval-relationship formulas for Pythagorean, Even-tempered, and Just tunings.

Robert Carr supported the tuning stories with an analysis of popular electronic tone-production methods, including additive synthesis, subtractive synthesis, FM, and sampling. Stanley Junglieb provided a sidebar about vector synthesis, and Carr added one about simple waveforms and understanding overtones and harmonics.

The November issue was by no means limited to discussions of tuning and synthesis methods. In the “Careers” section, Paul Lehrman (the current EM Web editor) offered advice about starting a music-software company, and Craig Anderton explained the ins and outs of freelancing in the musical-electronics business. The “MIDI” section featured Rick Schwartz's roundup of MIDI Thru boxes and switch boxes and offered several examples of how to configure your MIDI rig.

The “Circuit” section began with a Jack Orman story about building your own AC line filter. John Loffink followed with a DIY article about building a digital, voltage-controlled counter for syncing analog sequencers to other sequencers, drum machines, and so on.

The reviews section comprised two stories, both interesting. Tony Thomas took a close look at Yamaha's FB-01 FM synth module. Of special interest, in the wake of Alesis's recent problems, is Anderton's review of that company's seminal Midiverb and Midifex, which set a new price and performance standard for digital effects processors.

Overall, I consider the November 1986 issue one of the best published in EM's first year as a monthly magazine. Almost every story is still relevant.