Are You Switched On?

Trans people are everywhere, in every profession and trade; we have some amazing talent out there. In some places you would be surprised to learn and one of the first trans person that I heard about was Wendy Carlos…

Switched-On Bach: How a transgender synth pioneer changed music
Wendy Carlos’s 1968 album of Bach music for Moog synthesiser brought electronic music into the mainstream and influenced artists from Giorgio Moroder to Daft Punk
The Irish Times
By Mark Graham
November 20, 2018

Since its release 50 years ago, Switched-On Bach has been relegated to the realm of kitsch curiosity; blips and blops produced from tinkerings on primitive electronic components. Many academics and commentators believe that part of the reason the album isn’t more widely celebrated is because of the gender of its creator. Wendy Carlos released her pioneering electronic album in 1968; at the time of release, she was six months into transgender hormone therapy. When the album hit the shelves, the person responsible for Switched-On Bach was still known as Walter.

Switched-On Bach was the first classical album to go platinum in America, remaining at No 1 in the classical album charts for more than three years (peaking at No 10 in the pop charts). The album won three Grammys, bringing synthesisers out of electronics laboratories and into the musical mainstream.

An electronic instrument playing the works of JS Bach wasn’t music to everyone’s ears. In 1964, inventor and engineer Bob Moog was manning his stall at an Acoustic Engineering Society (AES) convention in New York. Business wasn’t brisk. His hand-made electronic instruments were lauded by some, but others thought them an abomination to the world of music. When he was interviewed for a television news piece on the convention, the interviewer leaned in to the camera and asked the mild-mannered inventor in very serious tones: “Tell me, Mr Moog, don’t you feel guilty about what you’ve done?” That upset Moog, but it was indicative of how some people felt about electronics being used to create serious music.

And now look at where we are at in terms of electronic music.

Then came Wendy Carlos…

Moog fell asleep after lunch and was roused from his nap by a music student from Columbia University who seemed not only interested in the musical potential of the modular synthesiser, but also in how it worked and made its endless array of sounds. Carlos had been advised to seek out Moog by her composition professor Vladamir Ussachevsky, a fan of Moog’s work, and a musician who grasped the instrument’s potential to explore new worlds of sound.

Carlos couldn’t afford to buy one of Moog’s hand-crafted, polished walnut-finished, incredibly expensive instruments. Walter Sear, who was responsible for selling the synths, recalled, “You could buy a nice house and a nice car for what these cost back in those days.” Instead, Moog and Carlos developed a barter system that saw Carlos recording pieces of music showcasing the capabilities of the instrument. For this work and for advice that aided the development of the synth, Moog knocked a few bob off the price.

Some of her works are, Tron, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining and one of the musicals she influenced was…

Mick Jagger was among the small number of musicians able to afford a modular Moog synth. The Rolling Stones bought one a year after Switched-On Bach’s release. Jagger can be seen playing a Moog in the 1970 film Performance. The Moog synth requires years of practice to master, and it didn’t get used much by the Stones, so they sold it to German electronic music trailblazers Tangerine Dream, who featured it on many of their recordings.

Yes keyboard player Rick Wakeman picked up a cheap Moog synth secondhand. These early instruments were monophonic, meaning they could only play one note at a time. Wakeman found a disgruntled customer in England who’d bought a Moog, but thought it was broken because it wouldn’t play chords. Unlike Jagger, Wakeman got his for a song.

Wendy Carlos was a true pioneer not only in music but also her transition in 1979.