Walter (Wendy) Carlos and the Moog Synthesizer

Some of my early exposure to classical music was in the form of electronic music.  In the late 60's Walter Carlos (later, Wendy Carlos after a medical procedure) pioneered the recording of electronic music using the Moog Synthesizer.  The photo (taken from the Moog website) is typical of the synthesizers of the time.  They consisted of wave generators and voltage controlled oscillators and they could be combined to generate overtones and more complex sounds.  The keyboard had to be tuned to the waveforms to allow for keys to match desired base tones.

Carlos then built an 8 track tape system and laid down individual tones mixes that represented individual "instruments".  The use of 8 tracks allowed him to develop "orchestrations.  It was an incredibly slow process, yet he insisted that every note be true to the original classical scores.

He had three purely classical albums:  "Switched on Bach", "The Well Tempered Synthesizer", and "Switched on Bach II".

Now, back to specific classical music.  The "Switched on Bach" album had, as its first track, Sinfonia to Cantata No. 29.  There followed a number of other songs, but the first suffices to show how difficult it must have been to play one note at a time and get the timing right, rewind the tape, go to the second track, do the same and so on.  Nonetheless, the output was great and so I began to become a fan of Bach.  Here are two versions of the Sinfonia:

Synthesizer version by Wendy Carlos  (This is actually a link to the entire side 1 of the album)

Orchestral version as originally intended

Pipe Organ version as I heard it in church

I find that listening to different versions of the same song really promotes an understanding of the different moods that you can get for the music as the different interpretations of artists and directors.