Laurie Spiegel plays Alles synth - temporary replacement

Until they restore the copy suffering from data corruption please look at this copy instead.

Comments can continue to be left on the original's page (where there have been over 25,000 views!), here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4T3eT56GlA

Thanks for watching,

- Laurie

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Laurie Spiegel
• computer music
• electronic music
• computer arts
• improvisation
• synthesizers

[DeRex9]

This is serious synth porn, btw when was this synth built, 60's ? can anyone answer please? Thank you for great upload.

[MusicMouse]

@DeRex9 "Synth porn"? I hope that isn't bad. This synth was built in 1977 by Hal Alles and his team at Bell Telephone Labs, Holmdel, NJ. It is all digital. There was no realtime digitial synthesis in the 1960s and this one-of-a-kind instrument was a first in many ways. Hal and BTL got a lot of patents out of it. There is a link on the video's page to a Computer Music Journal article that more fully describes it.

[6364gg2]

Put unix on it, and you've got the best computer in existance.

[MusicMouse]

@6364gg2 It wasn't that kind of general purpose computer. We could only program it remotely, from a PDP 11/45 in another part of the building over trunk cables. Those 11/45s did run early UNIX and the software I wrote for this interactive performance set-up was in an early version of C. - Laurie

[wurlybird9]

machines can amplify human energies. broadcast and replicate though the cold vast space. capturing the interaction. a strange love and discipline. deep and magical. transcendent but never extending beyond the most extreme limits. one is longing for travels but the journey must remain safe.  all is understood, energies shall align and illuminate the way. you close your eyes, become one with sound. your light rides the wave and thus an infinite closed loop of satisfaction

[0e0]

this is serious.

[SPFXsynthesisers]

Laurie = genius synth babe.

[iain42]

This is great. Thanks for posting. Gotta love the pioneers of electronic music. :)

[johninfl]

I actually saw this video in a DVD from Netflix, about the history of electronic music...I think it was produced by "OHM"....Very cool...Thanks..

[DeRex9]

@MusicMouse Thank you :)

[MusicMouse]

@lordoid Ah! I just found your message. You already checked it out at Oberlin. (Good work!) I heard a rumor it was dropped on the stairs while being moved and was never the same again, but that was only a rumor. It was extremely far from an easy instrument to program, that in itself could have been why it never sang again.

[MusicMouse]

@lordoid It was a true prototype, so there only ever was one of these. After Bell Labs it went to Oberlin College computer music lab. I don't think they ever got it to work. Had to be programmed in the C language remotely over a UNIX network.