Early ElectroMIX is a series to document the history of experimental Electronic music from the 50s to the 80s, composers making use of electronic instruments, test equipment, generators of synthetic signals and sounds… to analog synthesizers…While our sessions document those who make it today my desire is to transmit some pioneering works which paved the way to what we try to create today.
Realizing that most of those seminal recordings were not available I decided to archive them in a contemporary way, DJing-mixing them and while most of the time running several sources together or in medleys I made sure to respect the original intent of each composers as I want to transmit their message rather than mine.
The only one I would dare deliver being that they should not be forgotten…
Philippe Petit / April 2021.
Recorded (on March 19/2021) for our series broadcasted on Modular-Station
https://modular-station.com
Tracklist:
Piero Umiliani – Automa/Gadget (1981) 00:00 > 04:31
Georges Teperino – Cosmic Sounds N° 5 (1969) 04:02 > 06:25
Cécil Leuter – Electro Sounds N° 3 + 1 + 6 (1969) 05:58 > 09:34
Louis and Bebe Barron (Forbidden Planet) – Battle with Invisible Monster (1956) 09:21 > 12:08
Hermann Heiss – Elektronische Komposition 1 (1956) 11:45 > 16:55
John Pfeiffer – Take-Off (For Metric Transperformer) (1968) 16:16 > 19:51
Emerson Meyers’Provocative electronics – Rhytmus / Excitement (1970) 19:48 > 25:58
Peter Zinovieff – Tristan (1970) 25:58 > 35:38
Tristram Carry – Music for Lights / Visible Manifestations (1971) 35:38 > 44:07
Don Preston – Electronic Music / Analog Heaven (1967) 44:07 > 59:59
Piero Umiliani – Automa/Gadget (1981 / Easy Tempo)
Renowned Italian composer Umiliani produced an incredibly vast discography offering some refined works of library music and he was pioneering in the use of Moog, Hammond, and EMS Synthi AKS.
Georges Teperino – Cosmic Sounds N° 5 (1969 / TVMusic)
Cécil Leuter – Electro Sounds N° 3 + 1 + 6 (1969 / TVMusic)
Georges Teperino also recorded under the name Nino Nardini.
At the very beginning of the Sixties he entered the world of Music Library in collaboration with his old childhood friend Roger Roger (Cécil Leuter) and they build up the Studio Ganaro, a personal recording space where they started to work together on composing many kind of music and then heavily experimenting on the moog synthesizer and other analogue electronic systems.
Louis and Bebe Barron – Battle with Invisible Monster (1956 / Planet)
One of the most dramatic & frightening moment from the first entirely electronic film score for the MGM movie « Forbidden Planet » whose most of the tonalities were generated with a ring modulator. The sounds and patterns that came out of the circuits were unique and unpredictable because they were actually overloading the circuits until they burned out to create the sounds. After recording the sounds, the couple manipulated the material by adding effects, such as reverb and tape delay. They also reversed and changed the speed of certain sounds. The mixing of multiple sounds was performed with at least three tape recorders. The outputs of two machines would be manually synchronized, and fed into an input of a third one, recording two separate sources simultaneously to create the otherworldly and strange electronic soundscapes required by Forbidden Planet.
Hermann Heiss – Elektronische Komposition 1 (1956 / Harmonia Mundi)
Hermann Heiss was a German composer, pianist, and educator who composed this work at the Studio for Electronic Music (WDR) in Cologne in 1956. Before that he had been increasingly occupied with twelve-tone music. Hermann Heiß’s twelve-tone compositions, improvisational studies and sound movement theory, his pioneering work in the field of electroacoustic music and, above all, his teaching and lecturing activities, including the famous “Darmstadt Summer Courses”, provided impulses for musicians and composers from all over the world.. He then founded his ‘Studio für elektronische Komposition Hermann Heiß’ in Darmstadt which was one of the first private electronic studios in Germany.
The studio includes rare early electronic music devices such as a noise generator and a sinusoidal (measuring) generator, two large albis filters and even one of the first tape recorders, which allowed the mixing of different tracks made in succession, a technique developed by Heiß especially for electronic composition practices. The ring modulator, the Hall spiral and two loudspeakers were built by Heiß himself. An oscilloscope with an extension was used for experiments on combining image and sound.
John Pfeiffer – Take-Off (1968 / RCA Victrola)
Producer and engineer who joined RCA in 1949 where he started as a design engineer. In 1950 he moved to Artists & Repertoire, where he was a producer for classical music with Red Seal and eventually became the Executive Producer overseeing all classical labels at RCA. However, he also helped RCA develop stereo and quadraphonic recording techniques and coordinate their adoption of digital recording. In addition to this, he composed « Electronomusic — 9 Images » whose « Take Off » is from.
Emerson Meyers’Provocative electronics – Rhytmus / Excitement (1970 / Westminster Gold)
Professor Emerson Meyers, Haig Mardirosian, and Frank Heintz composed & executed at the “Electronic(s) Music Laboratory” at the Catholic University of America instigated in 1961, and the album is nothing short of daring, weirdo and showing that Early Electronic music knew few barriers.
Peter Zinovieff – Tristan (1970 / Space Age)
Peter Zinovieff is a British engineer and composer, who originated EMS with David Cockerell and Tristram Carry, the company made the VCS3 synthesizer in the late 1960s and changed the face of British Electronic music to follow. He is still active and especially recommended his two concertos for violin and electronics with Aisha Orazbayeva + his collaboration with cellist Lucy Railton, entitled RFG Inventions for Cello and Computer released on PAN in 2020.
Tristram Carry – Music for Lights / Visible Manifestations (1971 / EMS)
While working as a radar engineer for the Royal Navy during World War II, he independently developed his own conception of electronic and tape music, and is regarded as among the earliest pioneers of these musical forms.
Following World War II, he created one of the first electronic music studios, later travelling around Europe to meet the small numbers of other early pioneers of electronic music and composition. He studied arts at the University of Oxford and went on to study composition, conducting, piano, viola and horn at Trinity College London.
With Peter Zinovieff and David Cockerell, he founded Electronic Music Studios (London) Ltd, which created the EMS VCS 3, Synthi AKS, and was then involved in the production of such distinctive EMS products as the EMS Synthi 100.
In 1967 he created the first electronic music studio of the Royal College of Music. He built another at his home in Suffolk, which he transported to Australia when he emigrated there, and incorporated it into the University of Adelaide where he worked as a lecturer until 1986. Aside founding EMS Carry is also particularly well known for his film and television music.
Don Preston – Electronic Music (1967 / Sub Rosa)
Don Preston – Analog Heaven (1975 / Sub Rosa)
Founding member of Zappa’s The Mothers Of Invention whose touring all over the place left a mark upon all of those who saw his wall of Moog onstage. Once he told me he was friend with Louis & Bebe Barron and in a way I can feel their influence in his early Electronic tonalities…
