9 ms·

Living sound forever: The genius of Wendy Carlos

154 points by CharlesW 3y ago

boopmaster 3y ago
"Beauty in the Beast" album on streaming services or re-issues would be wonderful. The title track is, to me, absolutely epic and transports my mind to a parallel dream dimension. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2j1gy2 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2j1gy2
- lelandfe 3y ago
  I know it stems from the bias of western music, but this is really not enjoyable to me. Those weird scales to my ear just sound wrong, like a synthesizer with some frayed wires.
- pavlov 3y ago
  Yes! I remember reading about this album in the ‘90s and decided to buy it as soon as it’s reissued. Still waiting. I don’t quite understand how that’s possible for someone with as much name recognition as Carlos. Are the rights to this album held by a bankrupt record company or something?
killerstorm 3y ago
I wonder what's her reason to not make her music available online. This is really unfortunate.
- fweimer 3y ago
  Not just online, the CD re-releases (and LPs) are only available second-hand as far as I can see, except for the Tron re-release from last year.
KerrAvon 3y ago
It's really unfortunate that the only example of her work easily available to most people is the Tron soundtrack, which frankly isn't very good; as she herself has said, the synthesizer is out of tune with the orchestration due to circumstances beyond her control. (Not to be confused with the Tron Legacy soundtrack by Daft Punk, which is incredible.) edit: grammar
- speed_spread 3y ago
  Switched-on Bach is readily available if you're willing to, uh, look for it. Not her compositions admittedly but still seminal Wendy Carlos.
  - manbart 3y ago
    There’s also the ‘Clockwork Orange’ soundtrack
denton-scratch 3y ago
> HRT involves rewiring the endocrine system to alter one’s mind, body and emotions to their desired state. I don't think that's what Carlos was doing; she was using a Moog synthesiser, which is an modular analogue synthesiser rigged so as to simplify making "patches" - roughly, a Moog put you on tramlines. Carlos wasn't re-wiring anything.
- alar44 3y ago
  She was trans. Started as Walter Carlos.
gossamer 3y ago
My favorite piece of hers has always been the 13 minute version of Timesteps from the Clockwork Orange movie. Some of her works are on Spotify.
dahart 3y ago
Oh Switched-On Bach was just foundational for me as a kid, it cemented my love for both Bach and for digital music. I found it in my dad’s vinyl collection and used to put it on, turn it up loud (sometimes waking my parents up and/or really irritating them) and rock to it. My dad might have been secretly a little disappointed when Switched-On Bach led me to seek out lots more digital music (found stacks of Isao Tomita at the library) and then go deeply into digital art, because my dad was a luthier who made violins by hand, but he never judged me openly. I think I didn’t even realize the first time I saw TRON or The Shining or Clockwork Orange that it was Wendy Carlos, it just had that Moog sound I knew I loved. Yes looking back it’s unquestionable that the mark Wendy Carlos left on the world is enormous.
- hammock 3y ago
  There is a great podcast called Switched on Pop that goes deep into pop songs and I just made the connected to Switched on Bach :)
- efficax 3y ago
  oh but switched on bach is so delightfully analog
  - mastazi 3y ago
    I'm going to guess that parent meant "electronic music" rather than "digital music". I can see their point, at various times in the history of contemporary music, there has been a preconception that electronic music is worth less than music played by performers, or that it's only good for the dance floor but not for listening. Especially during the time that rock music was big, let's say from the late 50's to the late 70's. EDIT: I don't know if Switched on Back was mostly sequenced or mostly performed by Wendy on a keyboard, Moog synths of the time offered both options - I'm guessing it was a mix of the two but I might be wrong.
    - pulvinar 3y ago
      It was entirely analog (well, all except for the fingers). Switched-On Bach was recorded in 1968, playing one voice at a time on a keyboard going to a custom 8-track tape recorder. https://www.wendycarlos.com/+sob.html https://www.wendycarlos.com/+sob.html And I was another who found it enthralling when it came out, and still do.
gwbas1c 3y ago
> The trans synth pioneer changed music—and the world—forever > it contained a nod to her identity, hidden in plain sight. There it was, on her 1968 album cover: Trans-Electronic One thing that Wendy really didn't want to be is an icon for "trans" anything. I remember reading an article on her website years ago about her transition, but now I can't find it. What I remember is that she wants to be known for her music, but not for her transition. She just wants to put the whole thing behind her. It's not part of her identity. (I really wish I could find the article, because her words are better than mine.) As a huge fan of her music, I see her as a musician first and foremost. The gender change is just an interesting footnote, not her identity.
- jb1991 3y ago
  I would say she succeeded in that, because for decades I have listened and enjoyed and respected her music, and today is the first day I learned that she was trans.
  - Freak_NL 3y ago
    I only noticed when I started out with the Clockwork Orange soundtrack and noticed her name varying in different releases. It's completely irrelevant to her work.
    - lostlogin 3y ago
      > It's completely irrelevant to her work. I don’t think it is from her perspective. Lost connections, lost time, and she can’t even get her name on her work. “By 1981, Carlos was known everywhere as Wendy: she had completed her gender confirmation surgery in 1972, and talked about it for the first time in a 1979 Playboy interview. Only two columns were devoted to her music in the piece, which she saw as a betrayal. Nevertheless, she revealed just how much “forced secrecy” had affected her career. Switched-On Bach’s popularity had made things hard for her, she said. She had “lost an entire decade” avoiding live performances and connections with other artists because she didn’t yet feel ready to disclose her gender transition publicly. Once, Stevie Wonder came to check out her synthesiser set-up, and Carlos hid as he knocked. Sewell writes in her book how Carlos still faces prejudice from record companies today: Warner Music has not still corrected her name on the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange.” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/nov/11/she-made-music-jump-into-3d-wendy-carlos-the-reclusive-synth-genius https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/nov/11/she-made-music...
vr46 3y ago
Sadly, I fear Wendy has already vanished from current culture as I cannot access her work, only reams of writing on her. I have the Clockwork Orange LP that I bought in Canada for $5 back in 1998 but attempts to get much else have failed. It’s just too expensive, and while I can be a fan of the artist, I would like to be a fan of the art. Maybe whoever inherits her works will make it available for a new generation to discover, and hopefully there’s enough writing and analysis that contextualizes her achievements.
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  You can easily find her albums in FLAC or WAV/CUE (not quite legally, or possibly somewhat legally via archive.org), or even get the vinyl records second hand (often for fair prices, although state of the record may vary). She certainly didn't disappear from the collective memory of many people around the world (and anyone seriously in to synthesizers will know her works). Her music just isn't available on whatever streaming service is popular now, or whatever Apple or Google are pushing. It'll come back available to all eventually.
baggy_trough 3y ago
Her Brandenburg concertos are amazing. I’ve got them on CD - I think they might have been remade with direct to digital output.
slowhadoken 3y ago
I’ve always been cool with trans artists but I’m not drinking the arcus foundation kool-aid. People are always looking into the past to validate their skewed contemporary perception. It’s a drag.
anonymousiam 3y ago
While reading this, it got me wondering about proper pronoun usage for past-tense. AFAIK, Wendy was Walter when Switched On Bach was released, so is it proper to say "his" work, or "her" work? The article refers to Carlos with "her" in all cases. https://www.discogs.com/release/1343533-Walter-Carlos-Switched-On-Bach https://www.discogs.com/release/1343533-Walter-Carlos-Switch...
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  Article also refers to her "deadname". I suppose that is how she likes to view it: Walter never existed.
- burk96 3y ago
  The Wikipedia Manual of Style is a good guide to cases like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Gender_identity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Gend... To answer your question, she/her is correct, and a brief note that she went by Walter at the time is sufficient to avoid confusion.
  - anonymousiam 3y ago
    Thanks! I'm somewhat ignorant of these things, and I did not mean to offend anyone.
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  It's, uhm, confusing. She was living as a she at the time. The first pressing of Switched on Bach didn't even have a name on it. She had to fight just to get W??? Carlos on the second pressing. (I have the first pressing framed.) In hindsight, it might have been less confusing to just use W. Carlos as her professional name. I certainly was confused because, in 2000, my college textbooks said "Walter Carlos" but the record store had CDs by "Wendy Carlos." I didn't figure it out until I Googled "Walter Carlos."
klik99 3y ago
I have so many stories about Wendy Carlos - one of my college teachers wrote the early moog manuals and was fond of saying “Walter was an asshole, Wendy was the sweetest person I’ve ever met” - someone told me of a time they were synthesizing a trumpet and someone invited Wendy in, who listened for 20 seconds and said the third partial was a few dbs off, sure enough it sounded much more real after adjusting just that - but at the end of the day, something everyone forgets to acknowledge is just how great of a performer she was - switched on Bach wasn’t great because of the patches she used or the mixing or anything technical, she was really an amazing interpreter in the classical sense of Bach, and her works shine for it - pity that she is so regressive when it comes to digital rights, but a reminder that being a genius in one field does not make you a genius in related fields
- klik99 3y ago
  The first time I heard Carlos on a college radio station I had to stop and pull over - it was as close to a sea change moment in my life as anything - at the end of the day she was/is a human being and it sucks that she has to be an icon of anything because her work speaks for itself and independently of that she is who she is - I love Wilhelm kempff for his interpretation of Beethoven but have no idea of his self-identify - I truly don’t agree with Wendy’s view on copyright but that doesn’t delegitmize what she has created - it takes strong personalities to break conventions and that force isn’t always “right”, but we’re better for those that have them
blueblimp 3y ago
Some time ago, I listened to Switched-On Bach out of historical interest, and I was surprised to find that it's largely gimmick-free. It's a (good) classical music performance that just happens to be performed using synthesizers. It's a shame that, as the article mentions, Carlos's music is currently inconvenient to listen to due to unavailability on streaming services.
reality_inspctr 3y ago
Wendy used to hand-draw album covers for tapes of tests she sent to Bob Moog when he sent prototypes to try. They are beautiful and childlike with wonder. A couple went to Smithsonian. source: I’m former cochair of Moog Foundation
at_a_remove 3y ago
I've mentioned this before, but I have a bootlegged "Everything Carlos did for The Shining," which was a LOT, but Kubrick hardly used any of it. Good stuff.
allenbrunson 3y ago
i am a lifelong fan of electronic music. given that wendy carlos is one of the pioneers, i am in the process of buying up all her records. as has been mentioned previously in these comments, her music is harder to acquire than some of us would like. pretty much all of it was released on CD at one point or another, but all of those labels are now out of business. further, she is absolutely rabid about having her music removed from youtube and other such sites, when it appears. that said, it is not all that difficult to get ahold of this stuff. personally, i am going through sellers on discogs. say you wanted to buy a copy of her version of the clockwork orange soundtrack. https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/193356?ev=rb https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/193356?ev=rb you can order a copy for as little as ten bucks. not exactly a princely amount. i do hope she will re-issue this stuff one day, in a more readily available format. it will probably come too late for me, though! i will have bought up all her records second-hand by then.

154 points by CharlesW 3y ago

"Beauty in the Beast" album on streaming services or re-issues would be wonderful. The title track is, to me, absolutely epic and transports my mind to a parallel dream dimension. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2j1gy2 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2j1gy2

lelandfe 3y ago
I know it stems from the bias of western music, but this is really not enjoyable to me. Those weird scales to my ear just sound wrong, like a synthesizer with some frayed wires.
pavlov 3y ago
Yes! I remember reading about this album in the ‘90s and decided to buy it as soon as it’s reissued. Still waiting. I don’t quite understand how that’s possible for someone with as much name recognition as Carlos. Are the rights to this album held by a bankrupt record company or something?

killerstorm 3y ago

I wonder what's her reason to not make her music available online. This is really unfortunate.

fweimer 3y ago
Not just online, the CD re-releases (and LPs) are only available second-hand as far as I can see, except for the Tron re-release from last year.

KerrAvon 3y ago

It's really unfortunate that the only example of her work easily available to most people is the Tron soundtrack, which frankly isn't very good; as she herself has said, the synthesizer is out of tune with the orchestration due to circumstances beyond her control. (Not to be confused with the Tron Legacy soundtrack by Daft Punk, which is incredible.) edit: grammar

speed_spread 3y ago
Switched-on Bach is readily available if you're willing to, uh, look for it. Not her compositions admittedly but still seminal Wendy Carlos.
- manbart 3y ago
  There’s also the ‘Clockwork Orange’ soundtrack

denton-scratch 3y ago

> HRT involves rewiring the endocrine system to alter one’s mind, body and emotions to their desired state. I don't think that's what Carlos was doing; she was using a Moog synthesiser, which is an modular analogue synthesiser rigged so as to simplify making "patches" - roughly, a Moog put you on tramlines. Carlos wasn't re-wiring anything.

alar44 3y ago
She was trans. Started as Walter Carlos.

gossamer 3y ago

My favorite piece of hers has always been the 13 minute version of Timesteps from the Clockwork Orange movie. Some of her works are on Spotify.

dahart 3y ago

Oh Switched-On Bach was just foundational for me as a kid, it cemented my love for both Bach and for digital music. I found it in my dad’s vinyl collection and used to put it on, turn it up loud (sometimes waking my parents up and/or really irritating them) and rock to it. My dad might have been secretly a little disappointed when Switched-On Bach led me to seek out lots more digital music (found stacks of Isao Tomita at the library) and then go deeply into digital art, because my dad was a luthier who made violins by hand, but he never judged me openly. I think I didn’t even realize the first time I saw TRON or The Shining or Clockwork Orange that it was Wendy Carlos, it just had that Moog sound I knew I loved. Yes looking back it’s unquestionable that the mark Wendy Carlos left on the world is enormous.

hammock 3y ago
There is a great podcast called Switched on Pop that goes deep into pop songs and I just made the connected to Switched on Bach :)
efficax 3y ago
oh but switched on bach is so delightfully analog
- mastazi 3y ago
  I'm going to guess that parent meant "electronic music" rather than "digital music". I can see their point, at various times in the history of contemporary music, there has been a preconception that electronic music is worth less than music played by performers, or that it's only good for the dance floor but not for listening. Especially during the time that rock music was big, let's say from the late 50's to the late 70's. EDIT: I don't know if Switched on Back was mostly sequenced or mostly performed by Wendy on a keyboard, Moog synths of the time offered both options - I'm guessing it was a mix of the two but I might be wrong.
  - pulvinar 3y ago
    It was entirely analog (well, all except for the fingers). Switched-On Bach was recorded in 1968, playing one voice at a time on a keyboard going to a custom 8-track tape recorder. https://www.wendycarlos.com/+sob.html https://www.wendycarlos.com/+sob.html And I was another who found it enthralling when it came out, and still do.

gwbas1c 3y ago

> The trans synth pioneer changed music—and the world—forever > it contained a nod to her identity, hidden in plain sight. There it was, on her 1968 album cover: Trans-Electronic One thing that Wendy really didn't want to be is an icon for "trans" anything. I remember reading an article on her website years ago about her transition, but now I can't find it. What I remember is that she wants to be known for her music, but not for her transition. She just wants to put the whole thing behind her. It's not part of her identity. (I really wish I could find the article, because her words are better than mine.) As a huge fan of her music, I see her as a musician first and foremost. The gender change is just an interesting footnote, not her identity.

jb1991 3y ago
I would say she succeeded in that, because for decades I have listened and enjoyed and respected her music, and today is the first day I learned that she was trans.
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  I only noticed when I started out with the Clockwork Orange soundtrack and noticed her name varying in different releases. It's completely irrelevant to her work.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    > It's completely irrelevant to her work. I don’t think it is from her perspective. Lost connections, lost time, and she can’t even get her name on her work. “By 1981, Carlos was known everywhere as Wendy: she had completed her gender confirmation surgery in 1972, and talked about it for the first time in a 1979 Playboy interview. Only two columns were devoted to her music in the piece, which she saw as a betrayal. Nevertheless, she revealed just how much “forced secrecy” had affected her career. Switched-On Bach’s popularity had made things hard for her, she said. She had “lost an entire decade” avoiding live performances and connections with other artists because she didn’t yet feel ready to disclose her gender transition publicly. Once, Stevie Wonder came to check out her synthesiser set-up, and Carlos hid as he knocked. Sewell writes in her book how Carlos still faces prejudice from record companies today: Warner Music has not still corrected her name on the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange.” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/nov/11/she-made-music-jump-into-3d-wendy-carlos-the-reclusive-synth-genius https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/nov/11/she-made-music...

vr46 3y ago

Sadly, I fear Wendy has already vanished from current culture as I cannot access her work, only reams of writing on her. I have the Clockwork Orange LP that I bought in Canada for $5 back in 1998 but attempts to get much else have failed. It’s just too expensive, and while I can be a fan of the artist, I would like to be a fan of the art. Maybe whoever inherits her works will make it available for a new generation to discover, and hopefully there’s enough writing and analysis that contextualizes her achievements.

Freak_NL 3y ago
You can easily find her albums in FLAC or WAV/CUE (not quite legally, or possibly somewhat legally via archive.org), or even get the vinyl records second hand (often for fair prices, although state of the record may vary). She certainly didn't disappear from the collective memory of many people around the world (and anyone seriously in to synthesizers will know her works). Her music just isn't available on whatever streaming service is popular now, or whatever Apple or Google are pushing. It'll come back available to all eventually.

baggy_trough 3y ago

Her Brandenburg concertos are amazing. I’ve got them on CD - I think they might have been remade with direct to digital output.

slowhadoken 3y ago

I’ve always been cool with trans artists but I’m not drinking the arcus foundation kool-aid. People are always looking into the past to validate their skewed contemporary perception. It’s a drag.

anonymousiam 3y ago

While reading this, it got me wondering about proper pronoun usage for past-tense. AFAIK, Wendy was Walter when Switched On Bach was released, so is it proper to say "his" work, or "her" work? The article refers to Carlos with "her" in all cases. https://www.discogs.com/release/1343533-Walter-Carlos-Switched-On-Bach https://www.discogs.com/release/1343533-Walter-Carlos-Switch...

JKCalhoun 3y ago
Article also refers to her "deadname". I suppose that is how she likes to view it: Walter never existed.
burk96 3y ago
The Wikipedia Manual of Style is a good guide to cases like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Gender_identity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Gend... To answer your question, she/her is correct, and a brief note that she went by Walter at the time is sufficient to avoid confusion.
- anonymousiam 3y ago
  Thanks! I'm somewhat ignorant of these things, and I did not mean to offend anyone.
gwbas1c 3y ago
It's, uhm, confusing. She was living as a she at the time. The first pressing of Switched on Bach didn't even have a name on it. She had to fight just to get W??? Carlos on the second pressing. (I have the first pressing framed.) In hindsight, it might have been less confusing to just use W. Carlos as her professional name. I certainly was confused because, in 2000, my college textbooks said "Walter Carlos" but the record store had CDs by "Wendy Carlos." I didn't figure it out until I Googled "Walter Carlos."

klik99 3y ago

I have so many stories about Wendy Carlos - one of my college teachers wrote the early moog manuals and was fond of saying “Walter was an asshole, Wendy was the sweetest person I’ve ever met” - someone told me of a time they were synthesizing a trumpet and someone invited Wendy in, who listened for 20 seconds and said the third partial was a few dbs off, sure enough it sounded much more real after adjusting just that - but at the end of the day, something everyone forgets to acknowledge is just how great of a performer she was - switched on Bach wasn’t great because of the patches she used or the mixing or anything technical, she was really an amazing interpreter in the classical sense of Bach, and her works shine for it - pity that she is so regressive when it comes to digital rights, but a reminder that being a genius in one field does not make you a genius in related fields

klik99 3y ago
The first time I heard Carlos on a college radio station I had to stop and pull over - it was as close to a sea change moment in my life as anything - at the end of the day she was/is a human being and it sucks that she has to be an icon of anything because her work speaks for itself and independently of that she is who she is - I love Wilhelm kempff for his interpretation of Beethoven but have no idea of his self-identify - I truly don’t agree with Wendy’s view on copyright but that doesn’t delegitmize what she has created - it takes strong personalities to break conventions and that force isn’t always “right”, but we’re better for those that have them

blueblimp 3y ago

Some time ago, I listened to Switched-On Bach out of historical interest, and I was surprised to find that it's largely gimmick-free. It's a (good) classical music performance that just happens to be performed using synthesizers. It's a shame that, as the article mentions, Carlos's music is currently inconvenient to listen to due to unavailability on streaming services.

reality_inspctr 3y ago

Wendy used to hand-draw album covers for tapes of tests she sent to Bob Moog when he sent prototypes to try. They are beautiful and childlike with wonder. A couple went to Smithsonian. source: I’m former cochair of Moog Foundation

at_a_remove 3y ago

I've mentioned this before, but I have a bootlegged "Everything Carlos did for The Shining," which was a LOT, but Kubrick hardly used any of it. Good stuff.

allenbrunson 3y ago

i am a lifelong fan of electronic music. given that wendy carlos is one of the pioneers, i am in the process of buying up all her records. as has been mentioned previously in these comments, her music is harder to acquire than some of us would like. pretty much all of it was released on CD at one point or another, but all of those labels are now out of business. further, she is absolutely rabid about having her music removed from youtube and other such sites, when it appears. that said, it is not all that difficult to get ahold of this stuff. personally, i am going through sellers on discogs. say you wanted to buy a copy of her version of the clockwork orange soundtrack. https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/193356?ev=rb https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/193356?ev=rb you can order a copy for as little as ten bucks. not exactly a princely amount. i do hope she will re-issue this stuff one day, in a more readily available format. it will probably come too late for me, though! i will have bought up all her records second-hand by then.