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@ted_gordon

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To say today was fun would be an understated understatement!! Thank you so much to MMT, Todd, Steve, and a bonus Ted. The music and sounds… the conversations. The ideas!! Jeez. So much was shared and all it really did was make me want to try more when I get home to my instrument. And visit this place. Incredible.

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What is a synthesizer? For most of us, such audio technologies function as a “black box”—with inputs and outputs and something mysterious happening inside. Music technology scholar @ted_gordon says the mystery of the black box allowed musicians to imagine analog gear in radically different ways, revolutionizing the musical landscape in the process.

In this interview, we discuss three visionary musicians with very different ideas about analog technology in the 1960s and '70s: Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, and Sun Ra. Ted's new book is called The Composer's Black Box: Making Music in Cybernetic America.

As always, there was way more conversation than we could fit into our free episode under an hour. Paid members will hear the full 90-minute-plus conversation, where we talk about Don Buchla taking LSD with Hell's Angels, and Pauline Oliveros' queer Tejano identity and how it affected her music, and Sun Ra's really interesting philosophy of nature and discipline.

Link in bio
https://www.mackhagood.com/podcast/analog-revolutionaries-with-theodore-gordon-free/

#phantomPower #analog #synthesizer #sunra #composers

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Scenes from @museum_of_music_technology_mmt with @ted_gordon watch full program on @youtube such an amazing Museum and the EMEAPP/MMT’s special exhibition Instruments That Talk Back: Celebrating the Legacy of Don Buchla is not to be missed! So much cool programming going on! 🚀⚡️🚀

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Highlights from a day at the Museum of Music Technology located in Harleysville, PA USA

Instruments That Talk Back: Celebrating the Legacy of Don Buchla
Hands on exhibits production electronics were available. Additional historical prototypes and technologies are also seen. One of the directors kindly showed the details from a very early Don Buchla circuit.

A film screening in the afternoon and a lecture and performance in the evening.

AFTERNOON AT THE MOVIES — Subotnick: Portrait of an Electronic Music Pioneer

Don Buchla in the Cybernetics Moment: Exploring Buchla's Place in 1960s San Francisco Featuring Ted Gordon and Marcia Bassett
@ted_gordon @lilyruskroda

Lecture/Discussion and improvised duo performance using Buchla instruments

Check out the 2026-2027 Instruments That Talk Back: Celebrating the Legacy of Don Buchla event series for more Buchla history and performances.
https://emeapp.org/buchla-exhibition/

MMT Powered by EMEAPP:
Electronic Music Education and Preservation Project

@emeapp @museum_of_music_technology_mmt

#buchla #liveelectronicmusic #musictechnology

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A new episode of Phantom Power is out now

What is a synthesizer? For most of us, such audio technologies function as a “black box”—with inputs and outputs and something mysterious happening inside. Music technology scholar @ted_gordon says the mystery of the black box allowed musicians to imagine analog gear in radically different ways, revolutionizing the musical landscape in the process.

In this interview, we discuss three visionary musicians with very different ideas about analog technology in the 1960s and '70s: Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, and Sun Ra. Ted's new book is called The Composer's Black Box: Making Music in Cybernetic America.

As always, there was way more conversation than we could fit into our free episode under an hour. Paid members will hear the full 90-minute-plus conversation, where we talk about Don Buchla taking LSD with Hell's Angels, and Pauline Oliveros' queer Tejano identity and how it affected her music, and Sun Ra's really interesting philosophy of nature and discipline.

Link in bio
https://www.mackhagood.com/podcast/

#phantomPower #analog #synthesizer #musicTechnology #composers

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The psychedelic effects of LSD have been well documented. But what about the psychedelic effects of electronic musical instruments?

In the early 1960s, Don Buchla made a living designing circuits that translated biological phenomena into electronic signals, building instruments for the blind and experimental sensors for NASA research into manned spaceflight. These devices didn't just report on the senses. They hinted at the possibility of changing them.

Then his friend Owsley Stanley began flooding San Francisco with hundreds of thousands of doses of LSD, and Buchla found another technology that promised to alter his senses, and his consciousness.

Join us on October 3rd at 8PM at the MMT in Harleysville, PA as musicologist @ted_gordon explores Buchla's place in the 1960s counterculture, including his relationships with Stanley and Timothy Leary, his work on the legendary 1966 Trips Festival, his involvement with the San Francisco Tape Music Center, and his interest in psychedelic technologies.

Following his lecture, Gordon will be joined by Marcia Bassett @lilyruskroda, a frequent collaborator and NYC noise legend who regularly performs with Buchla instruments and guitar, to perform an improvised duo, articulating some of the ideas developed in the talk.

Tickets are available at tickets.theMMT.org and we'll see you when you get here!
#donbuchla #further #kenkesey #museum #buchla

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NEXT WEEK at 101 Archer! 🎵

The Composer’s Black Box: A Book Talk and Performance by Theodore Gordon
🗓 Friday, September 25
📍 101 E. Archer St.
🕛 7:00 p.m.
FREE!

What happens when musicians encounter science and technology that promises to fundamentally change the way they understand sound?

Join music scholar and musician Theodore Gordon to discuss his recent book, "The Composer’s Black Box: Making Music in Cybernetic America", published by the University of California Press in December 2025. The book examines the consequences that cybernetics and information theory held for musicians and musical instrument designers in the 1960s and beyond. Through five case studies ranging from Morton Subotnick to Sun Ra, Gordon shows how new electronic technologies led musicians to imagine differing visions of the musicking human in the 20th century and beyond.

Gordon will also illustrate concepts from the book through an improvised performance with a modular electronic music system designed by Donald Buchla in 1973.

Theodore (Ted) Gordon is a musicologist and musician whose research into experimental music lies at the intersection of musicology, critical organology, and science & technology studies. He is an assistant professor at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His writing has also appeared in Modular Synthesis: Patching Machines and People (Routledge) and Submersion: Reconsidering John C. Lilly (MIT Press, forthcoming).

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We are less than two weeks away from the opening of Instruments That Talk Back: Celebrating the Legacy of Don Buchla, made possible through generous support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

Running from September 19, 2026 through April 17, 2027, this seven-month celebration honors the groundbreaking work of Don Buchla, whose visionary touch- and motion-sensitive instruments reshaped the relationship between human and machine.

The exhibition features a special limited-time physical exhibit built around EMEAPP’s collection of rare Buchla instruments, many of which will be fully operational for hands-on exploration. Visitors can also experience an immersive quadraphonic sound-art environment featuring video projections generated from a recreated Buchla slide-projector-controller.

And thanks to the MEMS Project, we’ll even have a working installation of a reproduction Buchla EEG controller module — so if you’ve ever wanted to hook a synthesizer up to your brain and see what kind of music your thoughts make, this is your chance!
In addition to the instrument exhibit, we’ve scheduled a dynamic lineup of Buchla artists and scholars who will bring the exhibition to life through performances, talks, and special programs.

Featured contributors include Todd Barton, Ezra Buchla, Suzanne Ciani, Joel Davel, Ryan Gaston, Mark Goldstein, Ted Gordon, Steve Horelick, Mike Hunter, Kurt Kurasaki, Steve McQuarry, The MEMS Project, Ami Radunskaya, Sarah Belle Reid, David Rosenboom, Stephen Ruppenthal, Howard Moscovitz and Barry Schrader. #buchla #electronicmusic #museum #musictechnology #donbuchla

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We are less than two weeks away from the opening of "Instruments That Talk Back: Celebrating the Legacy of Don Buchla", made possible through generous support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

Running from September 19, 2026 through April 17, 2027, this seven-month celebration honors the groundbreaking work of Don Buchla, whose visionary touch and motion-sensitive instruments reshaped the relationship between human and machine.

The exhibition features a special limited-time physical exhibit built around EMEAPP’s collection of rare Buchla instruments, many of which will be fully operational for hands-on exploration. Visitors can also experience an immersive quadraphonic sound-art environment featuring video projections generated from a recreated Buchla slide-projector-controller. And thanks to the MEMS Project, we’ll even have a working installation of a reproduction Buchla EEG controller module — so if you’ve ever wanted to hook a synthesizer up to your brain and see what kind of music your thoughts make, this is your chance!

In addition to the instrument exhibit, we’ve scheduled a dynamic lineup of Buchla artists and scholars who will bring the exhibition to life through performances, talks, and special programs. Featured contributors include Todd Barton, Ezra Buchla, Suzanne Ciani, Joel Davel, Ryan Gaston, Mark Goldstein, Ted Gordon, Steve Horelick, Mike Hunter, Kurt Kurasaki, Steve McQuarry, The MEMS Project, Ami Radunskaya, Sarah Belle Reid, David Rosenboom, Stephen Ruppenthal, Howard Moscovitz and Barry Schrader.

The opening day of the exhibition, September 19, features two afternoon lectures from The MEMS Project focusing on their slide projector and EEG controller modules. The evening features a talk/performance featuring MEMS and composer/performer Steve Horelick centered around Morton Subnotick's Buchla 100 system. All events will be livestreamed for those who cannot attend in person.

Tickets and livestream registrations are available now at tickets.themmt.org.

#museum #buchla #donbuchla #electronicmusic #musictechnology

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Out now: Shared Air is a 65 track collaborative album made by Workshop System owners using field recordings and inspired by @ted_gordon’s brilliant and inspiring Thingking workshop three weeks ago. More than 80 Workshop Systems attended, with their owners. We learned about Pauline Oliveros (featured in Ted’s book The Composer’s Black Box) and tried patches inspired by her earliest experiments. After the session, we worked together in international pairs, sharing field recordings and processing them with the systems. This album is the output of that work: 65 tracks on Bandcamp, a 78-page book of spectrograms and a YouTube album. I’ll be announcing Thingking #2 very soon. Links in my bio: https://musicthingmodular.bandcamp.com/album/thingking-1-shared-air

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@lilyruskroda @ted_gordon @woodstockhausen

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🔺Set Times • Saturday July 11🔺

2:00~The Secret Cult of Infinite Kitten + RGB Values
3:35~Rhiannon Catalyst
3:10 ~( ) Jeremy Slater
4:45~EHMN (Donny Martin)
4:20~Geoff Gersh
5:55~Catalyst Culture Labs Panel
6:30~Joan Jordi Oliver
7:05~Tommy Martinez
7:40~Kevin Ramsay + Bryce Hackford
8:15 ~Ben Bennett
8:50~Marcia Bassett + Ted Gordon

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