Blues Mix

In the fall of 1965, I joined the music faculty at the State University of New York at Albany (now called The University at Albany). In 1966, I was given a small grant and asked to establish an electronic music studio. I made contact with Robert Moog, who, as I had learned, had just begun a business in designing electronic music modules. I spent the grant in purchasing a group of modules.

The image here shows that first studio: On the left on the desk, there are six oscillators which, incidentally, I never used. In the rack in the center of the desk, there are the few Moog modules that I had purchased. And to the right of the Moog modules, there is a tape recorder, standing vertically. I’m wearing the earphones. With the help of Findlay Cockrell, the pianist in the music department at that time, the studio came together in 1966.

The first composition was Blues Mix.

Listening to it now, and noting a knob on the table attached to one of the Moog oscillators, I believe that I must have created an automatic process in which the Moog oscillators were connected to each other, and through those connections controlled one another, while I was turning the knob to change, directly and indirectly, the frequency of all of the oscillators.

It was a playful experiment on my part, and to my knowledge it was the first time a composition was created in this way.

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For other compositions, click on a title

Blues Mix 1966
Albany Music 3 1966
Jack in January 1967
Street Scene 1967

Drift 1970
Ideas of Movement at Bolton Landing 1971
Echoes 1972

From The 14th On 1973

Flowers 1975
Settings for Spirituals 1977

Solo 1978
Scenes from Stevens 1979
Follow Me Softly 1984

After Some Songs 1995
Spring Drum with Pierre’s Words 1997

Many Times … 2001
One World 1 2006
Micro Fictions 2009
Different Cities 2013