Bijan Ahmadi

MUS 307

Ghost in a Cello

During the electronic revolution of the 1960s, pioneers like Buchla and Moog created electronic instruments that would revolutionize popular music, and usher in a whole new genre. Assisting Buchla with ideas for his modular synthesizer was Morton Subotnick.

Subotnick was an integral part of the new music scene, establishing the San Fransisco Tape Music Center in 1963. He went on to teach, and eventually chair electronic music at LA’s California Institute of the Arts.

Subotnick’s early works, Silver Apples of the Moon (1967), Sidewinder (1971), and 4 Butterflies (1974) featured the tagline “Created by Morton Subotnick on the Electric Music Box”, and were entirely electronic compositions, performed on the Buchla modular synth. Silver Apples was commissioned by Nonesuch records, and was the first piece of electronic music to have that honour. However, Subotnick’s creativity was not static. He worked on a new electronic fusion device, the Ghost, and in 1977 he released Two Life Histories, for clarinet and male voice, augmented with Ghost score.

Subotnick’s works all are themed with vivid expressions of nature. On the liner notes of 4 Butterflies, he explains that each of album is a metaphor, “upon which the compositional procedures develop” (Subotnick, 1974). Sidewinder snakes its way through the speakers, rhythmic and subtle, with low frequency shifts from channel to channel. The album features æthereal tones, a changing resonance in a metallic timbre. In the liner notes, Don Skoller writes “Sidewinder became (and remains) the center for any number of meditative trips, like an unwinding sonic mandala” (Skoller, 1971).

The ghost is, in essence, an electronic signalling device. Subotnick would sing into the microphone which would pick up pitch changes from the maestro, and translate them as changes in voltage. These fluctuations are processed through the Ghost, and directly manipulate an incoming analogue audio channel. The maestro chooses whether the changes will affect frequency, amplitude, or balance. The augmented signal changes the sound of the chosen analogue instrument in an electronic, yet very natural way. The instrument is captured by the Ghost score, and the output is a unique combination of the two. The natural sounds take on a spectral quality, floating across the room, raising and lowering in frequency and amplitude. In the selection played from Axolotl, the dominant tones of the cello are sucked back by the Ghost, representative of the album’s namesake: a salamander who, although he grows lungs, will never leave the water to breathe air.

Prompted by “the promise of technology” (Subotnick, 2006), Morton Subotnick drew on his experience of electronic manipulation, and came up with Making Music, a children’s software musicbox. He applied simple techniques to make music fun for kids. He went on to write Making More Music, and Hearing Music, and publish a website creatingmusic.com that introduces kids to his Making Music programs. He also created performance software, called Gestures. The concept is similar to the Ghost, however in the Gesture performance, a mouse is used to access and manipulate stored soundfiles. Mr. Subotnick also lists a multimedia opera, and a “staged tone poem”(Hertzog, bio) among his works.

Hertzog, Christian (bio) Retrieved from http://mortonsubotnick.com/about.html 14 January, 2006

Making Music (1995). New York, NY. Voyager Software

Skoller, Don.(1974). Sidewinder: Created by Morton Subotnick (liner notes) CBS Records

Subotnick, Morton (1971). 4 Butterflies (liner notes) CBS Records

Subotnick, Morton (bio) Retrieved from http://mortonsubotnick.com/m- bio%5b157words%5d.rtf 14 January, 2006

Subotnick, Morton (wiki) Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Subotnick 14 January, 2006

Subotnick, Morton (2006): From a conversation by e-mail 18 January, 2006