Wendy Carlos demonstrates her Moog Synthesizer in 1970

let me try and show you how we get some of these sounds first of all none of them exist as a particular sound as they would on an electronic organ there's no magic button marked trumpet or violin or drums you have to build every sound and to start to build these sounds you have to start with something pretty simple near the simple things we start with there are five of them the simplest one of all is something that any lab technician must have seen at one time or another it's called a sine wave it's very smooth very flute like a little bit more complicated wave is called sawtooth and it's called sawtooth because on a oscilloscope screen it looks just like a sawtooth and uh this one is a little richer a little readier and it resembles a lot of sounds found on home electronic organs something in between those last two and a very useful sound indeed is something called triangular and it's kind of a pointed sine wave so you can see it's a little brighter than a sine wave this one's called pulse wave and i'm just going to show you how it swings into a thing called square wave it's up down up down just like a switch if you flip a switch you're making a pulse wave if it's an even off on off on then it looks on an oscilloscope very symmetrical and it's called a square wave and if i take the time that it's on and make it different from the time that it's off it changes quality listen to it shifts interior it's very useful sound the last of which uh is probably the least useful although you'd never want to be without it it's very colorful very coloristic and it's pure form it sounds like surf or a steam sound it's called white noise now i'll patch this up here into one of my output modules and try and show you how with these primitive sounds we start to get some very musical sounding things first of all here's a sawtooth wave that's coming out of an oscillator going into a mixer coming up into what's called a filter which is going to remove parts of the sound either the top or the bottom part much like bass and treble controls do on your you know high fidelity system and uh by hitting a note on the keyboard now i'm connected up so i'll hear that one sound it's a very low sound it's very bright if i manually turn this knob you'll listen to the sound get considerably duller [Music] instead of doing this manually i can do it automatically with what's called an envelope generator it generates the envelope the envelope being this type of motion that i'm shaping the tone with so i'll do it this way that can be speeded up till we almost start hearing a plucked string if we turn that around and make it uh open up instead of closing it does this which was quite a surprise when i first heard it has almost a trumpet like quality quality in this range let's uh show you how one of these sounds might be laid in to a piece okay we're in tune everything sounds like it's about right i'll start the eight track and you'll hear all the other components of this score and i'll add in the solo [Music] oh you

Channel: soup

Views: 1,459,076

Rating: 4.9447055 out of 5

Keywords: wendy carlos, moog synthesizer, moog modular, moog synth

Id: 4SBDH5uhs4Q

Length: 3min 56sec (236 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/hippopede]

I feel like there's something about "educational" videos from this era that is unmatched today in terms of how clearly information is presented without unnecessary filler.

[u/NevinyrralsDiscGolf]

Makes me crave a bit of the ultra-violence.

[u/Willzohh]

I remember when Wendy Carlos was Walter Carlos and their 33 1/3 LP was in Tower Records under both names. One album named Walter, same music with Wendy Carlos on it. I thought about buying both because I knew it was historic but I was too broke to buy them.

[u/40moreyears]

This is incredible. Never had a clue how a synthesizer worked before now.

[u/shiner_bock]

Seems she actually composed the soundtrack for "A Clockwork Orange" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Carlos). Quite impressive that, even after all this time, it's so distinctive that you can identify the style almost immediately.

[u/ElectricEliminator5]

Analogue synth legend

[u/TheSillyman]

I love this video. Wendy is a legend, she explains synths in such a simple understandable way. I've been playing synths for a year or two and am ashamed to admit I didn't fully understand most of what was going on until I saw this video.

[u/Fearganainm]

Carlos' Switched on Bach is a masterpiece.

[u/Kelsoklh21]

My dad who just passed two weeks ago had a genuine Moog Synthesizer as a young adult. He said the one he had is now in the synthesizer museum in Florida. Very cool to see a video of one and how it works. Wish I could have sent this to him. He would have got a kick out of it.