Buchla Buchla Boo

If the folks behind My First Sony truly had any interest in holding my attention past age 7, they would have done everything in their power to slap their name on the Buchla Music Easel and maybe I wouldn't be the schlub I am today.



The Music Easel was one of the many brainchildren of Don Buchla. It combines nearly every sound generating element found on a synth: a keyboard, multiple oscillators, cartridges, reverberation, envelope filters, as well as a variety of modular components. In fact, a majority of its charm stems from its interconnectivity. The only way he could have made it more over the top would be to graft on a baboon's heinie.

I stumbled across a great video of Charles Cohen going to town on the music easel. If the video is any indication of the Music Easel in raw form, it's even somehow producing sound in stereo. Here's the blib from the site and then the video:

/ / / / / Viewing with headphones or a stereo source is highly recommended / / / / /


This colorful video features sound artist Charles Cohen improvising on a 1970's Buchla Music Easel. This extremely rare instrument is one of Don Buchla's 200 series. Buchla (a pioneer of audio synthesis) only manufactured 14 of these units. The entire film was edited from an hour-long set of free improvisation, with audio was taken directly from Charles' mixing board.All of the photography and editing was produced by Alex Tyson, a sound and video artist from Pennsylvania. The film was shot in 16:9 720p High Definition format, using a 35mm LensBaby 3GPL




CHARLES COHEN AT THE BUCHLA MUSIC EASEL from Alex on Vimeo.