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Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

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Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#101

Post by quesera »

Blackthorn wrote: post #15
daneel_w wrote: post #9

Owed to my father's long interest in electronic music, I'm the thankful owner of several of the 1960s/1970s original print Walter Carlos-attributed vinyl records and a few of the 1980s Wendy Carlos-attributed ones. Switched-On Bach/Brandenburgs, Sonic Seasonings, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer etc. all played a large part in my discovery of electronic music as a child.

Would you be willing to work with an archivist to make these public? (I'm not one, to be clear.) Carlos recordings seem impossible to find!

These are still copyrighted recordings, and they seem to be available in the usual places you would find copyrighted digital audio.

Her work is not licensed for digital distribution, and largely out of print.

So, there's unfortunately no way to compensate her directly for her works.

And "work" is an understatement. Moog synths of the day were barely instruments. Imagine playing a symphony (symphonic arrangement) using only a single glass filled with water.

You could get any note you wanted, but only one at a time and even that required constant retuning.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#102

Post by renonn »

bane wrote: post #19

I grew up in a very religiously conservative household and was raised to not think "well" of trans people. Simultaneously one of my favorite soundtracks of all time was the music to the original 1982 Tron. I had never heard anything quite like it compositionally, or sonically. Sweeping orchestras blended in with synthetic beeps, and bold vistas. It fit the aesthetic of the movie perfectly and was such a daring film p…

No post body was provided.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#103

Post by puppable »

mt_ wrote: post #73
bane wrote: post #19

I grew up in a very religiously conservative household and was raised to not think "well" of trans people. Simultaneously one of my favorite soundtracks of all time was the music to the original 1982 Tron. I had never heard anything quite like it compositionally, or sonically. Sweeping orchestras blended in with synthetic beeps, and bold vistas. It fit the aesthetic of the movie perfectly and was such a daring film p…

Create art about whatever you want but if you bind it with your identity and sexuality you're more an idealogue than a craftsman.

This is a bad take both on the nature of art and Wendy Carlos.

Art encompasses all aspects of the human experience. How could this not include identity and sexuality, and yes, the treatment one lives through as an aspect of those things. Also wrong is the supposition that a ideological art is somehow a lesser form of creativity. Some of the greatest works in history were made by "ideologues", and made specifically as tracts for their beliefs, either expressly or subtextually. To demand that art be politically inert and sanitized of the identity of its creator is to demand art that says nothing to the viewer and means nothing to the artist. It is to chide a mural for not being a wallpaper.

But even then: Wendy Carlos is perhaps one of the weakest examples of someone doing this, as the article itself makes abundantly clear. Her identity as a transgender woman was something she had to hide for over a decade, and even then the social stigma has driven her into seclusion ever since. Rather, the story of Wendy Carlos is one that massively underscores the sheer importance of having the loud-and-proud expressions of people's identity and experiences that we're (and I am) fortunate enough to have today. If you don't like that, well, maybe you can be the one to close your blinds this time.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#104

Post by honcraft »

jacquesm wrote: post #69
MomoXenosaga wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am happy if gender therapy helped you I think it is fine for society to be critical however. I don't want to see documentaries in 20 years about people having regrets. Sadly any discussion is immediately considered a personal attack so we two camps.

It's pretty simple actually: if it's not your body then it is none of your business.

That's a narrowly individualistic view of the role of medicine in society.

Medicine has a social context as well. This relatively recent idea that someone can become more female or more male through drugs and surgery is one that has repercussions on how we as a society view the two sexes, what constitutes a woman or a man, and what is an acceptable expression of one's masculinity or femininity.

Maybe it's the right idea. But we should all reserve the right to be critical and consider alternatives, for this and any other idea with broad societal implications.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#105

Post by plasticeagle »

danidiaz wrote: post #25

Adult Swim's "Lords of Synth" comedy short contains a homage to Wendy Carlos in the form of a certain "Carla Wendos" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXgNo5Smino There's also the documentary "Sisters with transistors" about women pioneers of electronic music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r-3hlzpV7M

"Sisters with Transistors" is a superb film. Before I watched it, the only one of the many extraordinary women presented therein that I knew of was Delia Derbyshire.

I had no idea that the soundtrack to The Forbidden Planet (which may very well be the greatest Science Fiction film ever made), was by Louis and Bebe Barron on equipment they pretty much entirely built themselves. Today, we plug in a laptop, back then you were a true pioneer.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#107

Post by jacquesm »

honcraft wrote: post #104
jacquesm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple actually: if it's not your body then it is none of your business.

That's a narrowly individualistic view of the role of medicine in society. Medicine has a social context as well. This relatively recent idea that someone can become more female or more male through drugs and surgery is one that has repercussions on how we as a society view the two sexes, what constitutes a woman or a man, and what is an acceptable expression of one's masculinity or femininity. Maybe it's the right i…

I don't have a right to determine how you use and/or modify your body and you don't have that right over me. That's called bodily autonomy, and is about as clear cut a human right as you'll be able to articulate.

The social context has nothing to do with it, that's just a way to say that if enough people say that you can't do to yourself what you want to that that makes them right, which has historically led to all kinds of wrongs. See also: the right to euthanasia, abortion, being gay and so on and so on. It's always the sanctimonious groups that are hell bent on telling others how to live, but it never was any of their business.

How 'we as society' view this has no bearing on something that is ultimately the domain of a single individual, the person affected.

In the United States this is codified by "The right of the people to be secure in their persons" though of course there is plenty of hairsplitting going on about what that actually means, even though the simplest reading is to take it for what it says.

The implications of this are far reaching (for instance: I'm on the one side against a vaccine mandate because it would infringe on that right, on the other I think that a lot of people have allowed themselves to be pushed towards this on a pretext).

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#108

Post by lordfrito »

_cenw wrote: post #88
drannex wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marginally off topic here, but Occams Laser created a 'sequel' album to the Daft Punk score, and I feel it more closely feels like an updated original Tron soundtrack. There are two complete albums they've released: The Grid[1], which is a concept album based on the 1982 original, and Return to the Grid[2] which is a reimagined concept album for Tron Legacy, both that I absolutely love listening to. 1. https://occams…

I would also recommend the Tron 2.0 (which was a video game released before Tron Legacy) soundtrack. It reimagines a few tracks and otherwise expands in a similar style to the first movie.

Also Tron 2.0 game nailed the aesthetic, I wish Tron Legacy did. It just looked like your run-of-the-mill orange-and-teal sci-fi film. Such a wasted opportunity.

edited: You know I never paid attention to the soundtrack to the game, just listened to it... holy cow you're right they did a great job! Tons of cues from the original film... thanks for this!

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#109

Post by jacquesm »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #96
bane wrote: post #19

I grew up in a very religiously conservative household and was raised to not think "well" of trans people. Simultaneously one of my favorite soundtracks of all time was the music to the original 1982 Tron. I had never heard anything quite like it compositionally, or sonically. Sweeping orchestras blended in with synthetic beeps, and bold vistas. It fit the aesthetic of the movie perfectly and was such a daring film p…

It's quite strange that someone clearly nuts like that pastor can be considered sane, wise, and morally authoritative. While in the same circles a trans person like Carlos is considered inherently deviant and somehow immensely threatening - even though all they have to offer is a life-long list of creative achievements, and absolutely no evidence of harm to anyone.

My conversations with my deeply religious grandmother left me with the impression that religion is a very dirty game: it inserts itself into your psyche in a way that it can become nearly impossible to distance yourself from it without massively breaking open what you consider to be your identity. This makes what the OP did all that much stronger, to be able to overcome that conditioning.

My grandmother never managed to, but, to her considerable credit, she did realize that some of her views were no longer supported by the evidence available, she was just too rooted in her ways to change.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#110

Post by [deleted] »

renonn wrote: post #102
bane wrote: post #19

I grew up in a very religiously conservative household and was raised to not think "well" of trans people. Simultaneously one of my favorite soundtracks of all time was the music to the original 1982 Tron. I had never heard anything quite like it compositionally, or sonically. Sweeping orchestras blended in with synthetic beeps, and bold vistas. It fit the aesthetic of the movie perfectly and was such a daring film p…

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