Buchla Music Easel

For me, the holy grail of synthesizers is the Buchla Music Easel. It's the perfect size, built in it's own aluminum road case and looks like it's assembled from a rector set. I can only imagine how great it would be to run a Music Easel thru my Moogerfoogers. Bleeps and blurps for days! To think this synthesizer's first incarnation, the Buchla Music Box, was built in the 196os is astounding... If you'd had one of these, back then, blasting thru an amp in your garage, the neighbors would have thought they'd entered the Twilight Zone! Now, I had seen pictures of the Music Easel on-line for a number of years but only heard it for the first time last year, when I ran across a movie posted on Vimeo of Charles Cohen playing one. Needless to say I was transfixed. It sounded even better than it looked and immediately surpassed the EMS Putney on my gear lust list! So if any of you happen to win the lottery and want to make me forever grateful, you know what to get me...

CHARLES COHEN AT THE BUCHLA MUSIC EASEL from ∆LEX on Vimeo.

From Vimeo:

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

This 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 the Letus35 Extreme and a 35mm LensBaby 3GPL. "



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Buchla Music Easel

Charles Cohen