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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZCARLOS, Wendy(b Walter Carlos, 14 November 1939, Pawtucket RI) Engineer, composer. He worked with Dr Robert A. Moog (b 23 May 1934; d 21 August 2005), who had built a theramin when he was 14, earned a PhD in engineering in 1965 and built his first synthesizer. Carlos persuaded him to put his name on the machine, and with musicologist Benjamin Folkman perpetrated an album called Switched-On Bach (produced by Rachel Ellkind): it was no. a 10 pop LP '69, won three Grammys, stayed on the 'classical' chart for 310 weeks; The Well-Tempered Synthesizer '70, Walter Carlos' Clockwork Orange '72 (with sounds from the Kubrick film, also on the soundtrack LP) and two-disc Sonic Seasonings '72, all made the pop top 200 LPs; By Request, two-disc Switched-On Brandenburgs, Digital Moonscapes ('suite of ethereal melodies threaded through tape-manipulated environmental sounds') and Tron (soundtrack to Walt Disney's computer-game fantasy film) did not. The Shining on WB was the soundtrack of a Kubrick horror film with Jack Nicholson, widely panned. Carlos attempted to get inside the mathematical essence of Bach, not simply siccing synthetic music on us, but there didn't seem to be much reason to throw away our Glenn Gould records. Optimists hoped that electronic gadgets would become a tool in the composer's workshop rather than a mere source of new (unswinging) sounds; the jury is still out. The composer in Carlos tries to stay ahead of today's pack of kids with studio toys by digitally synthesizing the sounds of the orchestra (digital sounds merged with the London Symphony Orchestra in Tron); she was working on Beauty In The Beast, to use 'bent' tunings to combine Western and other modes, perhaps also new sounds, e.g. bowed piano, woodwind glockenspiel, etc. |