When Switched-On Bach appeared in 1968, the Moog synthesizer was still far from the convenient polyphonic instrument we now associate with keyboards. Wendy Carlos worked closely with Robert Moog and used multitrack recording to construct Bach’s polyphonic music from an electronic instrument that could produce only limited musical information at once. Carlos even built her own eight-track recording machine.
That means a piece that a pianist can perform with ten fingers became something closer to architectural construction.
Voice after voice had to be recorded and fitted together.
Today we can place an orchestral sample library on one MIDI track and play an entire arrangement immediately. Carlos faced almost the reverse situation: extraordinary control over timbre but painfully limited simultaneous performance.
The limitation forced listening at another level.
If every line has to be built separately, orchestration stops being an abstract concept. You have to decide what every note actually is.
Switched-On Bach is often remembered because it helped bring the Moog into popular consciousness. I find the production process more interesting.
Carlos was not using technology to make music easier.
She was using an impossibly cumbersome machine because it allowed music to sound like something that had barely existed before.
