Grandpa Mosc, tell us a story?

[mosc]

I'm sorry, I've been bad about this. Since I started the story, I found a bunch of press clippings that have been in a box since 1972 or something, and someone has even sent me some custom hardware used in the ESO, something I probably wired up myself.

[Acoustic Interloper]

The years roll by

Some day the telling of the story itself could become a thing of legend

[deknow]

Music has been on the backburner here for a few years as the bees have taken over (hey! We wrote "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Beekeeping" since I was last here)....but I get excited every time I get an update on this thread....until I read that the story has not been continued

deknow

[blue hell]

deknow

Good to hear you're doing well!

Now let me make room for the story

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[v-un-v]

Deknow?

Where's our Dnny or Wild Zebra??

[phobos]

just read the stories sitting in my pj's and absolutely love them.
please grandpa Mosc tell us one more

(this could be a nice radioshow,. Mosc telling stories with some live electronic
music in the background)

[Cynosure]

I know you are probably very busy with music and stuff, but it would be great if you could continue this when you have some spare time. I really enjoyed reading what has been posted so far.

Thanks for sharing!

[mosc]

I haven't forgotten this unfinished story. I will finish it when the time is right. In the meantime, I found this little interview that my friend, Charles Amerkanian did with Daniel Ravenaugh. Recorded a week before the big concert.

[Acoustic Interloper]

First installment since just after electro-music 2005!

[Johan Zwart]

[debterminer]

Ahhh a cliff hanger! Mosc i'd love to hear the end of this story :>

[Acoustic Interloper]

[Acoustic Interloper]

[debterminer]

Ah i did long ago, he said he was waiting for someone to uh... not embarrass them i suppose to put it tactly haha.

[Airlock]

BUMP!!!

[mosc]

Wow! It has been many years, I have been negligent. I will finish this story. As the You Tubers say, "this is me from the future, excuse the interruption".

A couple of weeks ago I was in Philadelphia for my grandson Ian's high school graduation. It took him to Emeapp, now renamed The Museum of Music Technology. It's an amazing collection of electric and electronic musical instruments. https://emeapp.org/ I have loaned to the museum some of my artifacts from the old days including my Moog Modular 2C, Don Buchla's first circuit, https://electro-music.com/forum/post-395357.html and a custom voltage controlled remote mixer controller Don designed for the ESO that I built for the big concert.

Those that know me will tell you that I can't help myself, and I started telling stories about working with Don. The EMEAPP people seemed to dig it, and told me that they are doing big extended festival to celebrate Buchla's 90th anniversary. Would I be interested in coming back and telling some of my stories about working with him, and maybe playing some music. YES!

So, on November 13, 2026 I'm presenting an evening of stories of my experiences working with Buchla, interspersed with live music by Bill Fox, Jared Stack, Doug LLewellyn, Joel Izquierdo, Jil Christensen and myself. There will be a few Buchla Easels. We will also be playing some software versions of the Buchla 700 digital system. We won't be using these instruments exclusively, but we will exclusively play music inspired by Don's philosophy.

I have re-read the story presented in the first part of this topic. It has brought back many memories, and it will help me get my head together for the November 13th gig. I remember why I was hesitant (understatement) to finish telling the story of the big ESO concert. It's because it's associated with bad memories, and hurt feelings. I didn't want to bring that up, or to say negative things about anyone. It's been many years and I've gotten over the hurt and the resentment. I am now emotionally able to tell the rest of the story without getting into any of that stuff. As Dylan might say, "You're a big boy now."

I do want to tell the story of the concert, and I will. But I must say now that Buchla had nothing to do with the aforementioned bummers. I only knew him as a very decent fellow who treated everyone with respect, even when he thought they were idiots.

It's sad, but I can't find any photos or anything else about the Electric Symphony Orchestra on the internet. This topic on e-m may be it for documentation of this amazing project and event. If any of you finds something, please post it here as a reply to this topic.

Once again, stay tuned...

[Airlock]

Well, look at that, it only took 4 years for that BUMP to take effect!
Looking forward to reading this but I'm gonna have to start at the begining.

[kkissinger]

Wish these stories had a "like" button. Great that you are participating in this event om November.

[mosc]

The day before we were to move into Zellerbach Auditorium, I went to Peter's place to help load the equipment. Since I had last been there, the guys had made a lot of improvements to the board; it looked almost professional. While we were loading stuff into a big rented truck, I asked the guys if they thought this production would ever work. They said, "probably not, but as long as we get paid we don't care." I didn't know at the time, that was an ominous foreshadowing.

From there we made it over to Buchla's in Berkeley, and loaded up all the 200 series VCA modules, the amplifiers and the individual speakers. Buchla wasn't there, so I assumed the role of directing the loading of the equipment.

When I got to Zellerbach the next day, the truck had arrived and most of the stuff had been unloaded. By the time the speakers, amps, the mixing desk, were set up it was already afternoon. I was already very tired.

The day before, Don told me that Ravenaugh had agreed that I would run the mixing board and the VCAs. I was expecting to do that and I was mentally prepared. After most of the equipment was moved onto the stage, Don came over and told me some upsetting news. Ravenaugh had heard that Leonard Bernstein's Mass had premiered in New York and the sound got great reviews. Ravenaugh then hired the guy that did the mix for that concert, and was flying him to Berkeley to run the board. He was to be here the next day, the day of the concert.

The guy, I never got his name, wanted to do the mix from the first row in the balcony. Don told me I was to wire up a huge multi conductor cable with mil-spec connectors and to connect an old faderbox that Buchla had made in the distant past. The faders would connect to the VCAs that drove the distributed amps. The big John Meyers system driven from the mixing board would be a set-and-forget thing.

I was appalled, "How could this possibly work. This guy doesn't know a thing about the system. Half of it is set-and-forget! Did you concur?" Don looked me in the eye, and I could see he was just as upset about it as I was. His look expressed absolute compassion for me that couldn't be expressed in words. I felt absolute compassion for him too. He had been treated terribly during this entire project. Without a word between us, I could see he was resolved to see this through, and at the moment I did the same.

I got the cable and the connectors, drew up a pinout diagram and got to work. I hate wiring multi connector cables. It took hours. I was internally fuming about being replaced as the mixer. I worked until late in the evening and went home. I got very little sleep.

The next day was concert day. In the morning musicians drifted in and we started testing out the pickups, the amplifiers, speakers, the VCAs, the mixer, and John Meyers' sound system. Something amazing happened!

When all the stuff was hooked up, and plugged in, there was a terrible 60 Hz hum coming from all the speakers. It was a potential disaster. Don, Peter and I started pulling down fader after fader to isolate where the hum was coming from. We couldn't find anything. This was high anxiety on amphetamines.

Then God intervened. An old guy, a member of McCuen sound company that brought over John Meyers' speakers, walked on the stage and says, "Do you guys even know what the fuck you are doing? Turn off the power to everything." Somebody threw the switch; all hum vanished and this old-timer pulled a random plug from one of the dozens of amplifiers on the stage. He looks at the plug; its a three conductor one. "Somebody get me a pair of pliers" and he snaps off the ground connector, and says something like, "Shit, why do I have to work with fucking morons?" He then pulls out every single plug on the stage and snaps off the ground connectors on each one. All of us, including Don Buchla, watched in motionless silence. Then, when he's done every power cord, he commands: "Turn the fucking power back on".

The lights on all the amps, on the mixer, and on Buchla's VCOs all turn on, and there is perfect silence! No hum at all! The room applauds.

Ravenaugh had flown in from Europe a world class cellist and a pianist. I don't remember their names, but it was clear that the were famous, and expensive, classical soloists. The pianist was going to perform Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 5 first movement. The piano was equipped with the a Countryman piano pickup that Carl Countryman had just installed that morning. The pianist played a few minutes while Carl adjusted the pickup.

Then, Carl yells out, "Can anyone play Bach?" I hesitantly raised my hand as nobody else spoke up. They walked to the back of the audience to hear how it sounded and Carl yelled, "Start playing". I was shaking because I hadn't practiced Bach for months, maybe a year. This guy was a famous artist. I was about to be humiliated.

I made it through Bach's Minuet from French Suite #2. They were satisfied the piano sounded OK. The pianist came up to me and said, "That was beautiful Bach". What a kind man. I stopped feeling so badly about not running the mixing board.

We got things set up, and ate some shitty take in dinner. About 90 minutes before show time, Ravenaugh and Buchla were standing by the mixer. Ravenaugh called me over and said. "It will look stupid to have this big mixer on stage with nobody running it. Moscovitz, you sit here and every once in a while you pretend to reach up and touch a control. Look like you know what you are doing, but do not touch anything".

That's how I spent the concert, as a prop.

When the concert started, I looked behind me and the audience was very sparse. I could see about 10 friends from Mills College and my brother, David, and my wife, Juli. I'd say the hall was only about 30% full.

The music sounded much better than I thought it would, but at times it was awful. As expected the balance was terrible and the strings running through the VCAs were too soft most of the time except when they were suddenly too loud. After the concert, my friends laughingly said it wasn't loud enough. (I had told them about Zappa's sarcastic comment that kicked of this entire thing).

Ravenaugh had flown big time classical music critics from New York, and had given away lots of tickets. Attendance was still a disappointment. In the following days the reviews came in and they weren't too good. One reviewer said, "The cello sounded like a diving board played with a saw." The was a write up in Time Magazine which included only one photo; it was me at the mixing board, not Ravenaugh conducting. He was pissed. Another reviewer wrote, "Howard Moscovitz sat at the mixing board like a mad scientist looking over a fatal mistake." Hey, they spelled my name right and it's pretty much how I felt at the time.

That was the first and last performance of the Electric Symphony Orchestra. The ESO never paid me for those exhausting final weeks. I never spoke to Don about it; what was there to say? I went back to work soldering up 200 series modules. That's when I decided to get another graduate degree, this time in electrical engineering where the pay is pretty good and steady.

But that's another story...