10.9

**Dead medium: the Mark II RCA Sound Synthesizer**

From: kadrey_AT_well.com (Richard Kadrey)

Source: Peter Forrest http://www.musicians-net.co.uk/Mix/Analogue.html

Electronic Music Synthesizer Mark I:1952 - 1957 Mark II:1957 - early 70s.

Users included: Milton Babbitt, Luciano Berio, Charles Wuorinen (1970 winner of the Pulitzer Prize with a piece called "Time's Encomium").


 * As much a digital sequencer as an analogue synthesiser, it was designed by Harry Olson and Herbert Belar at the RCA lab in Princeton.


 * Mark I had 12 fixed tuning-fork-based oscillators in equal temperament, whose frequency could be divided down to produce different octaves. Originally, tracks were recorded onto disc (up to six at once, replayed by six styli). The whole thing took up seven tall 19" racks.


 * Mark II had an additional twenty-four variable oscillators, and took up ten 19" racks. It used a multi- track tape machine to record completed tracks.


 * Both machines used punched paper rolls to program the synthesiser/sequencer in binary code, with four columns of dots for each parameter giving sixteen possibilities == the first column being worth 1, the next 2, the next 4, and the last 8. There were control sections for Frequency, Octave, Envelope, Timbre and Volume. The paper roll, 38 cm wide, moved at about 10 cm/sec, and could cope with sixteen holes in 10 cm == making a maximum bpm of 240. Longer notes were composed of individual holes, but with a mechanism which made the note sustain through till the last hole.


 * Attack times were variable from 1 ms to 2 sec, and decay times from 4 ms to 19 sec.


 * High and low pass filtering was available, along with noise, glissando, tremolo, and patchable resonance and attenuation sections, both giving millions of possible settings.


 * In 1959, the Mark II was moved to the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.