I became aware of EMS instruments through the music of Roxy Music, Hawkwind, and Pink Floyd. However, it was hearing the sounds of Heldon, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze that cemented my desire to own a VCS3 of my own. Though it is without question the instrument I love most, my relationship with the VCS3 is often contentious. Its design quirks sometimes lead to surprising results that can be inspiring. On the other hand, it has been making music for far longer than I myself have and its age is revealed in sometimes frustrating ways. Nevertheless, it has been a constant companion for many long years and despite the occasional need for servicing my particular unit is fairly stable once calibrated. I have no problem playing it melodically from an attached DK2 keyboard. Musically, the VCS3 provides a unique texture to any track. The joystick makes it ideal for long, shifting timbres, and the filter has a lovely, almost biological quality. It is the least synthetic sounding synthesizer I've ever owned, while remaining undeniably electronic.

Ernesto Romeo : EMS Synthi AKS, Electro Harmonix Memory Man delay Antonio Gutierrez: EMS Synthi A Sebastián Cirillo: EMS VCS3

From 1970 to 1974, with Camizole, I had experimented bass guitar, double bass, flute, violin. I had even built an adaptation of the zither, kind of piano frame which I scraped, hit and rubbed. Then I bought the mini-Korg 700, the very first model of the brand. It was a very pale imitation of the Mini-Moog, but extended by a Wem Watkins Copicat tape echo chamber, it opened possibles. I acquired my Synthi AKS in 1975, a second-hand purchase (trained keyboardists could not get used to the digital keyboard). Not having any conventional instrumental technique, I had finally found the instrument that suited my experimental and empirical approach. In the inputs I connected the little Korg (a bit like an extra oscillator), as well as an alto saxophone and a guitar in order to distort and pervert the sounds in our wild improvisations in public. From 1979, with Video-Adventures, it became my preferred instrument and most of our recordings originated on the Synthi AKS. By running it through a warm MXR effect, I was able to achieve broader and warmer sound colors. Loops, pulses, rustles... I always approached this instrument in a completely intuitive way and with unlimited happiness. However, even if I used it on stage, I think that it is above all a studio and laboratory instrument. That's why, afterwards, I preferred a Moog Source, which I used in sample and hold mode + coupled with the first affordable samplers. In 2012, I had it completely overhauled by Robin Wood (an EMS veteran) who offered to include new features for me to chose. Today, I still use it by connecting it to Moogerfooger and Eventide stompboxes.

I purchased my Synthi in early 2007 and Day Breaks was one of the first complete pieces I recorded with it after an initial period of experimentation. I love the relationship between the envelope shaper and Trapezoid in the Synthi. It inspires a different approach compared to other modular systems. That one section of the Synthi can influence and be influenced within a patch to create interesting pulses and shapes. It is often the secret to opening a patch up for me. I recall using a DK1 at the time with the Synthi and would find myself switching between the Ks and the DK1 depending on the types of sound/control I wanted to explore. A self cycling envelope generator with a voltage amount tied to that shape which can also be triggeredinterupted by an external source was a revelation at the time. This piece has always resonated with me due to its simple approach and now, in hindsight, as a moment which reflects a pure period of creativity and change within my own practice.

– I just made the « little ébauches » as a contrast to the longer, drone-based tracks. They are deliberately rhythmic and pulsed, but I couldn't find a way forward with either of them. At least not without adding new sounds that were not made with the Synthi A. I was a little less purist about these tracks in that the Synthi A samples are played rhythmically from Logic's EXS24 sampler with MIDI controlling them. In the longer tracks, Logic is just used as a "tape machine", not as a sequencer. But all the sounds on these ébauches are still made by a Synthi A.

– I just made the « little ébauches » as a contrast to the longer, drone-based tracks. They are deliberately rhythmic and pulsed, but I couldn't find a way forward with either of them. At least not without adding new sounds that were not made with the Synthi A. I was a little less purist about these tracks in that the Synthi A samples are played rhythmically from Logic's EXS24 sampler with MIDI controlling them. In the longer tracks, Logic is just used as a "tape machine", not as a sequencer. But all the sounds on these ébauches are still made by a Synthi A.

I first got exposed to the Synthi A through two major records of the 60s and 70s: « White Noise, An Electric Storm » by David Vorhaus with the participation of Delia Derbyshire - which brought me to know the productions of The BBC Radiophonic Workshop. « Video-Adventures Music for boys and girls » by Dominique Grimaud & Monique Alba - an impossible to classify record released on the famous English label Recommended Records. Following these discographic discoveries, a friend with whom I started my first experimentations and sound scrambling lent me a VCS3... A first initiation with this evil and fantastic machine gave me the virus. A few years later, my meeting with the composer Bernard Parmegiani who invited me one afternoon in his studio in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, and gave me for a symbolic sum a whole set of "sound machines" as they called them, among which a Synthi AKS with its EMS sequencer keyboard - opened again to me "the doors of unheard sounds"! This synthesizer remains my favorite machine, a most untamable instrument, with surprising possibilities and sounds.

I first got exposed to the Synthi A through two major records of the 60s and 70s: « White Noise, An Electric Storm » by David Vorhaus with the participation of Delia Derbyshire - which brought me to know the productions of The BBC Radiophonic Workshop. « Video-Adventures Music for boys and girls » by Dominique Grimaud & Monique Alba - an impossible to classify record released on the famous English label Recommended Records. Following these discographic discoveries, a friend with whom I started my first experimentations and sound scrambling lent me a VCS3... A first initiation with this evil and fantastic machine gave me the virus. A few years later, my meeting with the composer Bernard Parmegiani who invited me one afternoon in his studio in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, and gave me for a symbolic sum a whole set of "sound machines" as they called them, among which a Synthi AKS with its EMS sequencer keyboard - opened again to me "the doors of unheard sounds"! This synthesizer remains my favorite machine, a most untamable instrument, with surprising possibilities and sounds.

I first got exposed to the Synthi A through two major records of the 60s and 70s: « White Noise, An Electric Storm » by David Vorhaus with the participation of Delia Derbyshire - which brought me to know the productions of The BBC Radiophonic Workshop. « Video-Adventures Music for boys and girls » by Dominique Grimaud & Monique Alba - an impossible to classify record released on the famous English label Recommended Records. Following these discographic discoveries, a friend with whom I started my first experimentations and sound scrambling lent me a VCS3... A first initiation with this evil and fantastic machine gave me the virus. A few years later, my meeting with the composer Bernard Parmegiani who invited me one afternoon in his studio in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, and gave me for a symbolic sum a whole set of "sound machines" as they called them, among which a Synthi AKS with its EMS sequencer keyboard - opened again to me "the doors of unheard sounds"! This synthesizer remains my favorite machine, a most untamable instrument, with surprising possibilities and sounds.

EMS Synthi and VCS3 plus room acoustics and pencils. I have owned 4 EMS synths over the years. I sold one indirectly (VCS3) to Merzbow. There really isnt anything close to the EMS VCS3 / Synthi. It sounds like pure electricity.

”My interest in EMS synths started in the early eighties when I heard Tangerine dream records such as Atem and Rubycon. In 1987 I was lucky to get an AKS and I started exploring it and using it at several live concerts. I love the flexibility of the pin matrix. « Synthi 100 sketch » was recorded during a residency at the KSYME studio in Athens, 2017. It used to be Ianni Xenakis’ studio with lovely Synthi 100 I was thrilled to work with !

Conjuring was created using material from my recording sessions with a Synthi 100 (in Vancouver, Canada) in September 2012, and a VCS3 (in Austin, Texas) in November of the same year. This brief composition explores the emotional tension created by instability, when processes outside of our control refuse to be tamed. I first became aware of EMS after seeing Rick Reed perform with a Synthi, probably around 2002, and soon discovered Delia Derbyshire, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and other famous EMS users. At that time EMS itself was dormant, but after I learned that Robin Wood was beginning new production, I joined the waiting list for a new Synthi A and received it in 2018. By then I was also able to find an older Synthi (without its original KS, which I am still seeking!), and I am planning to take delivery of a new VCS3 soon as well. These instruments can be incredibly humbling and frustrating, but also reveal unexpected wonders. I don't try to impose musical ideas on them; I let their particular quirks and personalities guide the compositional journey.

After spending many years studying classical and ragtime piano, and then rock guitar in college bands, I was able to acquire an EMS Synthi A about 15 years ago. This was the same year I acquired my first Eurorack (Doepfer) setup. The layout and sounds from the Synthi were so mind-expanding and enticing that my Doepfer system collected dust for a few years. I learned signal flow and modular synthesis first on the Synthi and then went on to refine that knowledge with other modular systems. I have released many recordings and they almost always feature the Synthi A somewhere. Cheers to EMS for their designs and especially the Synthi which has and will bring me years of discovery and enjoyment

I have been an explorer almost all my life, since young I liked to explore ww2 bunkers and abandoned train cemeteries around my home town and collect various weird objects and books. During my youth I came across a record in a flea market called Greek Electronic Music 1 featuring greek avant-garde composers of the 60’s. On the cover of the record there is an EMS VCS3 and all recorded material on this lp where done with this machine. I instantly new that this was the synthesiser for me and it became a quest to find one slightly just before their prices exploded, it took me 10 years but in 2009 I finally got the opportunity to get a super modified ems synth aks. The last 10 years all of my music projects involve the synth aks and the synth E and they are my main instruments. I have other synths as well but I am an ems user and I compose only on these machines. EMS for me is freedom in a suitcase. Style and function hand by hand, science and magic combined to form this chimera, this ‘’silver crystal dream machine’’.

In late November 2011, Reptilicus (Jóhann Eiriksson , Guðmundur Ingi Markússon, and Rúnar Magnússon as a third member) and Senking (Raster-Noton), did a recording session at Grant Avenue Studio in Hamilton, Ontario. The legendary studio was founded by the Lanois brothers and the site of numerous classic recordings, among them many of Brian Eno's and Daniel Lanois' ambient series in the 1980s. At the time, production for modular-synthesizer documentary I Dream of Wires was under way. Reptilicus and Senking were among the first wave of artists featured for the project. Praveer Baijal of Yatra-Arts introduced the bands to William Blakeney, executive producer of the film. A collection of vintage modular synthesizers was made available for sonic exploration, including the EMS Synthi A. The bands were privileged to have Bob Doidge (Crash Test Dummies, Cowboy Junkies), at the mixing desk, and enjoyed the assistance and deep expertise of Dean Batute when operating the vintage gear. Director Rob Fantinatto filmed the Saturday session which featured in I Dream of Wires: Hardcore edition. Reptilicus and Senking released the album Unison in 2018, based on the raw material from those recordings. I used the original Synthi A recordings from Grant Avenue as a core element for the track "Portabella" both for the drone and percussion, two things the Synthi really excels at...

The two pieces I include in this series of compilation are quite friendly and modest creatures. Like most of us they are just looking for a place to shelter without fear and that is what I have tried to give them in these compositions. I have taken a somewhat anthropomorphic approach to synthesisers; choosing to regard them as organic life forms with creature-like personalities; bodies and organs drawn from the elements and blood made of flowing electricity. Electronic sounds are not totally abstract, but are surely natural objects and organic algorithmic processes just as much as they are synthetic products of a rational and orderly mathematical thought. This anthropomorphism definitely prejudices me more to the noise, the distortion, the non-linearities and mathematical failures of the analogue domain and in particular towards the modular instruments of Serge, Hordijk and EMS, which seem to me to personify this tendency, which of course is not to say that all of them are not capable of some very clean and precise sounds too. The sounds I tend to be drawn to the most generally seem to have some kind of tangibility - which I understand as a corporeal sense of plausibility or feasibility. However abstract the sounds might seem, for me there is always an embodied material spectromorphology binding them to the earth. Maybe such sounds sometimes gaze into the sky and space above and wonder what it would be like, maybe they even try to travel there for a while, but they remain beholden to gravity, and thus keep some mud and twigs beneath their feet. The synthesisers made by EMS in the 1970s come from a different and now quite distant era of music and technology, but for me they are not nostalgic objects, rather they are unprecedented and very current tools which connect us to the possibility an optimistic musical futurism of the kind that perhaps few of us feel any more in many other areas of life. So while I don't think these pieces try to look back to a mythical golden age of synthesisers or electronic music, they do keep an important link with the past, particularly in its more futuristic and utopian aspects. They also remind us that even now, in a digital era, an entirely analogue music can, as the genius Edgard Varese argued so vehemently, still engage the ear in new ways and can take us and our ideas towards a new kind of beauty and towards new possibilities of musical organisation. Of course has to be said that these pieces would not exist at all without t efforts of Peter Zinovieff, Tristram Cary and David Cockerell, and also Robin Wood and Thomas Lehn and thus they are dedicated to all of these gentlemen.

www.sionorgon.co.uk

‘Elegy For A Lost Spring’ is made on a ‘Synthi +’, as called by it’s designer. It’s a Synthi A clone made for a Paris based artists a few years ago and acquired by me in March 2020, during the first days the pandemic struck in Western-Europe. It offers several mods : S&H, Trapezoid polarity control, Inverter pins, VC controlled shape on each osc, hi/lo range switchable oscillators, osc sync, customized matrix lay-out, and sounds fantastic + is very sturdy. The instrument is housed in a vintage ‘80’s hardshell Delsey briefcase, exactly the same my father used to go to work. As soon as I was accustomed to the Synthi interface, I started composing on it and using it in my daily musical workflow. Often I only use a fraction of an instruments capacity to get a very simple, rather minimalistic, meditative result. In the ‘Elegy….’-track I tried to explore the many different function & possibilities of the Synthi +. As most of the time it started with a few ideas that were later totally abandoned and I ended up with something completely different than wat I had initially in mind. Most inspiration comes from sounds I stumble upon and from where I start to improvise and the piece takes form from there.

In September, 1967, I was one of a small group of students who gathered in a room off the stage of the Concert Hall at the Royal College of Music for the first session of a new course in Electronic Music. The teacher was Tristram Cary, one of Britain’s earliest pioneers in the field. At that stage the studio, which was being built by BBC engineers, consisted of a tantalising array of boxes and partially connected wires. It was not until well into 1968 that the studio was fully working, so the first couple of terms consisted of lectures by Tristram and visits to his studio in Fressingfield, Suffolk, Peter Zinoviev’s pioneering computer music studio in Putney, south London, and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. During 1968 the studio came on stream gradually. New pieces of equipment would appear one by one, and we would all pounce on these new opportunities and explore them to the full. By autumn 1968 we had a fully working studio Later in 1969 I was able to purchase a VCS1 synthesiser (also known as the Don Banks Music Box), one of the first products of the nascent EMS Ltd. The VCS1 was subsequently donated to the collection of electronic instruments, founded by Hugh Davies, at the Gemeinte Museum in The Hague. I was already forming ideas about a live performance instrument. I built myself a mixer (in those days the only real option) and also built amplifiers and speakers from kits of parts supplied by the company Heathkit. Finally I purchased a second-hand Revox tape recorder from my friend Adam Skeaping. This basic kit provided the performance environment for my first live electronic piece, "Solos, Commentaries and Integrations", and it was the germ of my idea of an electronic instrument. During one of my visits to Peter Zinoviev’s studio I had created on the computer some sounds that I really liked. Creating these sounds was an interesting adventure in itself; I was accompanied by my fellow student Malcolm Fox, and together we battled to understand the complexities of Peter’s system. Computers were not very user friendly in those days, and one had to do exactly what they required - and we were novices. However, we quickly began to create some really nice sounds that would be difficult to create in any other way. These became the basis of the tape part in "Solos, Commentaries and Integrations". I had also been exploring clarinet multiphonics with Howard Davidson (composer, clarinettist and fellow member of the Electronic Music class), based on the book New Sounds for Woodwind by Bruno Bartolozzi. I conceived the idea of a piece where the clarinet would be a protagonist, the computer-generated sounds (played on tape after further processing in the RCM studio), would be an antagonist, and a percussionist would act as a kind of Greek chorus, commenting on the action. Part of the idea of the piece is that the clarinet takes on an electronic “armour” in order to “defeat” the tape; at the end the clarinet music tries to return to the serenity of the opening, but can’t completely cast off the electronic armour; s/he has been changed irrevocably by the experience. This idea of electronic transformation representing some kind of journey became a constantly recurring theme in my music. There are nine sections of the piece which overlap extensively: three Solos for clarinet with increasing use of electronic processing; three Commentaries for drums, woodblocks and metal percussion, respectively (the woodblock and metal Commentaries overlap for a short time); and three tape sections. Each of the “characters” takes its own parallel journey through the three sections.

After helping to found the Electronic Studio at Radio Belgrade I worked there for some 14 years teaching, making my own music, assisting other composers and making incidental music and sound effects for various radio programmes, on the Synthi 100. I also wrote a comprehensive manual for the Synthi 100. In about 1984 I produced a composition called Mechanical Cartoons and then one called Play Me where I began to develop what I now call Zoetic Engines. On « Neznam » my zoetic engines are getting lively at dokumenta 14 in Athens 2018. They respond to sounds picked up by a microphone, from people visiting the venue, and/or to me playing to them.

This is an early Synthi-A four-track composition I did in the first several months I had the instrument, which was my first synthesizer (s/n 4522, a Mark II). I was shortly to receive my K keyboard, and the KS was still several months away, so all of the pitch changes are being done by hand or oscillator voltage control. I didn't have a mixer - the four TEAC 3340 outputs were blended into 2 discreet stereo channels by a pair of "Y cable" connectors, and sent to a cassette deck for the master. No outboard gear was used either - just the good ol' Synthi reverb. The attached photo was taken when I worked at EMSA (the sole American EMS distributor) in Northampton, Massachusetts about a year and a half later, in 1977. It was “analog heaven”, basically – a studio filled with Moog, ARP, EMS, and assorted other gear - an invaluable experience. I still play my Synthi-AKS often (along with my MultiMoog, etc., etc., and of course my drums) – it’s always within reach. I’ll never let it go.