Week 7 Forum - Tristram Carey

Tristram Carey was the founder of the electronic music unit that we all know and love, and also an electronic music pioneer, separately developing the synthesizer almost concurrently with Robert Moog. Last week, Tristram passed away and so Steven presented a tribute forum session about him.

This wasn't immediately apparent, because the session began with a bleeping sound installation that referenced Tristram's time as a navy radar operator (though the 2nd and 3rd years couldn't see the connection).

Steven explained some of Tristram's work and then we watched a documentary about him and his fellow "Electronic Music Studio" members. I was surprised that I hadn't heard of any of these pioneers while the house of Moog gets so much attention.

In reply to Steven's suggestion that the study of history is worthwhile, after spending 2 minutes with Carey's relatively simple "picnic" synthesizer (as used by Pink Floyd), I agree. I think that by looking at the origins of electronic music we can find new pathways, that were never fully explored; in 2 minutes I heard sounds from "synthy" with character that I have never experienced from the software which dominates today. Another discussion I found interesting was the differing attitudes of the early electronic musicians towards popular modern electronic music genres.

Reference: Stephen Whittington. "Week 7 Music Technology Forum - Tristram Carey". Lecture presented at Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 1 May 2008