Library Organization

San Francisco Tape Music Center

Bay Area studio and collective founded 1962 by Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick, birthplace of the Buchla modular system.

Morton Subotnick with a Buchla touch keyboard, 2012
Source
Type
Organization
Creators
Ramon Sender, Morton Subotnick
Subjects
Sound Instruments Technology

Growing out of composer Ramon Sender’s “Sonics” concert series at the San Francisco Conservatory (first performed December 1961, featuring Sender, Pauline Oliveros, and Terry Riley among others), the San Francisco Tape Music Center was founded in the summer of 1962 by Sender and Morton Subotnick. Pauline Oliveros, artist Tony Martin, and technician William Maginnis soon joined, and the collective commissioned engineer Don Buchla to build the Buchla 100, among the first modular voltage-controlled synthesizers. In 1966 the Center accepted a grant to join Mills College as the Mills Center for Contemporary Music, with Oliveros as founding director.