Wendy Carlos (formerly Walter Carlos)
 

So, the other day I was thinking about Stanley Kubric films, A Clockwork Orange in particular. I remember the soundtrack having some crazy synthesized Beethoven. My wife happened to have the soundtrack, which mentions in the liner notes that the synthesizer stuff was created by Walter Carlos.
I looked up Walter Carlos, discovering that she became Wendy Carlos in 1972.
Her debut album was Switched-On Bach (1968), and was the first classical album to sell over 500,000 copies and later go platinum. I downloaded this along with her second album The Well-Tempered Synthesizer (1969), and her original score for A Clockwork Orange (when you download this, be sure to change the name of the zip file before unzipping it if you have Windows Vista).
This stuff is extremely cool! Download, discuss.

Yeah, I love it, heard it years ago. She did something else I loved.. it was called like Tales of Heaven or Hell or something.

Haha, "Well-Tempered Synthesizer"... just realized that's a "Well-Tuned Piano" reference, duh at me.

Actually, I think it's a play on Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.

OH!

Well shit!

Oh hey, I found that album Tales of Heaven and Hell, and also one called Secrets of Synthesis

Yeah my dad has the vinyl of walter carlos haha and on the CD it's WENDY. I remember hearing that story when I was little. I think it's one of the first times I heard of people changing their sex.

I have the Clockwork Orange soundtrack on Vinyl, it's credited to Walter. I found it extremely confusing at first.

For fuck's sake.

I've heard the music above. It's all shit, completely shit. But thanks anyway.

The thing is, there's a pretty large difference between the sort of majesty that Oskar Sala did and the novelty synthesiser shite that this thread's about. I'm not saying early synths didn't scare the bejeebus out of people, but I'm confident it wasn't Wendy/ Walter. I mean, there's the Doctor Who theme, and there's a Bach fugue rendered appallingly, and ne'er the twain shall meet.

i have the well tempered synthetizer and switched on bach on vinyl (recent additions) and the clockwork orange soundtrack on tape (it's actually my mom's).

sure it's a fucking novelty but it's funny in a way, the clockwork theme is something else entirely, one of my favorite pieces of music.

Yeah, I'm pretty much in agreement. The Bach stuff is pretty dated and amusing for it. The stuff on Clockwork is great. My favorite track from it is actually "Timesteps", which I've always thought was really brilliant.

Definitely , no clue about this information... until seeing this thread.

I must look further into Carlos existence besides A Clockwork Orange soundtrack and have always felt compelled to.....

Almost bid on one of his/her records the other day actually, but I thought classical compositions on the synthesizer sounded a bit... gimmicky and cheap

You should be able to find it in charity shop bins, if you're interested. It's one of those, like Herb Alpert, shows up all the time.

"Sonic Seasonings" is pretty great if you can find it in good conditon.

Clockwork Orange OST is also a favorite of mine.