In 1969, US early electronic composer and musician Wendy Carlos released The Well-Tempered Synthesizer – the follow up to her critically acclaimed debut album Switched-On Bach (a collection of Bach arrangements on a Moog synthesizer). The first track off The Well-Tempered Synthesizer is a stereo test tone of 8 pure tone beeps (with the last 4 beeps alternating between the left and right speakers). I’ve always appreciated this ordinary moment because it feels as though Wendy is asking me to tune my speakers and take care of how I listen to her music.

This mix – that I compiled for a community listening project in Wendy’s hometown – starts with that ordinary moment and proceeds to swirl through her complete, and astonishingly varied discography of music. The mix includes instances from every record she’s released. You’ll hear a synthesis of genre, the exploration of physics, experiments with new technologies, and teachings in imagination. The influence that these compositions had on the evolution of electronic music is difficult to comprehend. This is why I keep carefully listening: to the pre-ambient textures of Sonic Seasonings and her vocoded voice in the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange; to the playful collaboration with “Weird Al” Yankovic and her work with The LSI Philharmonic.

And these musical sounds shouldn't have to be reduced to the cultural contexts that they exist within, although the social and political resonances of Wendy’s music have turned into onto-epistemologies that synthesize issues of misrepresentation, posthumanism, domestic studio production, and gender equity. In addition to Wendy’s living autoethnography, I would highly recommend reading Roshanak Kheshti's Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach, Esra Soraya Padgett's Where is Wendy Carlos? and Asha Tamirisa's book review in the Journal Of Popular Music Studies.

In the Switched-on Boxed Set, there is a short essay about one detail: the small ‘i’ in the logo for her record label Tempi. Wendy writes: “It represents the mathematical term for the imaginary number constant, defined as the square root of minus one, a concept that doesn't exist in the real world, but helps solve many equations [...] The tiny i is located at the base of the transistor schematic, as this is the normal input for this minimal circuit component. It's all terribly clever, don't you see, that Tempi's music-notehead [logo] is a transistor, the main element of a Moog synthesizer, and it's located to amplify (are you ready?) imagination, symbolised by the imaginary number, i.”

Full tracklist

Part 1
“Stereo Test Tone” (The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, 1969)
“Fanfare And Drunken “Dies”” (Rediscovering Lost Scores: Volume One, 1972-2005)
“Summer” (Sonic Seasonings, 1972)
“Bumps In The Night” (Rediscovering Lost Scores: Volume One, 1972-2005)
“Timesteps” (A Clockwork Orange: Wendy Carlos's Complete Original Score, 1972)
“Jiffy Test: Bee Dee Bei Mir” (Rediscovering Lost Scores: Volume Two, 1972-2005)
“Prelude And Fugue No 2 In C Minor” (Switched-On Bach, 1968)
“Wormhole” (Tron, 1982)
“Clockwork Black” (Tales Of Heaven And Hell, 1998)
“Shanty Town And Farewell” (Rediscovering Lost Scores: Volume One, 1972-2005)
“Winter (Out-Take)” (Sonic Seasonings CD Reissue, 1998)
“A Ghost Piano” (Rediscovering Lost Scores: Volume One, 1972-2005)
“Dark Winds And Rustles” (Rediscovering Lost Scores: Volume One, 1972-2005)
“Paraphrase For 'Cello” (Rediscovering Lost Scores: Volume Two, 1972-2005)’
“Two-Part Invention: In A Major, BWV 783” (Switched-On Bach II, 1973)
“Title Music From A Clockwork Orange” (A Clockwork Orange: Wendy Carlos's Complete Original Score, 1972)
“Orange Minuet” (A Clockwork Orange: Wendy Carlos's Complete Original Score, 1972)
“Electronic Pointillism & Hocketing” (Secrets Of Synthesis, 1987)
“Scarlatti: Sonata in G Major, L. 209/K. 455” (The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, 1969)*
“Midnight Sun” (Sonic Seasonings CD Reissue, 1998)
“Aurora Borealis” (Sonic Seasonings CD Reissue, 1998)
“Louise” (Rediscovering Lost Scores: Volume Two, 1972-2005)
“Seraphim” (Tales Of Heaven And Hell, 1998)
“Ring Game And Escape” (Tron, 1982)
“Greetings Ghosties” (Rediscovering Lost Scores: Volume One, 1972-2005)
“Little Fugue In G Minor” (By Request, 1975)
“Variations for Flute and Electronic Sound” (Electronic Music, 1965)

—

Part 2
“Colorado” (Rediscovering Lost Scores: Volume One, 1972-2005)
“Two-Part Invention In F Major” (Switched-On Bach, 1968)
“Peter & The Wolf” ("Weird Al" Yankovic & Wendy Carlos, 1988)
“A New Tron And The MCP” (Tron, 1982)
“Postlude” (Rediscovering Lost Scores: Volume Two, 1972-2005)
“Anthem For Keyboard Solo” (Tron, 1982)
“Rocky Mountains” (The Shining, 1980)
“Spring” (Sonic Seasonings, 1972)
“Sea Of Simulation” (Tron, 1982)
“C'est Afrique” (Beauty In The Beast, 1986)
“Sphera For Orchestra With Piano” (Unreleased, Brown University Orchestra)
“Tower Music - Let Us Pray” (Tron, 1982)
“Two Distant Walks” (Rediscovering Lost Scores: Volume One, 1972-2005)
“Brandenburg Concerto #5 In D” (Switched-On Brandenburgs, 1979)
“March From A Clockwork Orange” (A Clockwork Orange: Wendy Carlos's Complete Original Score, 1972)
“Cosmological Impressions: IC” (Digital Moonscapes, 1984)
“Demonstration Record” (Moog, 1969)
“Country Lane” (A Clockwork Orange: Wendy Carlos's Complete Original Score, 1972)
“Vocal Synthesis” (Secrets Of Synthesis, 1987)
“Monteverdi: Domine Ad Adjuvandum” (The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, 1969)
“Sinfonia To Cantata No 29” (Switched-On Bach, 1968)*
“Sinfonia To Cantata No 29” (Switched-On Bach 2000, 2004)
“Creation Of Tron” (Tron, 1982)

Wire subscribers can read Philip Brophy's Electric Cinema article exploring Wendy Carlos and the secret history of film music inside The Wire 160 via the magazine archive.