Hardware
Daphne Oram's 1960's Optical Synthesizer
Not really new but very interesting article on Daphne Oram’s Optical Synthesizer, unique in its kind.
I’ve always felt that Daphne Oram’s importance has been underestimated, both as a co‑founder of the Workshop and as an electronic composer, so I tried to redress this by including as much as I could about her graphically controlled Oramic synthesiser. This was not easy, as Daphne died in 2003 and I was unable to find anyone who’d even seen the Oramic System, let alone knew how it worked. I did my best, but shortly after the magazine went on sale, an email was forwarded to me by Sound On Sound.
“I enjoyed the article very much,” said the writer. “With reference to the bizarre design concept of the original Oramics machine, you might be interested in some background as to why and how it took shape! I was the engineer who originally turned Daphne’s concept into a reality, with an extremely tight budget and a lot of inverted, lateral thinking.” It was signed: “Yours respectfully, Graham Wrench.”
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