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My Tangled Roots

by Joe Paradiso

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1.
Primordial (1976) 21:15
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2.
WMFO News Intro 1976 01:06
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3.
Unused 1976 News Intro 02:25
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4.
Road To Berlin (1975) 08:51
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5.
Turnabout (1975) 09:50
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6.
1974 Station ID Bed 01:24
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7.
Some Chaos Before a Mysterious Hunt (1974) 08:49
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8.
Automata (1974) 05:01
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9.
The Hong Kong Doctors (1973) 24:04
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about

This is a collection of very early electronic pieces that I made between 1973 and 1976. They appear on this album in pretty much reverse-chronological order. The notes for each track give more details, and the enclosed liner notes provide some photos and more perspective. The first few tracks were made in 1976 with my then newly-finished synthesizer (at the time, a cabinet of 37 modules - I was perhaps the only 20-year-old around then who had his own fully fleshed out modular that he built and designed himself - otherwise I was in very slim company), together with a Gibson/Kalamazoo organ that I bought in high school and subsequently modified a little. The next couple were recorded when the synth was partially completed a year or so earlier, in 1975. The following tracks were made in 1974, mainly using tape loops, the organ, some effects, and a signal generator. The last track came from 1973 and uses tape loops, a couple of oscillators I borrowed from my high-school physics lab (and modified for voltage control) and effects I borrowed and modified from my guitar-playing friends. I was then a 17-year old kid trying to reach toward the music I was listening to, generally failing that, but getting somewhere forgivably strange in the process.

By putting these out there, I'm exposing my old roots a bit - definitely rough and somewhat unformed, but they developed into what I do now. Although I digitally cleaned up the old tapes as best I could - e.g., attenuating noise, removing any obvious pops, clicks, and glitches, smoothing a few transitions here and there, etc. - nothing was added, and these are true to the originals. This is indeed where my journey began...

More info on the synthesizer system that I designed and used here can be found at synth.media.mit.edu and paradiso.media.mit.edu/synth.html. Detail on the synth cabinet I designed and used for many of these pieces are here - paradiso.media.mit.edu/papers/EarlySynthesizerReport.pdf and consult the downloadable liner notes included with this album.

credits

released July 15, 1976

Cover image by Joe Paradiso - a collage I made in my darkroom in 1974 from a photo I took of the old trolley lines in Harvard Square.

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Joe Paradiso Cambridge, Massachusetts

Joe Paradiso has been designing, building, and using his own music synthesizers and systems since 1975. Joe is a professor at the MIT Media Lab, where he has designed many kinds of electronic musical instruments and controllers that have been used in performance worldwide. He has composed synth patches for live soundscape performances at several public venues, including Ars Electronica 2004. ... more

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