ABSTRACT
In 1966 the magnetic tape studio still represented the leading edge in electronic music technology. Just 18 short years after the establishment of the first major electronic music studio in Paris, there were at least 560 documented institutional and private tape studios in the world.2 Of these, only 40 percent were sponsored by institutions and corporations, the rest being privately equipped and operated as a result of the increasing affordability of tape recorders, mixers, microphones, oscillators, and other basictools of the trade. The year 1966 was pivotal because it marked the point at which the earliest analog music synthesizers were becoming known-a new trend in musical technology that would temporarily drive electronic musicians back to the confines of institutional studios, which were among the earliest adopters of the new and expensive equipment. The first syn thesizers were not designed as performance instruments for making live music but rather as sophisticated, modular alternatives for producing electronic sounds for the tape studio. The development of analog synthesizers is the topic of the next chapter. Before leaping into the history of yet another episode in the evolution of music technology, this chapter pauses to assess the imprint made by early tape composition on the development of the electronic music field even to this day.
