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Buchla & Associates is a manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, notably synthesizers. The 200e Electronic Music Box is currently in production. The original Buchla Music Box was the brainchild of composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick, and they hired electrical engineer Don Buchla to design and build it. First built in 1963, this Synthesizer was the first one that could be played by a musician. It is composed of several "modular" boxes that modify a generated tone. Each box served a specific function: oscillation, filtering, delay, sample and hold, etc. This would have an effect on the pitch and timbre of the sound. The idea was to allow musicians and composers to create sounds suited to their own specifications. Custom music from scratch! Previously, one had to utilize the musique concrete method of tape loops. Although it was a fresh and exciting idea and an excellent way to get new sounds, this was very time-consuming and arduous. The Buchla Box allowed musicians to bend and manipulate sound all in one device. This would lead to the many forms of electronic music we have today.
The Buchla Modular Synthesizer was commissioned specifically by Subotnick for use on his first major electronic work Silver Apples Of The Moon. He gave Don Buchla ideas and specifications for the boxes and what they should do. Along with Robert Moog's Moog synthesizer, it would go on the revolutionize the way music and sound is made.
Buchla tended to not refer to his instruments as synthesizers, as he felt that name gave the impression of imitating existing sounds/instruments. His intent was to make instruments for creating new sounds. He also had different naming conventions than most of the industry (e.g. his sequencer was called an "Arbitrary Function Generator").
It is also important to note that Donald Buchla and Robert Moog simultaneously invented the synthesizer in 1963, Moog in New York and Buchla in San Francisco. While there had been previous synthesizer experiments, Moog and Buchla's major development that made the synthesizer portable and flexible was that of using control voltage to manipulate the various elements of the circuits.
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"Buchla"