Touch

Morton Subotnick Computer Technique Group (CTG)

1969

Music/Sound

The Listening Room The CTG Collection

Description

Morton Subotnick’s Touch was the third LP to showcase the Buchla Electronic Music System, an instrument he co-commissioned with Ramon Sender for the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1963. With a $500 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, they asked Don Buchla to design a device that would allow composers to create entirely new sounds, rather than imitate existing ones. Subotnick envisioned the Buchla not as a traditional synthesizer but as a modular system for recording, layering, and sculpting electronic sound directly to tape.

Commissioned by Columbia Records for the emerging quadraphonic format, Touch embodies Subotnick’s idea of the record as a performance medium, composed specifically for home listening on four-channel stereo systems. The title plays on the Italian toccata (“touch”), the term Baroque composers used to name virtuosic display pieces. Across its movements, Touch demonstrates the Buchla’s astonishing range, from bell-like tones and percussive cracks to eerie winds, electronic gulps, and sweeping crescendos. The result is a flamboyant, tightly structured composition that dramatizes both the possibilities of electronic sound and the virtuosity of the composer manipulating it.

The LP’s striking cover art, Return to a Square (1967) by the Japanese Computer Technique Group, situates Touch firmly within the avant-garde of sound and image.

Bijutsu Techō (Issue No. 313, May 5, 1969) by Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1969

Bijutsu Techō (Issue No. 313, May 5, 1969) Bijutsu Shuppan-sha1969 Book

Kennedy in a Rectangle (Negative) by Computer Technique Group (CTG), 1968

Kennedy in a Rectangle (Negative) Multiple Artists1968 Print

Graphic Design, Issue No. 33, Spring (March) 1969 by Computer Technique Group (CTG), 1968

Graphic Design, Issue No. 33, Spring (March) 1969 Computer Technique Group (CTG)1968 Ephemera

Random Walk Kennedy (after CTG, 1968) by Kazufumi Oizumi, 1968/2016

Random Walk Kennedy (after CTG, 1968) Multiple Artists1968/2016 Mixed Media

Return to Square (color version) by Computer Technique Group (CTG), 1968

Return to Square (color version) Multiple Artists1968 Print

Perspective Pillar Collection by Computer Technique Group (CTG), 1968

Perspective Pillar Collection Computer Technique Group (CTG)1968 Print

Kennedy in a Rectangle by Computer Technique Group (CTG), 1968

Kennedy in a Rectangle Multiple Artists1968 Print

Twisted Circle by Computer Technique Group (CTG), 1968

Twisted Circle Computer Technique Group (CTG)1968 Print