Don Buchla Sound-Light Console

Don Buchla - April 17th, 1937 - September 14th, 2016 (RIP)

One of the very earliest pioneers of Light Shows in America so an extremely important individual as far as this project goes, Don Buchla's name appears on a few very early Flyers and Posters in the San Francisco area from 1966 onwards.

Perhaps more amazing was that Don Buchla designed a Synthesizer called the Buchla 100 series Modular Electronic Music System in 1965 and went on to have an extremely successful career in Electonic Music Technology.

He was present at the Trips Festival in 1966 along with Tony Martin, Roy's Audioptics, the rest of The Merry Pranksters (who he met for the first time) and all sorts of other strange characters.

I've not yet been able to find any definitive footage of the Don Buchla Sound-Light Console but I suspect very much like Roy's Audioptics and other very early Light Shows it was almost certainly quite primitive but WAS producing 'Kinetic Lighting' of some sort, paving the way for hundreds of other Light Shows to follow in his footsteps.

Photo from the January 1966 Trips Festival showing **someone** doing a Light Show but I have no idea who (Copyright Jim Marshall)

Trips Festival - January 21st, 22nd, 23rd 1966 - Longshoremans Hall, San Francisco (click for bigger version)

Thanks to Chicken on a Unicycle for use of the below scan :-)

Jefferson Airplane, The Exiles, The Skins, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Harmon Gym, Berkeley April 1966 (note the misspelling of Don Buchla's name)

The infamous 'Buchla Box' that Don Buchla built for the Merry Pranksters which got used at not only the Trips Festivals but of more significance it was installed in Further and used as a Mixer, Echo/Reverb Unit.

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