RCA Mark II Synthesizer

The RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer (nicknamed Victor) was the first programmable electronic synthesizer and the flagship piece of equipment at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Designed by Herbert Belar and Harry Olson at RCA, it was installed at Columbia University in 1957. Consisting of a room-sized array of interconnected sound synthesis components, much of the design of the machine was contributed by Vladimir Ussachevsky and Peter Mauzey. The Mark II gave the user more flexibility and had twice the tone oscillators of its predecessor, the Mark I. The synthesizer was funded with a large grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Earlier 20th century electronic instruments such as the Telharmonium or the theremin were manually operated. The RCA combined diverse electronic sound generation with a music sequencer, which provided a huge attraction to composers of the day, many of whom were growing tired of creating electronic works by splicing together individual sounds recorded on sections of magnetic tape. The RCA Mark II featured a fully automated binary sequencer using a paper tape reader analogous to a player piano, that would send instructions to the synthesizer, automating playback of the machine. The synthesizer would then output sound to a synchronized shellac record lathe next to the machine. The resulting recording would then be compared against the punch-tape score, and the process would be repeated until the desired results were obtained.

The sequencer features of the RCA were of particular attraction to modernist composers of the time, especially those interested in writing dodecaphonic music with a high degree of precision. In fact, the RCA is cited by composers of the day as a contributing factor to the rise of musical complexity, insofar as it allowed composers the freedom to write music using rhythms and tempos that were impractical, if not impossible, to realize on acoustic instruments. This allure of precision as a mark of aesthetic progress (played out even today with contemporary computer-based sequencers) generated high expectations for the Mark II, and contributed to the increased awareness of electronic music as a viable new art form. An album featuring the instrument and its capabilities was issued by RCA (LM-1922) in 1955.

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