The Switched-On Boxed Set --ESD 81422
 
The long-awaited deluxe collector's edition
of some MUSIC THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

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For the first time, hear optimum 20-bit Hi-D transfers from the original first generation 1/2" and 1/4" master tapes. Includes many fascinating preliminary tracks, never before heard, along with fascinating historical commentary. The set includes two handsome books with 200 colorful pages containing a history with photos that document the breakthrough albums, and how they came to be. There's a convenient double-page tear-off Selection Finder, which lists every track on the 4 CD's with handy color-coding, so you can find your favorite pieces at a glance. This beautiful boxed set is a perfect addition to your CD collection, one you'll enjoy and refer to often.

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Collect the Grammy-award family of Switched-On Bach, which propelled the synthesizer to fame in 1968 and became the first Platinum-selling classical album, with The Well-Tempered Synthesizer (first CD release) Switched-On Bach II, and the Switched-On Brandenburgs. Many computer extras are included, such as additional chapters of texts, Bob Moog's comments and many pages from the original catalogs of the Moog Music Company, large high res versions of all the images contained in the books, MIDI files with Carlos's performances of most of the music on Switched-On Bach, and Retro AS-1, a working demo of an analog synthesizer to allow you to explore the fascinating worlds of synthesizing that Carlos raised to a sublime new artform.

Warnings: unauthorized CD's

The Boxed Set, For Dummies Some of you have written to say you found the contents list below, or our other explanations on this page, a bit confusing. Also, some web music stores have incomplete or inaccurate listings. If you are simply looking to find any or all of the original 1968 Switched-On Bach, any or all of the 1969 Well-Tempered Synthesizer, or any or all of the other Carlos realizations of Bach and Baroque music, boy, have you've come to the right place. The four CD's of this set contain the COMPLETE COLLECTION of every such Moog realization Wendy released from 1968-1980, and then some, with the most pristene, and faithful to the master tape sound they have ever had, and the complete S-OBackground Story, with many photographs.   So the short answer to all such questions is: "Yes, it's in here!"

Track Listings of the Four CD's Bob Moog's New Comments Looking Back on Synthesized Bach The Lost Tracks of S-OB Credits and Thanks New: The Audio/Musical Cleanup Story Interviews about our new set What they're saying about it -- Reviews Back to the Discography Page Back to the wendycarlos.com Homepage

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Switched-On Boxed Set Contents

DISK I: SWITCHED-ON BACH Virtuoso electronic performances of J. S. Bach SINFONIA TO CANTATA # 29 AIR ON A G STRING TWO-PART INVENTION in F Major TWO-PART INVENTION in B-Flat Major TWO-PART INVENTION in D Minor JESU, JOY OF MAN'S DESIRING PRELUDE AND FUGUE # 7 in E-Flat Major (from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier) PRELUDE AND FUGUE # 2 in C Minor (from Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier) CHORALE PRELUDE "WACHET AUF"   BRANDENBURG CONCERTO NO. 3 in G Major I -- Allegro II -- Adagio [first, 1968 version] III -- Allegro   Bonus Brandenburg track II -- Adagio [second, 1979 version] Bonus Track: Initial Experiments, demonstration		DISK II: WELL-TEMPERED SYNTHESIZER Virtuoso electronic performances of Bach, Monteverdi, Scarlatti, Handel MONTEVERDI ORFEO SUITE (Toccata; Ritornello I; Choro II; Ritornello II; Choro II; Ritornello II ) SCARLATTI SONATA in G Major, L. 209/K. 455 SCARLATTI SONATA in D Major, L. 164/K. 491   HANDEL WATER MUSIC Bourrée Air Allegro Deciso   SCARLATTI SONATA in E Major, L. 430/K. 531 SCARLATTI SONATA in D Major, L. 465/K. 96   J.S. BACH BRANDENBURG CONCERTO # 4 in G Major I -- Allegro II -- Andante III -- Presto   MONTEVERDI DOMINE AD ADJUVANDUM (from 1610 Vespers)   Stereo Alignment Tones Bonus Track: Well-Tempered Experiments, demonstration
DISK III: SWITCHED-ON BACH II More virtuoso electronic performances of Bach SELECTIONS FROM SUITE # 2 in B Minor Badinerie Minuet Bourrée   TWO-PART INVENTION in A Minor TWO-PART INVENTION in A Major SHEEP MAY SAFELY GRAZE from "Cantata No. 208"   SUITE FROM ANNA MAGDALENA NOTEBOOK Musette in D Major Minuet in G Major Bist du bei mir Marche in D Major   LITTLE FUGUE in G Minor   BRANDENBURG CONCERTO # 5 in D Major I- Allegro II- Affettuoso III- Allegro		DISK IV: SWITCHED-ON BRANDENBURGS Virtuoso electronic performances of the remaining three concertos BRANDENBURG CONCERTO # 1 in F Major I- Allegro II- Adagio III- Allegro IV- Menuuetto, Trio I, Polocca, Trio II   BRANDENBURG CONCERTO # 2 in F Major I- Allegro II- Andante III- Allegro Assai   BRANDENBURG CONCERTO # 6 in B-Flat Major I- Allegro II- Adagio ma non tanto III- Allegro   Disk IV contains enhanced CD files for your computer

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Some of Bob Moog's Comments

Switched-on Bach was released at the end of 1968 and became an immediate success. It was acclaimed as real music by musicians and the listening public alike. As a result, the Moog Synthesizer was suddenly accepted with open arms by the music business community. We witnessed the birth of a new genre of music--classical music, realized with impeccable musicianship on synthesizer and tape recorder.
 
Now, some three decades later, the electronic music medium has evolved into a mainstream musical tool. Sixteen-track and twenty-four-track recorders came to be widely used after the release of Switched on Bach, and then digital synthesizers, hard disk recorders, and computer-based music production systems. Wendy's contributions to this evolution cannot be overstated.
 
She has realized a wide range of high quality music, set ever-increasing standards for sound synthesis, developed a significant body of alternate tunings, and generously provided her usual perceptive advice to equipment manufacturers. Her four Bach/Baroque albums, specially remastered for this release, are major milestones in the evolution of electronic music. At the same time, each album stands by itself as an important contribution to our classical music tradition. I'm delighted to witness the re-release of these works, as are countless numbers of music lovers throughout the world.

--Robert A. Moog

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This is from the first chapter of the boxed set's new bonus book:

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Looking Back on Synthesized Bach
(excerpts from the complete notes of the CD set)

It's seems unreal to me that over three decades have passed since Switched-On Bach was first released, and even two decades since the final recording of the series (Switched-On Brandenburgs) was completed. From 1968 until 1979, four albums of Bach and other Baroque music (and one track from another) were "Switched-on" in realizations performed on the Moog Synthesizer. They are now collected together for the first time, in this special boxed set. The original mixes, masters and sub-master tapes are well preserved, and were carefully transferred using the original tape recorders (which were painstakingly restored) using new 20-bit "Hi-D" technology.
 
You'll hear all the recordings clearer than ever before, as a veil of dubbing generations previously used is lifted. Once the music was stored on a computer's hard disks, it was tediously polished, every tiny click or hum made by the older equipment was invisibly removed, levels were matched, and the earlier limiting and equalization compromises were ignored. Any hiss from the earliest masters was subtlety reduced, while careful comparisons assured no music was harmed or lost in the transfers. In all fairness, much of the earlier equipment's limitations hid most glitches and noises. Now they became only too evident, as one could hear all the way back to the surprisingly good original multitracks.
 
A lot of additional background information, many photos and diagrams were unearthed, then carefully scanned and cleaned up for inclusion in this book and in our Enhanced-CD files. You'll find a much more complete history of the "switched-on" albums, and some historical documents and descriptions that will give you a better idea how the music was made, how it came to be. One major section describes the studios where the albums were assembled. Another dissects the custom Moog Synthesizer, as it started and grew during the eleven years the set encompasses.
 
It's difficult to recapture the times of the late-60s through late-70s. Originally even that word "syn-the-si-zer" caused people a lot of trouble to pronounce, never mind understand. Even harder to grasp now is a misunderstanding that reared its head over and over: that the Moog Synthesizer (and other brands) was some kind of computer. The blinking lights of a 960 sequencer module may have stirred up this dopey notion, but this 960 did not exist at all on the earliest versions. Perhaps the maze of patch cords needed to interconnect all the modules had something to do with it. Analog computers used a lot of patch cords, too (as did the phone company's operator consoles).
 
That mess of knobs, switches, meters and spinning metal reels of wide magnetic tape must also have suggested sci-fi movie props for an "electronic brain" of some kind. Definitely blinking lights enhanced the misperception, but as I've just explained, these didn't arrive for a year after Switched-On Bach was swept along with a media frenzy. That partially explains how a recording of classical music, for heaven's sake, by a long-deceased composer came to climb to the top of the pop album charts. This kind of public attention for serious music is not likely to come our way again soon. But it did happen, and those of us involved rode the tornado as best as we could.
 
One can look back now, and smile about the frantic way studios and record companies clamored to jump into the maelstrom. Litters of copycat albums were released, most of them astonishingly inept--yet if it was "mo-oo-og synthesized" it sold. More or less. A handful of the me-too's were of welcomed quality. We noted those good musicians who rose above the rest, names like Dick Hyman and Gil Trythall, for example.
 
For several years we found the album being mentioned, alluded to, by a much wider range of people than you'd have expected for a novel collection of Bach's greatest hits. There were articles out just about every week in the major magazines of the day: Time, Newsweek, Eye, Saturday Review, New Yorker, Billboard, Look, Variety, pieces in The New York Times, and more. Conductor Georg Solti worried about how technology could produce real music, until his astute wife, Valerie, suggested: "It's all put together like the Disney cartoons, dear," and got it precisely right.
 
The most touching compliments came from the great Canadian pianist and legendary Bach interpreter, Glenn Gould. He arranged to speak with us via a radio link-up, for one of his CBC broadcasts, and an eventual article. Years later I learned he had enthusiastically championed our efforts to many friends and acquaintances, by mail and phone. He kindly allowed us to reprint his penetrating article in the liner notes to The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, and appended a comment which CBS immediately seized, and displayed in boldface at the top back of each W-TS album jacket:
 

"Carlos's realization of the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto is, to put it bluntly, the finest performance of any of the Brandenburgs -- live, canned, or intuited -- I've ever heard."

 
This was astonishing praise from a musician many times the performing artist I am. I've often thought back that we were lucky to embody an ideal Gould held for years: the days of the live recital are numbered and will eventually be replaced with the recorded arts. In S-OB he found an example of music that could NOT be performed live (until recently), had to be experienced as a recording, and on top of that was not too bad. So we helped him prove his career-shifting thesis, and he helped us to gain acceptance among the snobbier of classical music intelligencia, via his "Imprimatur."

--Wendy Carlos

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Transcription of Comments & Demonstrations
(as heard on Disk-I, Track 14, Initial Experiments)

When we started assembling "Switched-On Bach", it was not immediately clear the best way to approach doing it. My small studio on West End Avenue had just been completed and was working well, and the Moog synthesizer had just gotten its first working prototype of a touch sensitive keyboard.
 
Rachel and Ben and I began by making tests with the opening of the Third Brandenburg, a selection we'd already decided would be ideal as a "grand finale" for the new project. Before committing to recording polished final tracks, we began to experiment. Fortunately the master 8-track sessions for those experiments still exist, and I was able to mix them down here for you for the very first time.
 
Here's the opening minute of the first movement, played hastily only to get an idea of what kinds of timbres might work best. It's slower than the final version, too, while the overdubbed playing of each line is not quite together yet.
 
Cue 1 (Test 1, Brand #3-I)
 
That was rather sloppy, wasn't it? But there is a spirit of sorts which we wanted to keep, and build upon. Here's our second attempt, just half as long this time, and already you can hear things coming together more cohesively.
 
Cue 2 (Test 2, Brand #3-I)
 
Based on these experiments, we decided to go ahead with the first movement as you now know it. Ben still fought me on my desire to add soft 4', 2' and other higher pitches, as he was concerned these might sound like unstylistic octave doublings. But I was soon able to make these higher pitches act like organ stops, which can brighten and lighten an otherwise reasonable timbre into something clearer and more buoyant. While the opening remains dark and somewhat muddy, you can hear these higher colors introduced gradually after the first theme is stated.
 
Cue 3 (Final, Brand #3-I, opening)
 
Once this movement was mixed and "in the can", we went on with some shorter pieces, saving the tricky second and third movements to last. One of these was Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. One initial concept was that this selection ought be softly air-like and ethereal. Perhaps tuned white noise might work. Here the main instrumental voices and the bass are so played. The choir's theme you'll hear is a solo place marker only, meant to be replaced later by appropriate sounds. But we never got that far, for as you can hear, the tuned noise quickly becomes annoying.
 
Cue 4 (Jesu, Joy -- white noise test)
 
For the final version we flipped the location of the noise phrases. Now the instrumental theme is a slightly flutelike timbre, while the choir voices contain suggestions of tuned white noise, but more complex and subtler than those used in our abandoned test.
 
Cue 5 (Jesu, Joy -- final, opening)
 
Often we'd simply abandon a first attempt at a piece, to try again with a different tempo or timbres or phrasing. Most of the reworkings were simply rerecorded over on the same multitrack tape, and no evidence for them now exists. I was surprised to discover we'd kept the next selection, an incomplete Fugue #2 in c minor. You'll detect a slight awkwardness in the playing, and the colors are somewhat too similar between the three voices. At the time I just shrugged and started all over again, knowing if it came out worse, we'd still have this one to fall back on.
 
Cue 7 (Test- Fugue #2 in c minor)
 
Do you remember the two-part Invention #1 in C major on Switched-On Bach? Of course not, because that piece never made it to the final master! While another Invention, the one in F, happened to be the first final master we recorded, the remaining Inventions were not decided upon until later. We tried many of them, to determine the two or three best suited to the sounds and limits of our early synthesizer.
 
Among the 'near-misses" still on the multitrack tape is this performance of Invention #1, which begins with my usual, paranoid tuning check. This two track version may sound a little rough, but it remains nicely spirited.
 
Cue 6 (Test- Invent #1 in Cmajor)

(Note: you really have to hear the demonstration cues mentioned above to appreciate the rapid progress that was achieved in early 1968, and made that album the classic it remains to this day.
 
Disk II, which focuses on The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, has a similar over 9 minute in-depth demonstration track at its end, which reveals many other formerly lost tracks that went into that album, specially mixed heard here for the first time.

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Credits and Special Thanks

This Special Edition boxed set was assembled by Wendy Carlos. Graphics layout, creative design and supervision by Chika Azuma. All texts and photos (except where noted), illustrations, image processing, audio engineering and CD mastering by the composer.
 
With a special thanks to Bob Moog for his generous comments and permission to print the original Moog logo, and pages of his catalogs from 1965 and 1967 in our Enhanced-CD files, to John Romkey, for computer equipment and frequent support, to Clare Cooper for assistance during master transfers, to Chris & Todd & Georges @ Arboretum Systems, and Eric Klein @ Waves, to Joe Winograd and Gabriel Lawrence @ Aris for MusiCode support, to Drew Miller@ ESD for the Enhanced-CD file assembly and HTML editing, and to ESD's Rob Simonds for thoughtful suggestions, feedback, and executive support.

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Interviews

Since many interviews nowadays are published electronically, we were able to obtain permission to post the first of new inteviews on our newest ESD release. To kick things off, here's a nicely done article/interview, with more depth than usual, that comes from Orcas Island (near Seattle), Washington. It was written by veteran music reviewer, Carol Wright (look at her neat site, too), for the November 1999 issue of New Age Voice. She is also the New Age Music Editor for Barnes and Noble, where you can find some of her other fine reviews, and you'll find a perceptive new review of the boxset below. There's also her fine brief interview with me that answers several outstanding questions, to be found on the bn.com site, which you can read HERE.

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What they're saying about it:
(Initial Reviews, to be updated again soon. A big thanks to all who contributed!)
 

From:
WENDY CARLOS
Switched-On Boxed Set
Producer(s): Rachel Elkind
East Side Digital ESD 81422
Genre: VITAL REISSUES
Originally reviewed for week ending 11/13/99
Go To Billboard.com

Since Wendy Carlos unleashed "Switched-On Bach" upon an unsuspecting world in 1968, her Moog synthesizer orchestrations have been hailed variously as a watershed in electronic music and as a passing novelty. Certainly, three decades later "Switched-On" classics have become a cliché, and the synthesizer itself is now simply part of our contemporary sonic fabric. That leaves the music-making itself to be judged. Carlos' renditions remain the platinum standard of their ilk, not because she replicated the sound of a Baroque orchestra but because her own orchestral palette was so unique: Her "instruments" huffed, wheezed, and clanked like an intergalactic music box -- and yet under Carlos' hands, they illuminate the contrapuntal magic of Bach and his contemporaries as if their intricate mazes were formed in midair.
 
The "Switched-On Box Set" includes all four of Carlos' electronic Bach and Baroque albums released on Columbia, from the original "Switched-On Bach" in '68 to the final "Switched-On Brandenburgs" in 1980. The scrolled and bordered artwork of the boxed set reinforces the ironically antique image of the music, while two booklets (totaling nearly 200 pages) include the original liner notes and more background information than you could ever desire. Plus, Carlos throws in an enhanced CD with extra info and a virtual synthesizer to boot. 

As you know from my enthusiastic review of Wendy Carlos's soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, Sonic Seasonings, and Tales of Heaven and Hell (Sept/Oct 1999), I grew up listening to her amazing music and artistry--you might even say it shaped a lot of my earliest thoughts about what musical performance was and could be. Switched-On Bach was one of the first classical albums I ever heard, and I heard it long before I had heard Bach on conventional (let alone period) instruments. Carlos's brilliant transcription of Bach's Sinfonia for Cantata 29 blew me away. For a long time I couldn't listen to anything else on the record. But soon I savored the rest of the disc as well: varied and ever-fresh realizations of the 'Air on the G String', 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring', the inventions in F, B-flat, and D minor; the E-flat and C-minor preludes and fugues from WTC I; 'Wachet auf'; and the piece de resistance, Brandenburg 3. Wendy Carlos started me on a lifetime of loving and performing Bach as well as a continuing desire to study and make electronic music that retained a sense of tonality and expressive immediacy.
 
Over the years, some of Carlos's Bach recordings were reissued on CD, and they always left me feeling a bit disappointed. The sound wasn't as lustrous as I remembered, for one thing; what's more, my favorite installment in the series--the superb Well-Tempered Synthesizer -- never appeared in the new medium except for brief, tantalizing excerpts on the now-deleted Sony disc Secrets of Synthesis. And while I never lost my love or respect for Carlos or her work, bringing it up in classes and in conversations whenever I could, I wondered if perhaps my unabashed affection for her achievement might have been more the product of youthful inexperience, a kind of musical "puppy love". Well, having devoured these completely remastered treasures--both volumes of Switched-On Bach, the remaining Brandenburgs, and, of course, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer -- I've concluded that my first impressions were absolutely right. Wendy Carlos is a cultural icon of the same magnitude as Leonard Bernstein and Glenn Gould: all three were artists whose personalities and vision changed forever the way we heard and thought about music.
 
For the new CDs, Carlos took the original master tapes and lovingly cleaned them up at a digital audio work-station. Every detail is vibrant and clear--much better than on the LP's, since that medium didn't allow the level peaks, high frequencies, sharp attacks, and so on of the original. (And just for the record, I should mention that Carlos had little if anything to do with the original Sony CD reissues; these are of little value now.)
 
For those who come new to the Carlos experience, let me list the contents of the four discs. The first, Switched-on Bach, contains the works I have already mentioned. Next is the Well-Tempered, which has Brandenburg 4, four Scarlatti sonatas (K 455 in G, K 491 and 96 in D, and K 531 in E), three excerpts from Handel's Water Music (the Bourrée and Air from the F-major suite and the Hornpipe from the D-major one), and two Monteverdi tracks (a suite fashioned from a few instrumental and choral pieces in Act I of Orfeo and the grand opening motet from the Vespers, 'Domine ad adjuvandum'). Switched-On Bach II has the Badinerie, Minuet, and Bourrée from Bach's orchestral suite in B minor, the Inventions in A and A minor, 'Sheep May Safely Graze,' four little pieces from Anna Magdalena's Notebook (including a heart-rending 'Bist du bei mir'), and Brandenburg 5. Finally, the Switched-On Brandenburgs has the first, second, and sixth concertos.
 
The remastered discs have a few bonuses: tracks narrated by Carlos that include tests and rejected arrangements and the transcription of the Little Fugue in G minor (originally on the Columbia By Request album), included here so that all the Bach pieces are in one place. And there's more: the fourth disc includes a computer demo of "a virtual analog synthesizer" and many photographs (accessible via CD-ROM drives). The original notes from the albums are collected in one booklet (Benjamin Folkman's liner notes for the first album are still some of the best I have ever read) and a larger booklet includes remarks by Robert Moog and lengthy historical and technical essays by Carlos.
 
The remastered discs reveal both the beautiful detail of the transcriptions and (on the first disc) some of Carlos's "growing pains" as a performer--mostly occasional lapses in synchronization and a couple of smudged notes. (In her defense, Carlos writes that she wanted to fix these glitches, but Benjamin Folkman assured her that the performances were "good enough" -- I wonder if he knew how important the recordings would be 30 years down the road and beyond!)
 
There's absolutely nothing here to discourage buying this amazing set, so I'll just comment on some of the many highlights. The four Scarlatti sonatas--in particular, K 455 -- are amazing because of their innovative treatment. First, the musical lines rapidly change position in the stereo image -- from hard right to left and back; second, Carlos uses multitrack recording to double certain notes in the musical lines with different timbres and percussive white noise--the result is a rich sounding and dramatic rehearing of Scarlatti's visceral sonatas that, quite frankly, is more exciting than the originals can ever be.
 
Carlos is a composer as well as a performer and audio professional and shows her uncanny sense for just the right timbres in her realization of the E-flat fugue from WTC I; the three-part contrapuntal web has more clarity than would be possible on a keyboard instrument (not to mention more lively ornamentation). And again Carlos changes the sounds subtly to reveal the work's structure and maintain expressive variety: the subtle doublings of white noise near the end are both clever and elegantly comic. I spend a lot of time talking about the sounds themselves because I find them so amazing and fresh, but rest assured the performances are no less impressive. Carlos's interpretations are vivid, loving, full of variety. Listen to the exciting finale to Brandenburg 5 and the lyric, almost melancholy, version of Wachet Auf David Moore talked about Carlos's new version, Switched-On Bach 2000 for Telarc (Jan/Feb 1993); I don't believe American Record Guide covered the earlier, inferior CD re-releases. Carlos's Switched-On Bach Set is an historic recording in the very best sense.

--Rob HASKINS

This re-release of Wendy Carlos' early recordings has been long awaited. At last, these treasures are available in this wonderful boxed set. Wendy Carlos went back to the original master tapes for this collection, producing the most clear and detailed versions yet released. The results are amazing, with sounds and nuances that were not audible on the LP's or early cd releases. And for the very first time on cd, "The Well-Tempered Synthesizer", which is, in my opinion, the most beautiful electronic creation of classical music ever produced. I hadn't heard this release in a decade and hearing it again now took my breath away.
 
There are bonuses on each cd, for example, the Little Fugue in G Minor and the alternate second movements for Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. Also, included are some tracks of Wendy Carlos' narrative explaining the evolution of some of the works, overcoming technical problems, etc. It is a delight to hear, in her own charmingly New York accented voice, the genius behind these incredible recordings.
 
The boxed set also includes an extensive book with photographs detailing how each recording evolved, her production partnership with Rachel Elkind, the evolution of her unique and impressive Moog Synthesizer and recording studio and other personal details providing great insight and interesting reading. A detailed description of the Moog Synthesizer modules, with photographs, is fascinating.
 
The boxed set is an exciting reward to all the loyal fans who have been waiting for these precious recordings to be available on cd. And as one of those long-time fans I can't express my enthusiasm too strongly. 

--Jan Hanford (<jan@jsbach.org>)

In the early seventies I bought my first Carlos record. In fact I didn't know what kind of music I actually bought, but I felt it had something. It was the time of the Quadraphonic records and my interest in classical composers was awakening. The amount of Quadra-(SQ) records in the record stores was very small, that's why I met the SQ-record of Switched on Bach. From that moment my life went "classical", with a special interest in synthesizer music. In the years that followed I have bought a lot of synthesizer-records, but the most of all I loved the ones from Wendy and Isao Tomita. I think many of Carlos listeners have that same experience. By Wendy I have now reached a high classical listening level and I am really grateful for that! The Switched On Boxed Set has become one of my most precious possessions. I wouldn't have dreamed that it turned out so beautiful and full of wonderful information. What a fantastic job Wendy did and thanks to ESD! Almost every year I play Wendy's records, but they never bore. Every sound settles in your ears. Also the new CD "Tales of Heaven an Hell" is fabulous. Wendy Carlos is forever !

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Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Boxed Set
Review by Peter Manzi, managing editor for New Age Voice

"Wendy Carlos is the original synth," her logo proclaims. It's a crown she rightfully claims as creator of Switched-On Bach and three other revolutionary albums of baroque interpretations played on the Moog Synthesizer. Released in 1968, Switched-On Bach quickly became among the best-selling classical albums of all time. Carlos proved that electronic music was not merely blips and bloops. With the help of Robert Moog and producer Rachel Elkind, she created real music with a fresh sound.
 
This boxed set contains the original S-OB recording, plus The Well-Tempered Synthesizer (which includes selections by Monteverdi, Scarlatti, Handel, and Bach), Switched-On Bach II, and finally, from 1979, Switched-On Brandenburgs. Over the years, the albums were released in different formats but never remastered for optimal sound quality -- until now. Carlos recently regained rights to these albums, and she spent months of painstaking restoration (including rebuilding the original tape recorders) to take advantage of the dynamic range available on CD. The result is simply breathtaking. The sounds seem to spring from the speakers. Here we are, some 30 years later, and these recordings still sound revolutionary.
 
As novel as the sounds are, Carlos's interpretations are also genuinely bright and lyrical, especially considering the tedious process with which she created and layered the sounds. Garbed in Moog electronica, Bach's genius shines as brilliantly as ever. Carlos sets the lively pieces dancing and imbues the slower movements with nobility.
 
Two booklets are special features of this box set. The first gathers together the entertaining liner notes from the original albums, while the second 142-page illustrated book delves into the music's history, the inner workings of the Moog units and keyboards, the studio setup, and key participants in the projects. Two tracks offer narration by Carlos and musical examples of the composing process. The fourth CD contains an Enhanced CD feature with high-resolution photographs, virtual wendycarlos.com website, and a demo of an analog synthesizer. This definitive edition illuminates an important chapter in the history of music -- and best of all, it sounds better than ever.

--Peter Manzi
(Another writer for New Age Voice, Carol Wright, has written this review of TH&H, and an excellent interview with Wendy.)

WHILE MANY SO-CALLED Internet visionaries suggest that digital downloads will revive the single as the most popular music format, artists continue to set their sights on creating the perfect album. Since the dawn of rock and roll, many musicians have viewed the full-length record as a variant on the novel, either writing to a cohesive theme or happily stumbling across motifs as they plow through song after song.

In the process, artists have influenced one another through their albums, helping music evolve and new styles to blossom. MP3s make it easier to download and listen to single songs, but the album is hardly an endangered species. (It helps to remember that many wags predicted the death of magazines/newspapers/novels because of the Internet.)

We've compiled a list of the 20 albums that shaped the future of music, basing our decisions on their timelessness, influence, and reverberations.

1. Beach Boys, Pet Sounds (Capitol, 1966)--From its groundbreaking arrangements to its heartbreaking harmonies to its shockingly introspective lyrics, this remains the standard for psychedelia, pop, and all points between.
...
16. Wendy Carlos, Switched on Bach (CBS/Sony, 1968)--A sort of plug for her friend Bob Moog's new invention, this interpretation of Bach masterworks caused a fury among purists, who watched in horror as it became the first classical recording to sell a million copies. The public embraced the warm sounds of the analog synth, and the disc has taken on new levels of meaning as the Moog has gone on to power the krautrock, electronica, and indie-rock movements.
...

© Copyright 1999, The Seattle Weekly

I received your new Wendy Carlos "Switched on Boxed Set"...
 
It sounds AWESOME!! These first four albums from Wendy have always been classics in my book, and the great job ESD did of remastering combines real history with technology.... I turned up the volume on my JBL studio monitors , and it sounded like a moog would sound coming right out of my keyboard amp.... truly breathtaking. I am part of Valley's Special Markets dept. ( in Connecticut ), and I manage all the Library accounts . You can bet I'll be pushing this selection in the next few months. It really is a great "millennium" purchase, really putting several hundred years of composing, performing , and technology all together into one very experiential cd package .
 
I've done well selling "Tales", and the new "Clockwork" is brilliant as well; it's great Wendy brought all that together. (On a informative note, my bosses brother, Chris Martirano from Kurzweil, gets credit on "Tales" for his assistance to Wendy.) We are indeed fans, and look forward to some excellent sales here. Great Job !!

Barry Konarik <BXK@valley-media.com>

What a remarkable journey these recordings have made, and the end result is nothing short of spectacular!
 
The 4 disks comprising the "Switched on Boxed Set" come with two lusciously narrated booklets describing the synthesizer technology used in the making, photographs and other memorabilia. As for the recordings themselves, having survived baking in ovens, the ravages of various CBS engineering masters and the politics of the commercial record industry, they appear here as 1st generation digital masters recorded in glorious 20-bit resolution by ESD.
 
Some restoration is mentioned and is evident on a couple of the disks. My personal favourite of the quartet, is The Well Tempered Synthesizer (W-TS), which I believe represents the culmination and maturation of the disk which was chronologically before it, the original "Switched On Bach", or "The Electronic Bach". Switched on Bach II and the Switched On Brandenbergs are less satisfying for me after hearing W-TS, but interesting none the less.
 
Background hum and key clicking have been kept to a minimum and there are rare occasions on all of the disks (except Switched-on Brandenbergs, which was made much later) of oscillator tuning drift. There are some occasions where the oscillators are sharp, but they are never flat. The hum and background noise level on the disks is nothing short of a miracle of restoration by Wendy herself. The noise now on the ESD disks is no worse than your average classical recording made in a Concert Hall. It's certainly superior to the original vinyl titles from CBS.
 
The 20-bit Hi-D process has also brought out nuances in tempo, volume, orchestration and track placement that aren't apparent on the CBS releases. Octave doubling of some parts is revealed for the first time, as are the details of each "stop" or voice of the Moog. What I thought were electronic clicks in several voices was actually the attack envelope of the sound... very resolute!
 
There is only one thing that bothers me about these disks, and it has nothing to do with either ESD or the technology behind these milestones. It is that is in the Air of the Handel Water Music on W-TS contains slow trills which start on the lower of the two notes. In Baroque style it was uncommon to start on anything but the top note. It's only a minor point and there may have been a technical reason when the track was recorded, for this to happen this way.
 
These disks are a fitting conclusion, also a timely release, and in a strange way, a link to the Telarc disk "Switched On Bach 2000", which is a hi-bit digital Dolby ProLogic recording, featuring a re-orchestration and performance of the 3rd Brandenberg Concerto rendered 30 years previously on SOB. All that remains now for the "Switched On" recordings, is for them to be transcribed into multichannel DVD-Audio from the recordings originally recorded in 4 channels. Unfortunately, W-TS and S-OB were originally mastered in stereo only, so DVD-Audio will not benefit them greatly beyond even more resolute recording than the 20-bit Hi-D process affords.
 
Beautifully packed and worth every single cent if you're a Wendy Carlos fan. A proud milestone in commercial electronic music. The rich sumptuous sounds of the analogue Moog, and sensitive interpretations by Wendy, are something to behold when presented this way.

Superior!

--Ivan Smith (at sigma.com.au)

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Editorial Review
from Amazon.com

In 1968, keyboardist-composer Wendy Carlos released Switched-On Bach, her best-selling LP featuring baroque music performed on the Moog synthesizer. Carlos intended to spread the gospel of electronic classical music through this quirky release; instead, she sold more albums than Karlheinz Stockhausen could ever dream of, released a few follow-ups, and paved the way for Hot Butter's "Popcorn." Carlos has since become well known for more than just these wacky classical interpretations--she recorded the soundtracks to A Clockwork Orange and Tron and released new works--but the "Switched-Ons" are the goofy synthesizer recordings that most of us still remember.
 
No less than Glenn Gould proclaimed, "Carlos's realization of the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto is, to put it bluntly, the finest performance of any of the Brandenburgs--live, canned, or intuited--I've ever heard." We're not sure what he meant by that, but if you have half the enthusiasm Gould did for this music, check out this box set. All four of Carlos's baroque-gone-space-age LPs from the '70s are included here--Switched-On Bach, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, Switched-On Bach II, and Switched-On Brandenburgs--completely remastered in all their stereophonic glory and containing bonus tracks (the fourth CD is even enhanced for use on your computer). The liner notes weigh in at around 150 pages, filled with photos and background information even on the evolution of Carlos's studio (you get the original LP notes in their entirety, too). The music? It's hilarious, absolutely riveting, and--whether Scarlatti, Bach, Handel, or Monteverdi--played successfully by Carlos and her battery of special effects. For the lover of the eclectic or the classical fan who knows how to let loose, this is a box set to get. -

-Jason Verlinde

For fans of Wendy Carlos, this compilation of early synthesizer works is a godsend. In these groundbreaking and in some ways still unequaled recordings, Carlos showed the Moog indeed was a musical instrument of great range and nuance. The remastering is impressive when compared to earlier CDs and, of course, LPs. Get one for yourself, another for a friend.

What this box set proves, once and for all, is that Wendy Carlos's synthesizer recordings of Bach and others are no novelty: they're great performances in their own right, often better than those using traditional instruments. And what could serve her work better than this lavish, more-than-complete set? Get one for yourself and one for each of your enlightened friends. You'll be glad you did. Way to go, Wendy!

Wow! Switched-On Bach still has the magic, after all these years...!
 
I doubt you could find any compilation anywhere that would even come close to the value that this set presents. Newly remastered versions of all four of Carlos's incredible baroque Moog transcriptions, all of the original liner notes, reproductions of the original covers, extra audio tracks with outtakes from the original albums, and a gargantuan booklet of new notes--plus nearly 35 MEGABYTES of material accessible from a CD-ROM drive. Carlos includes a snapshot of her entire website, pictures of her studio, even the MIDI source for the entire SOB 2000 album (which updated the original SOB selections). All this for less than sixty bucks!
 
Value isn't the only point in this set's favor. This is THE seminal work of electronic music, the recording that launched the entire genre into the public eye. Carlos's orchestration makes classical music fun to listen to again--even if you've heard Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, and Monteverdi hundreds of times, you've never heard them like this. Creative use of stereo and careful attention to synthesizer programming ensure that every part of every piece is distinct and special. You literally cannot do these things with a traditional orchestra. This isn't a replacement for acoustic performances of the classics, but it is an indispensable companion to them.
 
Fans of pure electronic music shouldn't be disappointed, either. These discs are the origin of "phat." Whether you like New Age or Hip-Hop, the sounds and textures in this set should really move you. Carlos worked more than a decade before the TB-303 and the TR-808, but you'll recognize a lot of the sounds in these albums anyway--because they were so good that they became widely imitated instant classics.
 
I wish I could come up with a list of negatives for this set, but I honestly can't. It's true that I like some tracks more than others, but I can't in truth say that any of them are bad. This set is a must buy.

When Wendy Carlos released "Switched-On Bach" in 1968, she sent an electric shock through the music world. Young people thrilled to her synthesized interpretations of Bach's greatest hits, while classical fans got their first tantalizing taste of electronica. This set includes all of Carlos's brilliant baroque recreations, painstakingly remastered by the moog master herself.

Just as Bach's Brandenburg concertos remain fine examples of music written for a small ensemble, so Wendy's realisations of this music, amongst others, remain fine (dare I say the finest?) examples of synthesizer orchestration. Listen to the superb performances, to the way the melody dances around the stereo image, to how the synthesizer's sounds change every couple of bars &endash; sometimes every couple of notes &endash; in a way that complements the music perfectly.
 
The quality of these recordings is equally fine &endash; it's hard to believe they are all twenty to thirty years old. Wendy's efforts to present the original recordings in the best possible form have paid off spectacularly well. Round this off with the beautifully produced books giving details of the music and the Moog synthesizer together with the enhanced CD-ROM section on CD 4 and you have something no-one who enjoys Bach, Wendy's music, or synthesizers should be without.

In 1990, back when I was 14, and an extreme electronics enthusiast, I would spend hundreds of hours in my father's shop, tinkering with different ways to create and design electronic musical instruments. I'm dead serious, this is what I did. Anyway, one day my father comes to me with an old, dusty copy of "Switched on Bach." "You might get something out of this," he says, so I dig up our old turntable and hook it up to my bedroom hi-fi system.
 
My first playing of "SOB" will be forever etched in my mind as one of the all-time biggest musical experiences I am to have. This was all the technical, mathematical electronic theory I had cut my teeth on, merged with the most beautiful music ever composed. From that point forward, and onto a scholarship in Electrical Engineering years later, solderless breadboards and easels would seem the same to me. Such was the power of that scratchy old record.
 
So now I'm much older, having just received the "Switched on Boxed Set" a few days ago, only having given it a few complete listenings, eager to hear it again, and again, and begin digging back into the music that changed my life almost ten years ago.
 
Let me just say that this is an absolute gift to any Bach enthusiast, giving these absolute standards a new interpretation through the glorious old (well NOW it is) Moog synthesizer. Most friends for whom I played the original "SOB" thought it was a gimmick, or Moog advertisement. Maybe this remastering and repackaging will help give it the credit it deserves, as well as open new doors for 14-year old electronic dorks worldwide.
 
For all those who would pretend to conduct with a live soldering iron, let this collection be a gift to you.

At long last, Switched-On Bach the way it was meant to be heard. Glorious!!!
 
First Carlos had to reclaim her masters from Columbia. Then she had to digitally clean up and restore the (in some cases) 30-year old tapes. Next she had to design a presentation worthy of these groundbreaking albums. It took a few years and a ton of work, but the result is (dare I say it?) worth the wait.
 
Carlos is to be commended for undertaking this project. Many artists can't be bothered with work done early in their career, no matter how popular it remains. Carlos herself has moved light-years beyond these early transcriptions in her recent work (see "Tales of Heaven & Hell" or "Beauty in the Beast" to see how far).
 
But they were groundbreaking albums, single-handedly moving Bob Moog's cumbersome contraption into the musical arena, changing the face of popular music. And they still stand up surprisingly well musically, too. Since Columbia (whose commitment to the bottom line prevented it) was unable to do them justice, it fell on Wendy to do the job proper.
 
And oh, what a job she has done! This is first class all the way, from sonics to graphics to layout and tons of extras! This is a dream package, not an expense spared, well worth the small investment.
 
Own a piece of history!

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