Editing Wendy Carlos (section)

====''Switched-On Bach''====

In 1968, Carlos released ''[[Switched-On Bach]]'', an album formed of several pieces by [[Johann Sebastian Bach]] performed on a [[Moog modular synthesizer]]. Carlos had originally wanted to record an album of her own music, but Elkind suggested that they use music that was more familiar to the general listener in order to introduce the synthesizer as a credible new instrument. The idea for an album of Bach's music performed on the Moog began to crystallize during 1967, after Carlos asked Elkind to listen to some recordings by Carlos and musicologist Benjamin Folkman made up to ten years prior at the Electronic Music Center, one of them being Bach's [[Inventions and Sinfonias (Bach)|Two-Part Invention in F major]], which Elkind took a liking to. Plans for an album of several Bach compositions developed from there.

From her experience working in the music industry, Elkind knew that a major label would be unlikely to accept a pitch from a woman, so she approached her friend, the musician, conductor and producer [[Ettore Stratta]], who was then a producer working in the A&R division at [[Columbia Records]]. He successfully pitched the project to the label on their behalf, leading to a two-album recording contract with [[Columbia Masterworks Records|Columbia Masterworks]], a deal that lasted until 1986. Crucially, it gave Carlos and Elkind ownership of their recording masters, and Elkind was able to negotiate what she described as "a very nice royalty", possibly because the label did not have to invest a large sum up-front and did not expect the album to sell many copies.{{sfn|Sewell|2022|p=50}}

Columbia had launched an album sales campaign named "Bach to Rock", though it had no album of Bach's works in a contemporary context in its catalogue.<ref name=playboy1979 /> They were given a small advance from the label; Elkind recalled they were offered $1000, Carlos told an interviewer they were given about $2500,{{sfn|Sewell|2022|p=50}} a relatively modest sum, given that the average recording budget for a major pop album at this time was about $10,000. Columbia granted Carlos and Elkind artistic freedom to produce and release the album. Carlos performs with additional synthesizers played by Folkman and with Elkind as producer.

The recording process was long and complex, because the monophonic Moog could only play [[monophony|one note at a time]].<ref name=SeattlePI /> Due to the limitations of her equipment, every instrumental part in each score had to be recorded separately, and then each successive part was layered over the previously recorded parts on Carlos' eight-track recorder. All the parts were coordinated by recording each one in time with a [[click track]], which was eventually erased. Biographer Amanda Sewell reports that Carlos only rarely wrote down the complex combination of control knob settings and cable connections (or "patches") used to create specific sounds on the Moog, and that she was able to memorize and recall nearly her entire "library" of patches at will.{{sfn|Sewell|2022|p=46}}

This tortuous recording process was made even more difficult by the tendency of the early Moog oscillators to drift out of tune—by her own account, Carlos was often only able to record one or two measures of each part before the Moog went out of tune, and she claimed she sometimes even had to bang on the casing with a hammer to get it back into tune. This issue also meant that she had to meticulously review each segment for consistency once it had been recorded, because if one line was out of tune the entire section would be ruined.{{sfn|Sewell|2022|p=47}}

Carlos later recalled that she worked on the recording of the album for eight hours a day, five days a week, for five months, on top of her regular 40-hour-per-week day job at Gotham Studios.{{sfn|Sewell|2022|p=46}} Although ''Switched-On Bach'' was extremely costly in terms of person-hours expended, her high-quality home studio, her proficiency as a programmer and performer on the Moog, and her ability as a recording engineer enabled Carlos and her colleagues to record and produce the album completely independently, thereby avoiding the need to use expensive commercial recording studios. As well as the consideration that repeatedly taking the bulky, complex and delicate Moog system to and from a studio for each session would have been almost impossible, given Carlos' own reckoning that the project took over 1100 hours to complete, using commercial studios would have made the recording prohibitively expensive, and would likely have cost upwards of US$100,000 in 1968. By comparison, [[The Beatles]]' 1967 album ''[[Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band]]'' took over 700 hours to record and cost a reported UK£25,000, or about US$60,000 at the 1968 exchange rate. Additionally, although the recording was extremely labour-intensive, the combination of the Moog and the multitrack recorder gave Carlos and Elkind unprecedented control over every facet of the timbral, expressive and environmental qualities of every single note they recorded, enabling them to create a new level of clarity for each "voice" in the compositions—a key concern for Elkind, who was critical of what she called the "soggy" audio quality of contemporary classical recordings.{{sfn|Sewell|2022|p=44}}

Released in October 1968,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Dayal |first1=Geeta |title=Doug McKechnie |url=https://4columns.org/dayal-geeta/doug-mckechnie |publisher=4 Columns |access-date=November 6, 2020 |archive-date=November 6, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201106165513/https://4columns.org/dayal-geeta/doug-mckechnie |url-status=live }}</ref> ''Switched-On Bach'' became an unexpected commercial and critical hit, with [[Glenn Gould]] calling it "the album of the decade",{{sfn|Sewell|2022|p=51}} and it helped to draw attention to the synthesizer as a genuine musical instrument.<ref name=SeattlePI>{{cite news |last=Barbrick |first=Greg |title=Book Review: Keyboard Presents Synth Gods |newspaper=Seattle Post-Intelligencer |date=March 23, 2011 |url=http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Book-Review-Keyboard-Presents-Synth-Gods-Edited-1306589.php |publisher=Seattle Post-Intellegencer |access-date=July 25, 2012 |quote=''Switched-On Bach'' almost single-handedly revolutionized the public's perception of synthesizers&nbsp;... |archive-date=March 8, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140308220438/http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Book-Review-Keyboard-Presents-Synth-Gods-Edited-1306589.php |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name=NYTMockBach>{{cite news |last=Henahan |first=Donal |title=Switching On to Mock Bach |page=D26 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1968/11/03/archives/switching-on-to-mock-bach.html |access-date=July 25, 2012 |newspaper=The New York Times |date=November 3, 1968 |quote=...&nbsp;possibly one of the year's more significant records |archive-date=April 11, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180411111551/https://www.nytimes.com/1968/11/03/archives/switching-on-to-mock-bach.html |url-status=live }}</ref> A [[CBC Radio|Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]] program in November 1968, called CBC AM, secured a rare interview with Carlos about the selection and use of Moog.<ref>{{Cite AV media |date=November 1968 |title=CBC AM- Glenn Gould on the Moog synthesizer |url=https://archive.org/details/cbc-glenn-gould-on-the-moog-synthesizer-1968 |website=The Internet Archive |at=05:04 – introduction just before the interview with Walter Carlos}}</ref> Biographer Amanda Sewell observes, it is notable that Carlos is not pictured anywhere on the album, and is only mentioned by name (as Walter Carlos) in the rear sleeve notes of the original cover. ''[[Newsweek]]'' dedicated a full page to Carlos with the caption "Plugging into the [[Steinway]] of the future".<ref name=playboy1979 /> It peaked at No. 10 on the US [[Billboard 200|''Billboard'' 200]] chart and was No. 1 on its Classical Albums chart from January 1969 to January 1972. It was the second classical album to sell over one million copies and was certified [[RIAA certification|Gold]] in 1969 and Platinum in 1986 by the [[Recording Industry Association of America]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.riaa.com/gold-platinum/?tab_active=default-award&se=Wendy+Carlos#search_section |title=Gold & Platinum |website=[[RIAA]] |access-date=September 18, 2017 |archive-date=December 31, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231231172731/https://www.riaa.com/gold-platinum/?tab_active=default-award&se=Wendy+Carlos#search_section |url-status=live }}<!--Unfortunately a search will have to do, because the share links are broken--></ref><ref name="TimeMusic">{{cite magazine |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,903305,00.html |magazine=Time |title=Music: Switched-Off Bach |date=February 14, 1972 |access-date=2013-04-15 |archive-date=July 6, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120706065315/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,903305,00.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Carlos performed selections from the album on stage with a synthesizer with the [[St. Louis Symphony Orchestra]].

The massive and unexpected success of ''Switched-On Bach'' put great pressure on Carlos. She was by this time well into her gender confirmation process, and she was fearful of both personal ridicule and physical attack, and of the negative impact that her status as a transitioning person could have on her music career. Biographer Amanda Sewell records that the St. Louis appearance was extremely difficult for her—she hated having to disguise herself as Walter, for which she had to affect a deeper voice, use makeup to simulate a five o'clock shadow, and don a wig and pasted-on fake sideburns. Her childhood experiences of being bullied and assaulted made her so fearful of appearing in public that she reportedly even contemplated taking her own life before the event and cried all the way to St. Louis.{{sfn|Sewell|2022|p=61}}
This was to be one of only two live performances Carlos made following her days as a student, the other being with the Kurzweil Baroque Ensemble for "Bach at the Beacon" in 1997.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/02/arts/play-it-jazzy-switched-on-or-straight-it-s-bach.html|title=Play It Jazzy, Switched On Or Straight, It's Bach|first=James R.|last=Oestreich|newspaper=The New York Times|date=April 2, 1997|access-date=February 26, 2018|archive-date=January 29, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180129004627/http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/02/arts/play-it-jazzy-switched-on-or-straight-it-s-bach.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=people1985>{{Cite magazine|url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20091206,00.html|title=After a Sex Change and Several Eclipses, Wendy Carlos Treads a New Digital Moonscape|date=July 1, 1985|magazine=People|first=Susan|last=Reed|volume=24|edition=1|access-date=February 15, 2015|archive-date=December 1, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141201061203/http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20091206,00.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In 1970, the album won a [[Grammy Award]] for [[Grammy Award for Best Classical Album|Best Classical Album]], [[Grammy Award for Best Classical Performance – Instrumental Soloist or Soloists (with or without orchestra)|Best Classical Performance – Instrumental Soloist or Soloists (With or Without Orchestra)]], and [[Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical|Best Engineered Classical Recording]]. Carlos released a follow-up, ''[[The Well-Tempered Synthesizer]]'', with synthesized pieces from multiple composers. Released in November 1969, the album reached No. 199 on the ''Billboard'' 200 and received two Grammy nominations. The success of both albums allowed Carlos to move into Elkind's more spacious New York City home in 1971.<ref name=playboy1979 />

Carlos considers Elkind's contribution to her work, and specifically ''Switched-On Bach'', to be underappreciated, calling her "a 'silent' partner" and her work "critical to my success".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.wendycarlos.com/rachel.html|last=Carlos|first=Wendy|title=Rachel Elkind-Tourre|website=WendyCarlos.com|date=17 January 2001|access-date=2023-02-14}}</ref>