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Would you be willing to work with an archivist to make these public? (I'm not one, to be clear.) Carlos recordings seem impossible to find!


These are still copyrighted recordings, and they seem to be available in the usual places you would find copyrighted digital audio.

Her work is not licensed for digital distribution, and largely out of print.

So, there's unfortunately no way to compensate her directly for her works.

And "work" is an understatement. Moog synths of the day were barely instruments. Imagine playing a symphony (symphonic arrangement) using only a single glass filled with water.

You could get any note you wanted, but only one at a time and even that required constant retuning.


It’s not quite as a bad as a single glass. More like 61 glasses, but you can only strike one at a time.

And on the other hand, you can glissando smoothly between any 2 notes. Not many other instruments in the orchestra can say that!

Pitch drift due to temperature fluctuations was quite bad, it’s true, but it becomes part of the charm of those “switched-on” records.


Some of it made it to CD, like the Switched-On Boxed Set.


The Discogs marketplace seems to have plenty of them.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/16261-Wendy-Carlos


You have no idea how long I've looked for this, thank you so much lol.

edit: wait, is this just a place that sells physical copies?


Yes, Discogs is basically the IMDb of musical recordings. Its marketplace is probably the best place on the internet to find and sell physical copies of pretty much any musical recording.

They don't sell or host digital recordings, presumably for copyright reasons.


Shame, I've been wanting to buy a Wendy Carlos digital album for ages. Guess I'll have to keep wishing. sigh


I realize this is probably not a great consolation, but you could buy a CD for just a few bucks and rip it yourself.


Looks like it :-/ was hoping I could find digital recordings.


Maybe I'm just today's lucky ten thousand then.


Ripping these original vinyl editions is already somewhere on my list of things-to-do-before-I-get-too-old. Currently I don't have a functional pickup for my record player. I will get around to it, some day. The Switched-On Boxed Set (CDs) was released in the late 90s, and I happen to have ripped that one about 20 years ago. I should do another FLAC or high-quality AAC rip of that box, for posterity, before eventual CD rot happens.




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