LMJ14_001- 11/15/04 9:24 AM Page 75 A Musical Technography of John Bischoff ABSTRACT Douglas Kahn John Bischoff has been part of the formation and growth of electronic and computer music in the San Francisco Bay Area for over three decades. In an interview with the author, he describes his early development The San Francisco Bay Area has long been a thesizer. His efforts, in this respect, as a student of experimental hotbed of activity in electronic and experimental music, be- were similar to the activities of music technology, including the ginning with the work of John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen David Tudor, David Behrman, Gor- impact of hearing and assisting and David Tudor, who performed and conducted residencies don Mumma, Nicolas Collins, Ron in the work of David Tudor. Bischoff, like Tudor, explored there beginning in the 1960s. There followed the establish- Kuivila, Paul DeMarinis and others the unpredictable potentials ment of the San Francisco Tape Music Center and the Center at the time. Indeed, hearing a within electronic components, for Contemporary Music at Mills College in Oakland, among recording of Tudor’s performance and he brought this curiosity to many other developments. While other locations focus more of Cage’s Variations II, with its “big bear when he began working on on individual talents, the Bay Area is known for its collective blocks of noise,” was a transforma- one of the first available micro- computers. He was a key energies and has proven to be fertile ground when those en- tive experience for Bischoff, as was individual at the historical turning ergies are channeled through circuits and when the ground his experience at Mills assisting in point when computer music is made of silicon. Over the last three decades John Bischoff the recording of Tudor’s composi- escaped its institutional restric- has been at the center of that collective activity, first as a grad- tion Microphone. tions and began becoming widespread. uate student at Mills College and then, up to the present day, Beginning in 1977, under the as a faculty member. Bischoff was a member of the League of prodding of Jim Horton, Bischoff Automatic Music Composers (with Jim Horton, Rich Gold, began composing on the KIM-1, Tim Perkis and David Behrman) (Fig. 1) and the Hub (with one of the first microcomputers [4]. At $250 at the time, it was Chris Brown, Scot Gresham-Lancaster, Tim Perkis, Mark Trayle relatively inexpensive (a synthesizer still cost several thousand and Phil Stone) [1]. With the publication of his CD Aperture dollars), and after a period of apprenticeship it allowed com- [2], Bischoff’s music has been embraced by a new generation posers full-time access, much like any traditional musical in- of electronic, laptop and noise musicians, and audiences. strument. This development led to the widespread use of The following interview is not so much about Bischoff’s computers for music making today and helped move elec- music, however, as it is about the musical technologies that he tronic and computer music composition from its neglect at employed during an especially auspicious historical juncture the margins of Western art music to the array of cultural and when institutionally privileged access to mainframe comput- subcultural sites it presently enjoys. The following interview ers and early synthesizers gave way to the broader access of do- took place at Mills College during the spring of 2003. An ad- it-yourself electronics and, soon after that, the hardwiring of mirer of Bischoff’s music, I requested the interview to better electronics began to contend with the programmability of the understand the genesis of the present-day practice of com- first microcomputers [3]. Pioneering mainframe composers, puter and electronic music and his role within it. I have ed- such as James Tenney and Jean-Claude Risset at Bell Labs, were ited the dialogue to allow Bischoff to describe his earlier dependent upon very restricted research-based access; to a development uninterrupted. lesser degree, a generation of students and composers were kept from the access they needed to the early synthesizers by the institutional demands on them and the prohibitive ex- Fig. 1. The League of Automatic Music Composers (left to right: pense of individual ownership. As an undergraduate student Tim Perkis, John Bischoff, Don Day and Jim Horton) rehearsing at at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, ca. 1981. (Photo © Eva Shoshany) California, Bischoff was unable to gain hands-on access to the school’s synthesizer; later, as a graduate student at Mills, he commandeered a room full of unused modular electronic gear in part to compensate for his limited access to the Buchla syn- Douglas Kahn (historian, theorist, educator), Program in Technocultural Studies, Art Building, Room 103, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, U.S.A. E-mail: Ͻ[email protected]Ͼ. Frontispiece. Jim Horton’s KIM-1 computer music system, ca. 1981. (Photo © Eva Shoshany) The KIM-1 is encased in a “Danish mod- ern” wood panel with its small keypad showing through the rectan- gular opening. The wires labeled “A2,” “B0,” etc. are KIM data port connections patched to other microcomputers. The small box with black knobs at the top is an audio mixer. © 2004 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 14, pp. 74–79, 2004 75 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/0961121043067262 by guest on 30 September 2021 LMJ14_001- 11/15/04 9:25 AM Page 76 John Bischoff: I had a traditional music I went to the San Francisco Conserva- John Cage’s Variations II. It completely background in some ways. I studied clas- tory of Music and studied piano and com- turned my musical world around. Just big sical piano as a kid, but I was always in- position for 2 years. During that time I blocks of noise. At first I was aghast, terested in jazz. I took piano because I listened to a lot of John Cage, Morton shocked; I didn’t even know if I liked it, wanted to play like my uncle, who played Feldman and Earle Brown. I really liked but it was totally different than anything a 1920s sophisticated kind of stride Brown’s music; it was busier and denser I’d heard. As before, when that would piano. Through high school I took clas- than either the space nature of Feld- happen to me, I listened more and more sical lessons and listened mostly to jazz— man’s work or Cage’s randomness. I de- and then began to like it. That’s when I was a big Thelonius Monk fan. cided I was going to go study with Brown electronic music got under my skin. But, My dad [Elmer Bischoff] was a painter. in my junior year at the Peabody Con- because CalArts was just starting, the elec- I would play him the jazz records I was servatory in Baltimore. However, he was tronic music scene was in chaos. I took listening to, and we would talk about it going to be gone the first year and Morton Subotnick’s class in which he and other things on an artistic level. He wasn’t sure whether he’d be back, but he explained things theoretically—basic played, too, a trumpet, in addition to did tell me about CalArts. So I was there acoustics and oscillators and voltage— painting. My older brother, Steve, who the first year it opened in 1970. but it was very difficult to get time on the was 10 years older, was also interested in At CalArts I studied with [James] Ten- synthesizer. You just can’t learn anything that kind of thing, but besides that I was ney. He was really incredible, far and without doing that; it was frustrating. If I fairly isolated; my friends weren’t inter- away the best teacher I’d had up until had been a gearhead I might have just ested. that time, other than my father. Tenney bullied my way in. My high school teacher wasn’t espe- led me back into the American tradition. Then I went to Mills College for grad- cially interested in modern music, but I had been located partly in European uate school, in the fall of 1971. I had seen she was a good teacher and gave me the and partly American, but I got interested Robert Ashley give a talk in a composi- score and recordings of Arnold Schön- in Charles Ives and learned some of his tion seminar while I was still at the Con- berg’s atonal piano pieces, and I started piano pieces. I hung out with Peter Gar- servatory. He talked for an hour straight, learning them. I listened to a huge land, who was also studying with Tenney, and I remember being incredibly im- amount of music at the time, 3 or 4 hours and I can remember him, and maybe pressed. I knew he was at Mills, so I ap- a day. I developed my own program to ex- Tenney a bit also, criticizing Stockhausen plied and that’s how I ended up here. I pand my listening horizons. If I was in- and some of the other European com- decided to pursue electronic instead of terested in a piece of music, I would read posers at that time. I began to agree with instrumental music, but I really had no about it and listen to musicians in the them. Peter was a great colleague. He practical background in it. Maggie Payne, same crowd, piece by piece, adding other started Soundings then, and I co-pro- who was a year ahead of me, showed me people.