Raymond Scott: Electronic Music

Scott, who attended Brooklyn Technical High School, was an early electronic music pioneer and adventurous sound engineer. During the 1930s and 1940s, many of his band's recording sessions found the bandleader in the control room, monitoring and adjusting the acoustics, often by revolutionary means. As Gert-Jan Blom & Jeff Winner wrote, "Scott sought to master all aspects of sound capture and manipulation. His special interest in the technical aspects of recording, combined with the state-of-the-art facilities at his disposal, provided him with enormous hands-on experience as an engineer."

In 1946, Scott established Manhattan Research, a division of Raymond Scott Enterprises, Incorporated, which he announced would "design and manufacture electronic music devices and systems." As well as designing audio devices for his own personal use, Manhattan Research Inc. provided customers with sales & service for a variety of devices "for the creation of electronic music and musique concrete" including components such as ring modulators, wave, tone and envelope shapers, modulators and filters. Of unique interest were instruments like the "Keyboard theremin," "Chromatic electronic drum generators," and "Circle generators." Scott often described Manhattan Research Inc. as "More than a think factory - a dream center where the excitement of tomorrow is made available today." Bob Moog, developer of the Moog Synthesizer, met Scott in the 1950s, designed circuits for him in the 1960s, and acknowledged him as an important influence.

Scott developed some of the first devices capable of producing a series of electronic tones automatically in sequence. He later credited himself as being the inventor of the polyphonic sequencer. (It should be noted that his electromechanical devices, some with motors moving photocells past lights, bore little resemblance to the all-electronic sequencers of the late sixties.) He began working on a machine he said composed using artificial intelligence. The Electronium, as Scott called it, with its vast array of knobs, buttons and patch panels is considered the first self-composing synthesizer. Some of Raymond Scott's projects were less complex, but still ambitious. During the 1950s and 1960s, he developed and patented a large number of consumer products that brought electronically produced sounds into the homes and lives of Americans. Among these were electronic telephone ringers, alarms, chimes, and sirens, vending machines and ashtrays with accompanying electronic music scores, an electronic musical baby rattle and an adult toy that produced varying sounds dependent on how two people touched one another. It was Scott's belief that these devices would "electronically update the many sounds around us - the functional sounds."