Sometimes you come across material that is too good not to share and in this case we stumbled upon a rare interview with synth pioneer Harald Bode.

In 1954 the electronic engineer and pioneering instrument designer Harald Bode moved from his home in Bavaria, Germany to Brattleboro, Vermont, USA to lead the development team at the Estey Organ Co, working on developing his instrument the ‘Bode Organ’ as the prototype for the new Estey Organ. As a sideline Bode set up his own home workshop in 1959 to develop his ideas for a completely new and innovative instrument “A New Tool for the Exploration of Unknown Electronic Music Instrument Performances”. Bode’s objective was to produce a device that could included everything needed for film and TV audio production; soundtracks, sound design and audio processing– perhaps inspired by Oskar Sala’s successful (and lucrative ) film work, such as on Alfred Hitchcock  ‘The Birds’ (1963).

Bode’s new idea was to create a modular device where different components could be connected as needed; and in doing so created the first modular synthesiser – a concept that was copied sometime later by Robert Moog and Donald Buchla amongst others. The resulting instrument  the ‘Audio System Synthesiser’ allowed the user to connect multiple devices such as Ring modulators, Filters, Reverb Generators etc in any order to modify or generate sounds. The sound could be recorded to tape, mixes or further processing; “A combination of well-known devices enabled the creation of new sounds” (Bode 1961).

In the video, Bode discusses his modular synthesizer, which pre-dated the Moog modular, and his work creating Moog modules. Most of the video, catches Bode demonstrating the possibilities of modular synthesis and sharing his thoughts on why musicians of the time gravitated towards more traditional sounds.

Bode wrote a description of the Audio System Synthesiser in the December 1961 issue of Electronics Magazine and demonstrated it at the Audio Engineering Society (AES), a convention for the electro-acoustics industry in New York in 1960. In the audience was a young Robert Moog who was at the time running a business selling Theremin Kits. Inspired by Bode’s ideas Moog designed the famous series of Moog modular synthesisers. Bode would later license modules to be included in Moog modular systems including a Vocoder, Ring Modulator, filter and Pitch shifter as well as producing a number of components which were widely used in electronic music studios during the 196os