“These are better sine waves. They just are”: We meet the people using test equipment to make music
Stockhausen. Silver Apples. Forbidden Planet. Before the development of what we think of as synthesizers, there was test and measurement equipment. Raw oscillators, filters and amplifiers intended for not musical but industrial purposes. At some point, experimental musicians realised that if you amplified the electric signals they put out, you could generate, process, and control audio signals.
It was Bob Moog and Don Buchla who took these raw building blocks and added musical control, and the rest is history. But for a certain subset of musicians, this original equipment is very much not history; it still holds plenty of potential for sonic experimentation.
Curious about how to incorporate test equipment into your own studio and productions? Grab some ear protection, sign this waiver, and get ready to hear the most beautiful sine wave you’ve ever heard in your life.
“Test equipment has very little to do with traditional synthesizers in terms of workflow and signal chain,” says musician Andrea Taeggi, who often works with the gear. “With a standard synth, you typically think in terms of oscillators, filters, envelopes, VCAs and a defined signal path. With test and measurement gear, that structure often doesn’t really exist in the same way.”
Keyboard synthesizers – and even modular setups, to an extent – present a structured and interconnected whole, a finished product built upon components that started life as scientific equipment. Early pioneers in electronic music discovered that with a little coaxing, they could make sound with it, and by recording it and manipulating the tape, create music.
This equipment is generally referred to as test and measurement equipment. Rikkert Brok, the studio manager at Willem Twee Studios in the Netherlands, which has one of the world’s most sophisticated examples of such a setup, explains.
“Test equipment was used, for instance, in radio and telecommunication to measure signals, but also for acoustic measurements,” he says. “For instance, a sine wave oscillator could be used in radio to test a transmitter.”
Some gear didn’t make sound on its own but could still be used as part of a music production system, like lock-in amplifiers and boxcar integrators. “They don’t make sounds themselves,” says Rikkert, “but you can more or less see them as really complex kinds of filters.”
Housed inside a 1960s nuclear bunker somewhere near the Welsh border is Cold War Synths. Run by producer and archaeologist Matt Thomas (King Unique), Cold War Synths is the culmination of Matt’s interests in a number of different facets of music production. “It is a decision to do something with a load of equipment and a load of interest, and bring it together in a physical place,” he explains.
Although you can find some pretty amazing synthesizers there, including a Yamaha CS-80, Roland Jupiter-4 and EMS VCS3, the special focus is on test and measurement equipment.
“The earliest piece I’ve got is [from] 1948, which is within a year of the phrase ‘Cold War’ being coined,” Matt explains as to why test equipment. “That’s basically an LFO. It’s a 0.1 Hertz to 1K sine oscillator. Looks like it’s been taken out of a Lancaster bomber. (And the) sound of these things. There shouldn’t be better sine waves because it’s a sine wave. These are better sine waves. They just are. Tonally, they just sound lovely.”
Matt continues to list the appeal of this old and esoteric gear. Aside from the pure sonics, there’s the relative affordability. “Financially, while they’re not cheap cheap, they are compared to the levels that synthesizer collecting has driven things to now,” he says. “It’s a chance to get really unaffordable, unavailable ‘50s and ‘60s tones into the work I do. (With) 1960s Moog modules, there aren’t enough kidneys to even buy one.”
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The gear also allows Matt to experiment in a way that traditional synthesizers no longer do. “I’m very familiar with making electronic music,” he says. “I know what’s going to happen. Playing with this gear, I’m much more likely to do the wrong thing. Infinitely more likely.”
The gear itself encourages this, he stresses: “The interfaces are, by their very nature, going to deliver different outcomes. The impenetrability of some of this equipment, which was never meant to be used for sound in the majority of the cases, means you’re going to bump into wrong outcomes for which you go, ‘God, that’s amazing’.”
Willem Twee Studios is a four-room studio complex in The Netherlands. For fans of test and measurement equipment, however, it’s Studio One that is the real Mecca. Packed floor to ceiling with rare and unusual pieces, it’s the kind of place that experimental electronic musicians dream of visiting. Much of it was originally sourced by musician Hans Kulk, who started collecting it in the 1990s when institutions were letting it all go as part of a move towards digital technologies.
Uniquely, Studio One has been organised with a specific workflow inspired by the WDR studio in Cologne in the early 1950s, the place where Karlheinz Stockhausen made some of his most famous electronic works.
“Those instruments weren’t used in the, let’s say, more traditional electronic music studios, which started popping up in the mid-‘50s,” says manager Rikkert Brok. “We try to keep that intact, that workflow of setting up a certain patch with a certain technique, using the mixing desk as a part of your instruments, using some basic treatments like filtering, echo, reverb, ring modulation, and then creating a sound.”
Although it may look like a modular system from a distance, just with larger pieces, it is in fact quite different. There’s no MIDI or even CV control, for starters.
“We call it the manual studio,” says Rikkert. “All modulations you have to do by hand. There are some function generators that have voltage control, but they’re from a later area. Really early stuff like the equipment from the ‘50s doesn’t have any CV or input usually.”
There are also certain techniques when working with test and measurement equipment that don’t apply to modern modular systems – and that can be daunting for first-time visitors. “Studio One can be intimidating for people when you first get in,” notes Rikkert. To help visitors to the studio overcome this, there’s an engineer always on staff to make sure that you understand techniques and how to make a patch.
One of Willem Twee’s most unusual pieces of equipment – and possibly the ultimate example of this kind of music production – is its Hitachi 240 analog computer. Unlike digital computers, which process computations with ones and zeroes, analog computers use physical processes like electricity to solve mathematical equations. And when you amplify that electricity, you get – you guessed it – sound.
“It’s a bit between a breadboard and a modular (system) of test and measurement equipment,” explains Rikkert of the Hitachi 240. “There are many more patch possibilities in an analog computer than in a regular modular system.”
One artist who has done extensive work at Willem Twee is Andrea Taeggi, a trained jazz pianist who has found inspiration in making music with this unusual gear. “In many cases, the flexibility you get from a dedicated studio with test equipment is actually greater than what you’d achieve with a self-built Eurorack or standalone modular setup,” Andrea says on why someone might want to take this approach, “because the tools are infinitely more flexible and designed for high-precision signal manipulation rather than strictly musical needs.”
Like Matt Thomas of Cold War Synths, Andrea also prizes this ancient equipment for its sound quality. “Signal generators in particular can be extremely raw and harmonically rich,” Andrea explains. “High-precision oscillators are capable of producing sine waves with a level of purity that is difficult to replicate with almost any other type of gear. Some units are designed specifically just to output a highly accurate sine tone, and that level of beauty, precision and clarity can be very inspiring.”
Although Andrea has worked with all manner of test equipment, he declares Willem Twee’s analog computer the most unique. “These machines were originally used as flight simulators, by NASA and even the military to model and predict complex systems, things like the stability or instability of a structure, for example. When translated into a musical context, this opens up the possibility of generating functions with extremely unusual shapes, as well as unusual control sources.”
Andrea also identifies the open-ended and experimental nature of the Hitachi 240 as a key creative aspect: “Unlike a conventional synthesizer, it doesn’t come with predefined functions. You can patch it to behave like a filter, an oscillator, or many other signal-processing blocks depending on your configuration.”
You can hear Andrea’s work on the analog computer in his albums Zimní Král and Nattdett.
“It does help to recognise that part of this journey is getting your head a bit around electricity,” answers Matt Thomas when asked if he has any advice for people wanting to try working with test equipment.
“Most gear has an output which is in volts. Try and keep it under one if you want to be absolutely within your mixer spec.” To make sure you’re not going to blow anything up, Matt recommends, “Always remember: it’s not spitting out sound, it’s spitting out voltage.” One way to make sure you don’t destroy any of your regular gear by running test equipment through it is to put it through a burner mixer first, or better yet, a passive (non-powered) mixer to act as a voltage attenuator.
Finding the gear probably won’t be difficult. Pieces are available on online auction sites like eBay, as well as at car boot sales. Also, try second-hand fairs for radio enthusiasts. If you’re really serious, you can try calling universities or government institutions to see if they have any old gear lying around that they don’t need anymore, like the filter that came off a nuclear submarine from the 1960s in the Cold War Synths studio.
As for pieces to start with, Rikkert at Willem Twee suggests function generators. “They’re basically oscillators with multiple waveforms,” he says. “They’re pretty versatile and depending on the brands, you can find them. They’re still available for a reasonable price.”
When you’re ready for more, you can expand. “Definitely your oscillators, a filter, a noise generator, and some kind of pulse generator, which you already have inside your function generator,” continues Rikkert, listing other pieces that beginners should be on the look out for. “There you have the basic core elements, which in the ‘50s you would use to create electronic music. Of course, don’t forget an analog mixing desk, which is a big part of your instrumentation.”
As for working with a vintage analog computer, your best bet is to contact Willem Twee Studios about using theirs.
“Another accessible entry point,” says Andrea Taeggi, “is hardware like Bernd Ullmann’s THAT (The Analog Thing), which is an affordable and portable analog computer. It allows you to begin learning how these systems function and how they can be applied creatively in a musical context.” Andrea also recommends exploring Eurorack modules like Make Noise Music’s Maths module, which, “like analog computers, does not rely on traditional ADSR envelopes, but works through attenuators. It is a powerful control signal generator as well, definitely in line with what one can achieve with an analog computer.”
Lastly, there is also software that emulates test and measurement equipment available. Musician and YouTuber Hainbach has made a variety of plugins in collaboration with AudioThing that recreate devices like a passive bandpass filter, the Hewlett-Packard Word Generator 8006A, and much more.
