# San Francisco Tape Music Center [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Tape_Music_Center) ( Type: Research Institution ) ## Description Non-profit electronic music studio and concert venue founded in summer 1962 by [[Ramon Sender]] and [[Morton Subotnick]], growing out of a small tape studio Sender built in the attic of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in October 1961 and the *Sonics* concert series he organized there with [[pauline oliveros|Pauline Oliveros]] starting December 1961. [[pauline oliveros|Pauline Oliveros]], artist Tony Martin, and technician William Maginnis joined soon after. Over four years at two Bay Area locations, the Center became the essential hub of the West Coast tape-music and live-electronic scene and, through Subotnick and Sender's collaboration with engineer Don Buchla beginning in 1963, the site where the Buchla modular voltage-controlled synthesizer was invented. In 1966 a $200,000 Rockefeller Foundation grant relocated the Center to Mills College, merging it with the Mills Performing Group to become the Mills Tape Music Center — now the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM) — with Oliveros, Martin, and Maginnis as founding co-directors. ## Key Tags #sound #west-coast #institution-builder #apparatus-inventor ## Opportunities - Studio access, tape-composition facilities, and a public concert series (*Sonics*, 1961–62) for Bay Area composers (defunct; successor programs continue at Mills College's Center for Contemporary Music) ## Details Before incorporating as the SFTMC, the operation began as a minimally equipped attic studio at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, housing little more than a two-channel Ampex tape recorder; Sender and fellow *Sonics* composers used contact microphones to push past the studio's limits. The *Sonics* concert series (six concerts, December 1961 – June 1962) premiered tape works by Oliveros, Sender, [[Terry Riley]], and Philip Winsor alongside live improvisation, and directly preceded the Center's formal founding. The Center's most celebrated event was the premiere of Terry Riley's *In C* on November 4 and 6, 1964, performed by Riley, Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Morton Subotnick, and Warner Jepson, with Tony Martin operating a live light show. Donald Buchla brought early circuit experiments to the Center for members to test, making it the beta site for what became the Buchla 100 and 200 series modulars — an "electronic music easel" built out of Subotnick and Sender's design suggestions. Much of the Center's archival material, including the original Buchla box, is now held at Mills College. ### Concepts and Theories - [[Modular Synthesis]] - the Center was the development site and beta-testing ground for Don Buchla's modular voltage-controlled synthesizer, invented in collaboration with Subotnick and Sender ### Creative and Technical Practices - [[Tape Music]] - founded specifically as a shared studio and concert venue for composers working with tape recorders and other emerging compositional technologies ### Key People - [[pauline oliveros|Pauline Oliveros]] - co-organized the *Sonics* concert series with Sender, 1961; later a founding co-director of the Mills relocation - [[Morton Subotnick]] - co-founder, 1962; central to the Center's collaboration with Don Buchla on the modular synthesizer - [[Ramon Sender]] - co-founder, 1962; built the predecessor attic studio at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 1961 - [[Terry Riley]] - composer whose *In C* premiered at the Center, November 1964 ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography Riley, Terry. *In C*. Premiered at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, 4 and 6 November 1964, performed by Riley, Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Morton Subotnick, and Warner Jepson. Landmark early performance of minimalist composition, staged at and organized by the Center. ### Secondary Sources Bibliography Bernstein, David W., editor. *The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde*. University of California Press, 2008. Definitive institutional history, drawing on interviews and archival material from the Center's founders and members.