Gray Area Grand Theater: Cybersentics Book Club: West Coast Sound Synthesis
- Date
- Sunday, November 15, 2026
- Time
- 12:00 p.m.–2:00 p.m.
- Location
- Gray Area Grand Theater2665 Mission St, San Francisco
- Neighborhood
- Mission
Join us on November 15th for a session on West Coast sound synthesis, largely defined by the Buchla synthesizer. Ryan Smith will facilitate the book club discussion as we dig into selections from “Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer.”
We’ll read the Introduction alongside two chapters, glancing over the Moog’s journey into Bay Area counterculture in parallel with the invention of the Buchla Box. Through the book’s narrative, we’ll explore how East Coast synthesizers entangled with San Francisco’s psychedelic music scene, and how musicians formed a strange new intimacy with “popping and pouring” music machine designed by Don Buchla. Together, these chapters chart how a piece of electronic hardware became a vehicle for experimentation and a whole range of new genres that define our music culture, listening experience, and surrounding soundscape today.
The book is available for loan at Cybersentics Little Library https://grayarea.org/cybersentics-little-library/
Reading:
Pinch, T. J., & Trocco, F. (2002). Analog days: The invention and impact of the Moog synthesizer. Harvard University Press.
Chapters:
Introduction, pp. 1-11; Buchla’s Box, pp. 32-52; In Love with a Machine, pp. 155-170.