Buchla omitted the piano keyboard, using touch plates not tied to equal-tempered tuning

Buchla tended not to call his instruments ‘synthesizers’, because that name implies imitating existing sounds; his intent was to make instruments that create new sounds. This goal shows in the omission of a standard musical keyboard on his early instruments, which instead used a series of touch plates that were not necessarily tied to equal-tempered tuning. Refusing the keyboard refuses the assumptions baked into it — that pitch is 12-tone equal temperament, that octaves are privileged, and that pitch is the primary musical parameter. For Buchla, timbre, amplitude, and spatial location were equally primary. The touch interface is therefore not just an alternate controller but an argument about what music is; Buchla later extended this into dedicated MIDI controllers.

Examples

The early touch-plate controllers on the Buchla 100/200 instruments; his later alternate MIDI controllers — the Thunder, Lightning, and Marimba Lumina — carrying the non-keyboard philosophy forward; contrast with the Moog keyboard, which directly privileges equal temperament.

Assessment

Explain how replacing the keyboard with touch plates changes the performer’s relationship to pitch: what musical possibilities open up, and which keyboard-bound conventions become harder to maintain?