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Started by Ama Mensah (@amamensah) ·

the guy behind the Looney Tunes factory music also built early synths

The frantic assembly-line music in old Warner cartoons is his ('Powerhouse'). He didn't write it for cartoons: Warner bought his publishing in 1943 and Carl Stalling quoted him in over 120 shorts. Meanwhile Scott was building sequencers and electronic instruments in his own lab.

5 sources · 31 min down the hole

How I got here

Started with
“raymond scott powerhouse looney tunes”
Ended at
Clavivox

The Trail

  1. “raymond scott powerhouse looney tunes” (google.com)
  2. Raymond Scott (en.wikipedia.org)
  3. Carl W. Stalling (en.wikipedia.org)
  4. Electronium (en.wikipedia.org)

    a machine meant to compose on its own. he said it took 11 years and close to a million dollars

  5. Clavivox (en.wikipedia.org)

What I came away with

Berry Gordy saw the Electronium in 1969 and hired Scott to run Motown's electronic music research department from 1971 to 1977. Nobody has publicly identified a single Motown recording that used his inventions.

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