Week 7 - Forum - Tristam Carey

Tristram Cary was born in in 1923, Oxford, England. His father was the writer of several books like "Mr. Johnson" and "The Horse's Mouth." His mother was an amateur musician and cellist. Tristram Cary left secondary school to study music at the age of 17 in 1942. He then joined the navy as a radar operator. That is where he first larnt the basic electronic skills. At that time, it was the pioneering stage of radar where it has just been developed and considered top secret. That is also where Tristram first realised the potential of creating music through electronic means.

After troops were demobilised, electronic equipments became junk and Tristram obtained quite a few of them to be experimented with. He also returned to study music.

In 1950, Tristram bought his own studio and wrote the first radio show with electronic soundtrack. He was also occasionally commissioned by the BBC. By 1960 he already had his studio equipped with tape technologies established in an institution: Royal College of Music. He met Peter Zinovieff and David Cockrell and together, they founded the Electronic Music Studio (EMS). They were the first people who developed portable synths and they are called the Synthi and VCS3. The Synthi and VCS3 was a consumer product as they were easy to use. Bands like Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues, Tangerine Dream, Hawkland and Roxy Music bought them.

Tristram was also renowned as a composer of incidental music to the show Dr. Who. He wrote for few other films. As he was classically trained, he could incorporate symphonic music and electronic music together.

Tristram moved to Adelaide and established the Electronic Music Unit in Adelaide University. He spent his late years archiving his own work of scores, converting his analog music to digital, remastering his 1980s digital materials and wrote his autobiography.

Tristram died not so long ago and his work in the development in electronic music is very much appreciated.