Electronic Pioneers: Raymond Scott

A new discovery on my part, Raymond Scott is a composer, orchestra leader, pianist, engineer, recording studio maverick, and an electronic instrument inventor. I first heard him in J Dilla's Donuts with the track "Lightworks" and the cartoony playfulness of early electronics instantly called upon me to seek for more. Here are some interesting facts, courtesy of Wikipedia: Originally a radio musician from the late '30s, Scott formed a sextet, attempting to revitalize Swing music through tight, busy arrangements and reduced reliance on improvisation. Scott called his musical style "descriptive jazz," and named his pieces with even more descriptive titles like "New Year's Eve in a Haunted House" "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals" (in 1993 recorded by the Kronos Quartet), and "Reckless Night on Board an Ocean Liner" While popular with the public, jazz critics disdained it as novelty music. He believed in "head-planning" rather than composing on paper, he introduced his ideas live during the rehearsals and expected his band members to go along. There was much room for interpretation and improvisation until the composition was finished, but when it was complete, he tended to lock the composition in its place and no further improvisation was permitted, which raised more than a few eyebrows in the jazz communities. The importance Scott gave to head-planning also reflected itself on his musings upon tomorrow's music:

"In the music of the future," Scott writes in 1949, "the composer will sit alone on the concert stage and merely THINK his idealized conception of his music. His brain waves will be picked up by mechanical equipment and channeled directly into the minds of his hearers, thus allowing no room for distortion of the original idea." These glimpses into Scott's mind make the listening experience deliciously disorienting.

Scott's playfully orchestrated style was also popular among cartoonists, since although he never scored cartoon soundtracks (It seems he didn't even watch cartoons), his music is familiar to millions because of its adaptation by Warner Brothers in over 120 classic Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck animated features. Scott's melodies have also been heard in a number of Ren & Stimpy episodes (which used the original Scott recordings, not adapted versions), featured in other modern day productions such as The Simpsons, Duckman, Animaniacs, The Oblongs and Batfink. His composition "Powerhouse" besides being heard in 40+ classic WB cartoons, was quoted ten times in the major motion picture Looney Tunes: Back in Action." Aside from being an outside-the-box composer, he was also an electronics pioneer, being the founder of Manhattan Research, Inc. in 1946, for the designing and manufacturing of electronic music systems. He housed many famous guests in his lab such as Robert Moog and Bruce Haack, and future Muppetmaster Jim Henson (for whose early experimental films Scott composed and recorded electronic soundtracks). Aside from his inventions Clavivox and Electronium, he, like every electronic musician of his age, also believed in the power of electronics on human psyche, producing "Soothing Sounds for Baby" a series of albums designed to lull infants to sleep, which today sounds uncannily like the ambient work of Tangerine Dream or Brian Eno from the mid 1970s.