Les Craythorn realising Percy Grainger’s Free Music on the Synthi 100

Les Craythorn realising Percy Grainger’s Free Music on the Synthi 100

35mm slide, Grainger Museum Archive, 99.600.1 In 1976, ABC Television made a documentary about Grainger’s Free Music experiments, interviewing Burnett Cross, who was visiting the Grainger Museum in order to restore Percy Grainger’s Kangaroo Pouch Tone Tool in 1976. To give viewers of the documentary an aural understanding of Grainger’s Free Music 1, University of Melbourne technician, Les Craythorn, took on the challenge of realising Grainger’s graphic score on the EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer. The cross-over from Grainger’s graphic score to electronic sound was extremely complex, and Craythorn worked 16 hours a day, for three days, to make the realisation. Craythorn made a sync track on the 8-track tape recorder (2,400 steps), and used the tape sync to control the sequencer. Syncing and DATA entry was very accurate but very tedious. Craythorn said of this experience: “I was experimenting with the [Synthi 100’s] extensive sonic capabilities, microtonal tuning and seamless glissandos that you hear demonstrated in Percy Grainger’s Free Music.” Craythorn’s realisation of Free Music 1 was played to an engrossed audience on 23 March 1976, at the 1976 Percy Grainger Lecture.

A short film made by the ABC about Craythorn's work and Grainger's experimentation, Percy Grainger's Synthesisers, can be accessed through uTube courtesy ABC Classic.

1976