The Archives

The Buchla Archives is home to a range of artifacts from Donald Buchla's fifty years of intensive focus on the development of new electronic musical instruments. This includes a collection of instrument prototypes and fully functional examples of nearly every instrument Buchla created in his lifetime; but it also includes a wealth of ephemera documenting the motivations, design, functionality, and conceptual scope of Buchla's work.

The archive includes extensive physical and digital documentation for all of Buchla's known instrument designs. It includes user manuals, schematics, production films, and marketing materials, as well as the software for many of Buchla's computer-controlled instruments. It also includes documentation for one-off, prototype, and altogether unrealized instrument concepts from every decade of Buchla's life as an instrument designer.

In addition to documentation related to the material details of Buchla's instruments, the archive includes a wide range of additional materials, including, but not limited to: photographs, business and personal correspondences, notes, presentations, essays, research papers, and documentation of Buchla's work as a composer and conceptual artist.

The archive is a growing resource; we are actively at work cataloging and digitizing as many of its materials as possible. If you have questions about the archive—or if you have materials that you think might belong here—please contact us.