Switched-On Bach

33⅓ Main Series #141

by Roshanak Kheshti

So much, popular and scholarly, has been written about the synthesizer, Bob Moog and his brand-name instrument, and even Wendy Carlos, the musician who made this instrument famous. No one, however, has examined the importance of spy technology, the Cold War and Carlos's gender to this critically important innovation.

Through a postcolonial lens of feminist science and technology studies, Roshanak Kheshti engages in a reading of Carlos's music within this gendered context. By focusing on Switched-On Bach (the highest selling classical music recording of all time), this book explores the significance of gender to the album's--and, as a result, the Moog synthesizer's--phenomenal success.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

118 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2019

Reviews

[Alan (on December semi-hiatus) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walter/Wendy Carlos: The Original Synth
A review of the Bloomsbury Books 33&1/3 paperback (October 31, 2019).

In the past I've been critical of several of the 33 1/3 books in which you don't really learn very much about the actual album that is supposedly being discussed. This book on Switched-On Bach is potentially one of those, as it is difficult to talk about an album that literally had to be assembled note-by-note from taped sounds which could not be performed live at the time. The original Moog synthesizer was a monophonic instrument that could only make a single sound at a time. In order to play the polyphonic music of J.S. Bach required meticulous preparation and infinitesimal patience to create the illusion of a recorded live performance.

The background and the context portrayed in the book however is fascinating though, so I still give it a reserved 3.5 star rating (bumped up to a GR 4 star). Much of this is of course due to the performer Walter Carlos's gender transition which occurred during the album's recording and later release and promotion. Carlos was already living as a woman in 1968, but was so intimidated about coming out at the time that initially she promoted the album as Walter. Only in the late 1970s was her transition and name as Wendy revealed on later pressings. For further biographical information you can read the Wikipedia article on Wendy Carlos (1939-).

The historic context of the invention of the Moog synthesizer by Robert Moog (1934-2005) with the practical advice and application from Carlos is also quite a fascinating story. That includes the background that the Theremin, the original electronic instrument, was developed in 1920 (patented in 1928) by a Soviet scientist with weaponization in mind i.e. the movement detected by the advance of an enemy would trigger a sound.

All these factors made this an interesting read, even if you don't really learn very much about the actual recording process.


The front cover of the original LP of "Switched-On Bach" had no musician cover credit. Image sourced from a photo of my own copy of the LP.

Later versions would add the cover credits for Walter Carlos (left) and eventually Wendy Carlos (right). Images sourced from Discogs.

Soundtrack
Due to a copyright issue that I don't understand, there are no postings of this album online and it is not available for streaming from the usual sources e.g. Spotify. New pressings/editions of the album are also not available, although there are plentiful used copies available at either online or physical used LP and CD stores, as many copies were sold at one time.
The only track from Switched-On Bach available online as of early May 2025 appears to be the 3rd movement of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major on a compilation called J.S. Bach Greatest Hits, which you can listen to on YouTube here.

Bonus Track
The initial release of the album featured a different photograph from the same photo session. The J.S. Bach character was deemed to look "too mean" though (some called it the "constipated Bach" edition) and that version was quickly pulled off the market.

The quickly deleted first edition album cover. Image sourced from Discogs.

Trivia and Links
Switched-On Bach was published as part of the Bloomsbury Academic 33 1/3 series of books surveying significant record albums, primarily in the rock and pop genres. The series was originally published by Continuum. The GR Listopia for the 33 1/3 series is incomplete with only 179 books listed as of May 2025. For an up-to-date list see Bloomsbury Publishing with 202* books listed for the Main Series as of May 2025. The Main Series does not include the 33 1/3 books in the Global series which focuses on music from the regions of Europe, Oceania, Japan, Brazil, South Asia and Africa. You can search through those at the World Music listing here.

* This counts the not yet published Mazzy Star's So Tonight That I Might See as #202.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unfortunately Switched-On Bach is not available for streaming, however in the early 90's we had this on cassette tape and it was on a constant loop in my parent's stereo.

This particular volume goes more into the gendering of music, the development of the synthesizer and the events leading to Carlos' creation of said album. Quite an insightful book.

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wendy Carlos is an exceptional composer and the ultimate synthesizer/electronic music figure. Her album, "Switched-On Bach" is a revolutionary approach to that composer. Roshanak Kheshti's study on this album is insightful, interesting, and a very good read. Kimley and I will discuss this book in a future "Book Musik" episode.

[Mark Hodges · Rating 1 out of 5]

I find that the 33 1/3 books are either amazingly good or amazingly bad. This one falls into the latter category. Like other reviewers have mentioned, instead of an exploration of the "Switched-On Bach" album and/or Wendy Carlos, we get a rambling and incoherent essay that sounds like a half-baked research paper for a woke gender studies class.

It really is a shame when it gets down to it, as there are so many interesting topics that one could explore here - namely - the elephant in the room, Wendy Carlos and her transgender history and how it relates to her music. Or, even better, just the making of this album, without the gender topic being addressed. I've always been a fan of Carlos' music, and to me she is a musical and technical genius, regardless of her gender status. I'd love to hear the detailed story of how this record was made on a technical level.

Yet, Kheshti does not lead us down any specific or satisfying path in either vein. Instead, we get a meandering narrative that only briefly touches on the supposed subject at hand (the album). The path takes many self-focused, tangential detours, chasing rabbits that don't really have any point or relation to Carlos or her music. There's a half-hearted and questionable attempt to tie feminism to Carlos and the synthesizer, but it never really coalesces into a true hypothesis or statement. Thankfully, the book is rather short, so it doesn't take long to get through it.

I feel like this truly is a missed opportunity. Carlos is such an enigmatic and mysterious figure, and her story is captivating in so many ways. This book could have been so much more, and it is unfortunate that it was a wasted effort.

[Nathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Clearly I'm a fan of the more narrative branch of this series, but even then, I'm interested in historical lineage of certain albums. I didn't really get that here, and found that Kheshti perhaps indulged too much in the tangential aspects and thoughts that perhaps led to the adoration of the record. There's very little on the album itself, but instead you get a treatise that tries to walk the line between the masculine and feminine aspects of electronic music. Even then, it really touches little on Carlos, aside from the various quotes utilized to prove other points outside the realm of the album.

[Justin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointing and a big missed opportunity from 33 1/3 to pay tribute to a great artist and album. Instead we get a rambling, self-indulgent gender studies essay full of groan-worthy sociological jargon, questionable premises leading to ridiculous conclusions, and ad-nauseum accusations of racism, misogyny, transphobia, fascism, homophobia, Orientalism, sexism, colonialism, and white supremacy. The author just might make Wendy’s “ouch list”.

[Ryan Hertel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Switched-On Bach is one of my favorite estate sale finds when I thought I was finding something awesome no one knew about. Turns out it was the best selling classical album of all time, and I just wasn’t paying attention.

This short love letter to the album and Wendy Carlos is a must for any electronic music nerd or just anyone who loved the Peter and the Wolf Carlos did with Weird Al.

I tend to love the 33 1/3 series, and this one is no different. What fun!

[Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is like a long article that you might find in a psychology or sociology journal. Fascinating, engaging, yet unsatisfying to me because there was not a lot that pertained directly to the album. I'm personally more curious about how it was envisioned, created, recorded; hurdles overcome; techniques. I applaud the author's work...it's A++ for what it is. I had hoped for something that dug more intimately into the recording itself and into Wendy Carlos as a musician, rather than "yet again" about her gender identity.

[Jeff Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I adore Wendy Carlos. So a book about her work seemed like a good idea.

This book didn't work for me. I couldn't figure out a thesis, and the structure of the work was a mess. The author certainly knew what she was talking about from a lived experience and research standpoint, but it all came out as a pretentious muddle. The author spent time dwelling on concepts that were adequately explained about half the time, and could have benefitted from focusing on any one of the three or four "big ideas" she presented. As it stands, every idea got short shrift.

Not a good book about the album I love so much or the artist I adore. And not a good introduction point to the 33 1/3 series, for which this was my first experience. If they're all this convoluted and off, I'll steer clear.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This angry, often brilliant study of Wendy Carlos describes too impressionistically Switched-On Bach but has much to say about affect and mechanism. Khesti's book understands the Theremin and the Moog in terms of its "intra-subjective" cybernetics and applies Donna Haraway's cyborgian ethics to Carlos' engendering creative work in mechanism. The more affecting parts of it test queer theory [the author is a queer theorist; the subject a trans woman] against personal anecdote in relation to technical descriptions of mechanism, and unfortunately, whenever Kheshti addresses herself to modernism, the avant grade, or musicology, the result couldn't be more reified (to say nothing of ahistorical). What is Wendy Carlos like? as a composer, a performer, a sound engineer? Here the exposition puzzlingly lapses. In appropriating her to queer theory, we're only speculatively closer to the reclusive Carlos.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short book examines Wendy Carlos' seminal album through the lens of transformation, technology, and gender. The album Switched On Bach came out in 1968 and is a selection of Bach pieces performed on the analog Moog synthesizer. The creation of the album involved painstaking sound design and orchestration on a finicky piece of equipment. The album sold millions of copies, brought the synthesizer out of the esoteric and inaccessible avant-garde and into the mainstream, and popularized the instrument.
Kheshti takes a very philosophical and intellectual approach to discussing Switched On Bach, one which I found fascinating. She dwells a lot on the synthesizer's and recording studio's ability to transform and translate sound and music. She relates that to a few aspects of 1960s and 1970s history and society as well as to gendering and gender perceptions of the synthesizer, electronic music, and the avant-garde. It's pretty heady and brainy stuff, but also enjoyable and interesting throughout.

[Vicky · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very difficult, very academic-y book that I wanted to read as a preface before listening to the Switched-on Boxed Set for the first time. I only learned about Wendy Carlos recently after watching a YouTube video on "BachGPT."

Since this is supposed to be a book about the album, Switched-on Bach, I wish it had been organized around the track listing more. Only one paragraph on page 37 stood out to me as addressing the actual music, the one that begins: "The first track of S-oB, an interpretation of Bach's 'Sinfonia to Cantata No. 29 (originally composed for a pipe organ, which is typically found in a large, resonant cathedral), is very distinctly Moogy and clearly not meant to simply mimic the organ."

The rest felt dense and rambly: gender, synths, gender, cyborgs, "liveness", studios, and persian rugs.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you want a book about Wendy Carlos or “Switched-On Bach”, this isn’t the one. Maybe 10% of the text is spent on the actual subject.

It’s a pointless, meandering work (the author is an Associate Professor who apparently needed to publish something) that neither educates nor entertains. Even though it’s a mere 90 pages, it still feels like there’s a lot of filler - as if the writer was trying to hit a specific word count.

For example, there’s an 8-page digression on Persian rugs, simply because there’s a rug on the album cover. That kind of “oh-wow-profound” tangent works if you’re a stoned college sophomore, but it’s embarrassing when it comes from an adult academic.

I suppose one could use the text to play Academic Buzzword Bingo, but that’s about it.

[Dean Wilcox · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an album I grew up with an adore, as I do all of Carlos' recordings. Some interesting historical information about Carlos, her producer, and working with Bob Moog. But a few too many dubious, albeit engaging, theoretical flights of fancy and not nearly enough information about the making of the album. I have come to expect the 33 1/3rd series to be hit and miss. This is not a hit, but not quite a miss.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ultimately disappointing in that very little of the book is about the album, but instead focuses on everything around the album. (Other reviews can give you all those details.) The portions you get are good, if rather jargonistic (at times it felt the author was trying to prove their bonafides).

This album, which is referred to as "the most influential album ever released", deserved just as much focus on those merits as the environment in which it appeared. You won't find that here.

[Brian Shevory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kheshti’s analysis of the transformational album Switched-On Bach is a great approach to exploring a landmark album like this. Her focus is not only on the fact that this was the first album to use a synthesizer, but also on what a pioneer Carlos is in the field of music in general. Carlos not only became one of the first moog players, but broke boundaries as a woman in the field of classical music. Although Kheshti talks a little about Carlos’s gender identity, she uses this to show how the music industry often subjects women to double standards, questioning their musical skills and placing their gender above their abilities. I had not thought about this album in quite this way, although I have always enjoyed the sounds and this different approach to considering classical music. As someone who grew up with electronic music and synthesizers as a part of popular music, I had not really considered how revolutionary this album was and the possible backlash from musical purists that might have resulted. Kheshti considers these aspects, but also looks at the aesthetics of the album, including its cover, to consider how it has helped to shape our notions of electronic music over the years. Although it might be more academic for some fans of the 33 1/3 series, I really enjoyed this one.

[Brad · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author knows the gender of a Moog synthesizer (female) and finds this very important, especially given how everything else in this godforsaken world is misogynistic. (Not wrong.) The author also knows an awful lot about rugs. All this and more (less?) in this book...just don't expect discussion of the music.

[J Guy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cherish everything written about her that isn’t just complete transphobic horseshit, and to learn about and deepen my appreciation of SOB on TOP of that? Big love.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty smart

[Seth Arnopole · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some interesting ideas in this, but they feel fragmentary, and there is not really enough about the album itself to appeal to people who are curious about Switched-On Bach or Wendy Carlos.

[Zak · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sharp look at a pioneering synthesizer album and the studio-as-instrument concept, occasionally veering too far into identity politics.

[Kimley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tosh and Kimley discuss this on episode 14 of our Book Musik podcast.

Switched-On Bach, an album of Bach compositions played on a Moog synthesizer, is one of the bestselling classical recordings of all time. In the 1960s Carlos worked with Robert Moog to further the synthesizer’s capabilities and with the 1968 release of Switched-On Bach she pioneered an entirely new way of making music. She also wrote powerful scores to several films including Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. And she was one of the first public figures to come out as transgender. She’s groundbreaking in both her professional and private life and yet she’s maintained an air of mystery and intrigue that we find very compelling.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of the more conventional 33 1/3 books, Kheshti focuses more on a reading of Carlos and her work through the lens of gender theory as much as musicology.

There are flashes of true brilliance, but overall the sum product is a little unfocused and - for that reason - ultimately disappointing.

[Austin Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned about Wendy Carlos’ album ‘Sounds of Synthesis’ through this book. That’s what I was actually after. It’s really hard to talk interestingly about synthesizers without actual musical examples. It misses something in text alone.

http://www.wendycarlos.com/+sos.html

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ambitious. Curious. Distracted. Gifted. Probing. Questing. Fascinating.

Be on the lookout for my full review of this book later in 2019.