Suzanne

Ciani

BOM 224 Essay by Declan Peel s1451004

For this essay I will be discussing the life and work of Suzanne Ciani. She was an
early user of synthesizers in the late 60’s and continues to work to this day. In the late
60’s she was acquainted with Don Buchla in California, and went on to pioneer the use of
his Buchla synthesizer (Epstein, 1974). In the 1970’s, Ciani moved to New York, mixing
with the avant-garde scene including artists such as Philip Glass and Ornette Coleman;
and also working as a session musician for commercials, popular artists, and film
soundtracks (Hutchinson, 2017). Ciani was known as “the woman who could make any
sound” (Pinch & Trocco, 2002), and despite experiencing pushbacks such as being
barred from electronics classes and not being taken seriously due to being a woman; she
went on to forge a career as a composer and musician.

Suzanne Ciani was born in 1946 (Edmonstone, 2013) in an army hospital in

Indiana to a surgeon father and a homemaker mother (Parsons, 2000). Ciani grew up in
Quincy, Massachussets, and at the age of 6 or 7 she began taking piano lessons, learning
mainly classical music by Bach, Mozart, and Rachmaninoff (Epstein, 1974; Parsons
2000). Throughout high school Ciani continued to study music, and went on to study
music at university, graduating with honors from Wellesley College in 1968, and earning
her Masters in Composition from U.C. Berkeley in 1970 (Parsons, 2000).

It was during her time studying in Berkeley when she began to start working
with electronic instruments, as there was an electronic music centre nearby at Mills
College in Oakland (Epstein, 1974; Milano, 2018). She began to spend more time at Mills
College than at Berkeley; renting a Buchla synthesizer for $5 an hour, and enrolling in
classes in computer music & psychoacoustics (Epstein 1974; Milano 2018). Eventually,
through a mutual friend, Ciani had the opportunity to meet Don Buchla, the inventor of
the Buchla synthesizer that she had been playing with, and was inspired to work with
him after graduating (Yelton, 2017). Despite being ‘fired’ after her first day (Milano,
2018), Ciani worked at the Buchla factory for a year or two, soldering joints and drilling
holes for $3 an hour, and composing “sound signatures” for advertisements (Pinch &
Trocco, 2002) until she could finally afford her own synthesizer (Epstein, 1974; Milano,
2018). With her own synthesizer, Ciani continued to compose: writing music for
educational films, sound effects for films & TV series, advertising, and radio stations
(Epstein, 1974). She also gave lessons to Hollywood composers in LA who sought the
sound of the synthesizer in their scores (Pinch & Trocco, 2018). Whilst Ciani was
making a living in LA with music, she desired to perform original music, and felt that the
audiences in LA would not be receptive, thus prompting her to move to New York in
1974 (Epstein, 1974; Pinch & Trocco, 2018).

When Ciani arrived in New York she was “homeless and happy” (Finders
Keepers, 2019), all she had with her was her suitcases containing her synthesizer, and
she slept on the floor of minimalist composer Philip Glass, providing him with lessons on
the synthesiser (Noakes, 2014). She gave a few solo concerts on her Buchla in 1975,
demonstrating her new instrument and the new language she was developing with it
(Finders Keepers, 2019). Struggling as an artist in the New York scene & driven by
hunger, Ciani started up her own company, Ciani/Musica, penetrating the advertising
world with her sound signatures, which she felt was looking for something new and
unique (Hutchison, 2017; Noakes, 2014; Pinch & Trocco, 2018).

She quickly became very popular, and at her peak, Ciani was doing up to 50
sessions a week, recording sound signatures for GE, Columbia Pictures, Energizer, Coca-
Cola, Pepsi, and many more (Noakes, 2014; Pinch & Trocco, 2018). Ciani also did
sessions for a Star Wars disco remix, the song “Afternoon Delight” by Starland Vocal
Band, and programmed synths on albums for Joe Henderson and Yusuf Lateef
(Hutchinson, 2017; Payne, 2019). In 1980 she became the first and youngest woman to
compose the entire score for a Hollywood film “The Incredible Shrinking Woman”, in
which she blended the use of electronics with a 100-piece orchestra (Parsons, 2000).
Eventually, Ciani used the money she had earned from her compositional work to
finance her own original music, releasing her first album in 1982 (Parsons, 2000).
Suzanne Ciani continues to release original music and work with as a composer and
session musician to this day.

Suzanne Ciani pioneered the concept of the synthesizer as an instrument in

itself, capable of producing new sounds & timbres, rather than merely replicating
existing instruments (Hutchinson, 2017). As early as 1974, she was forward thinking
and cared deeply about the synthesizer as something that could become something
popular and mainstream, rather than just a gimmick used by opportunists (Epstein,
1974; Hutchinson 2017). Her use of the synthesizer was unprecedented, which allowed
her to develop her own language and way of creating sounds. She was interested in
developing a “poetry of sound”, searching for a way to elicit feelings in listeners with her
short sound signatures, using timbres and frequencies rather than notes and chords in a
traditional sense (Pinch & Trocco, 2018). To further search for a new sound, she
rejected the use of a piano keyboard interface, which she felt was too tied to traditional
modes of music making (Yelton, 2017).

Ciani experienced many difficulties breaking into the music industry as a woman
from very early on: dealing with an old fashioned chauvinist boss, being banned from
electronics classes, struggling to find work as a sound engineer, not being taken
seriously by record company executives; and yet despite these difficulties she was
ultimately successful, due to being the only person in the world to possess her skills
(Hutchinson 2017; Pinch & Trocco 2018; Milano 2018; Yelton, 2017). Suzanne Ciani was
an amazing woman who pioneered a new way of making music, paving the way for
synthesized sounds to be used in all sorts of mediums, and bringing a strong feminine
energy to electronic music.

Word Count: 1017

 References

Edmonstone, J. (2013) Music In American Life: An Encyclopedia Of The Songs, Styles, Stars And Stories
That Shaped Our Culture. Greenwood

Epstein, H. (1974) 'The Cello Can't Play These Chords', New York Times, July 21. Available from:
www.nytimes.com

Finders Keepers Records. (2019). Buchla Concerts 1975 - Finders Keepers Records. [online] Available
at: https://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/shop/suzanne-ciani-buchla-concerts-1975/ Back Cover
Image Available at: https://www.deejay.de/images/xl/1/6/222216b.jpg

Hutchinson, K. (2017) ‘Making sounds with Suzanne Ciani, America's first female synth hero’, The
Guardian, May 20. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/may/20/suzanne-
ciani-america-female-synth-hero

Milano, D. (2018) ‘SUZANNE CIANI: Supplying Synthesized Sound Seasoning for Radio & TV
Commercials, Movies and Records’, Electronic Musician, no. 1, p. 34

Noakes, T. (2014) ‘Suzanne Ciani: America's first female synth hero’, Dazed. Available from:
dazeddigital.com

Parsons, K. (2000) "Interview with Suzanne Ciani, January 2000". Mainly Piano. Available from:
mainlypiano.com

Payne, D. (2019). CTI DISCOGRAPHY: 1977-1883. [online] Dougpayne.com. Available at:

http://www.dougpayne.com/ctid7783.htm [Accessed 28 Sep. 2019].

Pinch, T., & Trocco, F. (2002) Analog Days, Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England: Harvard
University Press

Yelton, G. (2017) ‘Suzanne Ciani’s Marvelous Journey: The Diva of the Diode rekindles her passion for
synthesizers’, Electronic Musician, 33(6), p. 24.