Digital Sampler When Harry Mendell was introduced to the Moog Synthesizer by Dan Coren, he was struck by the limitations of a device marketed as being able to produce any sound. In search of new sounds, Mendell and Coren would create a new musical instrument, putting the full power of Alec Reeves' algorithm in the hands of sound artists for the first time . . . Coren oversaw the Moog installation at the University of Pennsylvania and was given a small budget for pursuing electronic and avant garde music in an overall conservative music department. An early adopter of computers, Mendell made a bold proposal that he could build a digital version for $4,000. Much like Harry Chamberlin , Harry Mendell was a practical inventor, personally hand-wiring the digital sampler based on a Digital PDP-8 computer. The system used a 12-bit analog to digital converter to provide source sounds. Mendell and Coren teamed together to write the programs for manipulating the sounds using various digital effects, including the first digital reverb. To use as much of the power of the PDP-8 as possible, they coded the programs in the machine code language of the system. The sampler was connected to the Moog and synced to an oscillator controlling the sample rate, so the analog controls of the Moog could be used to manipulate the sounds digitally. Mendell and Coren formed a business together aptly named Computer Music Incorporated and they marketed their instrument as the Melodian. The instrument was truly unique and too early in the microprocessor growth curve to achieve commercial success. The only person to purchase the instrument and the first musician to use the digital sampler was Stevie Wonder, who used the instrument on his landmark album, (A Journey into) The Secret Life of Plants. Commercial success would later be achieved by Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel who named their device the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument. The digital sampler eclipsed tape in the same way tape overshadowed vinyl platters. Writing the sound information to a microchip changed the way the sound information was accessed, sounds were truly accessible at the touch of a button for the first time. Digital samplers using microchips offer instant rewind and playback. Repetitions of sounds are made possible in a way that would be far more difficult and time consuming to achieve using tape. And, the quality of the sound in the static microchip medium is not at the same risk of degrading through multiple playback. A silicon and metal playback system is far more resilient to environmental factors than a magnetic coated tape system. Editing sounds to achieve a desired form is also made easier with the digital sampler. The edits can be repeated in the same way as playback. An 'undo' function allows the user to reset the sound to its state before their most recent manipulation, multiple levels of undo allow a new sense of artistic process in the same way the word processor made writing on a typewriter a circular instead of linear task. As the 20th century drew to a close, sound was increasingly recorded and transmitted in digital form; as the 21st century begins, the change is so pronounced that the use of analog tools is often seen as reactionary or vintage. Ironically, the digital manipulation of sound frees the sound artist from the physical encumberances that allow sounds to be created in our environment in the first place; time and matter don't matter like they did at a tape editing desk, or as they did for Dziga Vertov. The disembodied vision of music prophesied by early sound manipulators had engulfed the medium itself.