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Discovery In A Dusty Shed
- Erwin Chuzid discovered Raymond Scott living among piles of tape decks and strange machines in a dingy ranch house in Van Nuys.
- In that shed Chuzid found the Electronium, a large wooden console covered in switches that Scott had built to write songs.
Player Piano As Proto-Computer
- The player piano showed how automation could reproduce human performance and prefigured programming and punch cards.
- Raymond Scott absorbed this model, shaping his lifelong goal of making machines that could generate music reliably.
Band Built To Be Machine-Perfect
- Scott formed a tightly controlled band that rehearsed to play exactly the same every time, preferring machine-like precision over jazz improvisation.
- Musicians complained he bullied them, and he insisted on compositions that rarely changed once fixed.