[18] Moog recounted that Carlos fed back extensive and very detailed—but always constructive—criticism about his equipment, presenting him with suggestions for improvements to every module, including the shapes and dimensions of the cases.
Moog credited Carlos with originating many features of his synthesizer, and that many features that became part of the final production model of the Moog synthesizer originated with the custom modules he created for her, including the touch-sensitive keyboard, a portamento control, a fixed filter bank, and a 49-oscillator polyphonic generator bank that could create chords and arpeggios.
He successfully pitched the project to the label on their behalf, leading to a two-album recording contract with Columbia Masterworks, a deal that lasted until 1986.
[10] They were given a small advance from the label; Elkind recalled they were offered $1000, Carlos told an interviewer they were given about $2500,[23] a relatively modest sum, given that the average recording budget for a major pop album at this time was about $10,000.
[25] Released in October 1968,[26] Switched-On Bach became an unexpected commercial and critical hit, with Glenn Gould calling it "the album of the decade",[27] and it helped to draw attention to the synthesizer as a genuine musical instrument.
[24][28] A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program in November 1968, called CBC AM, secured a rare interview with Carlos about the selection and use of Moog.
Biographer Amanda Sewell records that the St. Louis appearance was extremely difficult for her—she hated having to disguise herself as Walter, for which she had to affect a deeper voice, use makeup to simulate a five o'clock shadow, and don a wig and pasted-on fake sideburns.
Her childhood experiences of being bullied and assaulted made her so fearful of appearing in public that she reportedly even contemplated taking her own life before the event and cried all the way to St.
A soundtrack containing only the film cuts of the score was released as Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange in 1972, combining synthesized and classical music by Henry Purcell, Beethoven and Gioacchino Rossini with an early use of a vocoder.
Recorded as early as 1970 and finished in mid-1971, before the A Clockwork Orange project was complete, Carlos wished to produce music that did not require "lengthy concentrated listening", but more than a collection of ambient noises to portray an environment.
She agreed to the request, opting to produce a sequel to Switched-On Bach, which began with her and Elkind seeking compositions that were most suitable for the synthesizer; the two picked selections from Suite No.
In 1971, she and Elkind had asked Columbia Records to attach a pre-paid business reply card in each new pressing of her albums, which resulted in a considerable amount of suggestions from the public regarding the subject of her future releases.
[43] Released as By Request in 1975, the album includes pieces from Bach, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, two of Carlos's compositions from the 1960s, and renditions of "Eleanor Rigby" by The Beatles and "What's New Pussycat?
The Shining (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), released in 1980 on Warner Bros. Records, featured only two tracks credited to Carlos and Elkind: the main title theme and "Rocky Mountains", the former a reinterpretation of the "Dies Irae" section of Symphonie fantastique by Hector Berlioz.
Biographer Amanda Sewell discovered that Carlos and Elkind's agent Lucy Kroll had written a note in her files indicating that the duo had initially considered suing Kubrick, but Sewell found that, several pages further on, Kroll had written another note that read "No signed contract"—Carlos and Elkind had made the deal with Kubrick "on a handshake", and thus had no legal recourse.
[46] Some of Carlos's music had some legal issues regarding its release, but much of it was made available in 2005 as part of her two-volume compilation album Rediscovering Lost Scores.
Carlos remained in New York City, sharing a converted loft in Greenwich Village with her new business partner Annemarie Franklin.
It housed her new, remodelled studio, which was enclosed in a Faraday cage to shield the equipment from white noise and outside interference from radio and television signals.
[48] Carlos's first project with Franklin began around 1980, when The Walt Disney Company asked her to record the soundtrack to its science fiction feature Tron (1982).
[36] The score incorporated Carlos's analog and digital synthesizers with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the UCLA Chorus, and the Royal Albert Hall Organ.
Soon after, Carlos secured a deal with Audion Records, a smaller label, as she wished to "get away from that kind of big, monolithic government-like aspect that [she] had dealt with for so many years".
[51] In 1988, CBS Records asked Carlos to collaborate with comical musician "Weird Al" Yankovic to release a parody of Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev.
Released in 1992 on Telarc Records, Switched-On Bach 2000 took roughly one and a half years to produce; Carlos estimated around 3,000 hours were invested in the project, which involved using several digital audio workstation software packages, including Pro Tools.
[54] Carlos wrote the soundtrack to the British film Brand New World (1998), also known as Woundings, directed by Roberta Hanley and based on a play by Jeff Noon.
Carlos explained the style of her music: "I was given fairly large carte blanche to do some horrific things and also some inside-psyche mood paintings, and that's what the film became".
[56] In 2005, the two-volume set Rediscovering Lost Scores was released, featuring previously out-of-print material, including the unreleased soundtrack to Woundings and music recorded for A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Tron that was not used in the films.
Prior to a live performance of excerpts from the album with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Carlos felt terrified about appearing in public.
She cried in her hotel room, before putting on fake sideburns and a man's wig, and drawing on facial hair with an eyebrow pencil to appear more masculine.
[34] Carlos disclosed her transgender status in a series of interviews with Arthur Bell held between December 1978 and January 1979, published in the May 1979 issue of Playboy magazine.
[71] Carlos contributed a review of the then-available synthesizers to the June 1971 edition of the Whole Earth Catalog, contrasting the Moog, Buchla and Tonus (aka ARP) systems.