https://youtu.be/uaqSkW1MqnI
In London, at the age of 88, Peter Lvovich Zinoviev died - an outstanding British engineer and inventor of Russian origin, one of the pioneers of electronic music, the creator of the famous VCS3 synthesizer, which was used in his work by the musicians Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Who, David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Yes, Depeche Mode, Brian Eno, King Crimson, The Who, Tangerine Dream, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Jean-Michel Jarre, Coil and others.
Peter Zinovieff is a descendant of the old Russian noble family of the Zinovievs, his grandfather Alexander Dmitrievich was a real state councilor, equestrian, civil governor of St. Petersburg. Peter's father, Lev Alexandrovich, a graduate of the Corps of Pages, was the leader of the Peterhof nobility, an entrepreneur, landowner, and a member of the IV State Duma. Mother - Princess Sophia Dolgorukova, one of the first Russian female aviators, took part in the battles of the First World War. The parents of Peter Zinoviev met already in London, in exile. Their marriage was short-lived, but left behind two sons - Peter and Jena.
Peter Zinoviev graduated from Oxford University, was a promising geologist, studied dormant volcanoes in Scotland, traveled for scientific purposes to Cyprus and Pakistan, but already in his student years became interested in sound experiments and the design of radio receivers.
In the early 1960s, Peter created a studio at his home in London, equipping it with radio equipment decommissioned from warships, and in 1965 spent a gigantic sum of £ 4,000 for those times on the purchase of a DEC PDP-8 computer, selling for this a turquoise tiara and pearls - a wedding gift from the father of his wife Victoria. The diode-transistor PDP-8 was about the size of a refrigerator, had no hard drive, but had 4 KB of memory. Zinoviev, according to him, became the first private owner of such a computer.
The computer-equipped studio allowed Zinoviev to record his first musical album "Electronic Calendar", where he gave free rein to his boundless imagination. According to the engineer and musician, he was the first to invent sampling, recording and processing a variety of everyday sounds, turning them into a kind of music. Zinoviev even climbed the tower of London's Big Ben to record the sound of its clock.
To provide funding for the work of his studio, Zinoviev founded Electronic Music Studios (EMS), which began to produce and sell the monophonic synthesizer EMS VCS 3 invented by Zinoviev. At this time, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney came to his studio, who were fascinated by experiments with electronic music. ... McCartney used equipment designed by Zinoviev while working on Carnival of Light
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https://youtu.be/A5p6z8QAVYU
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EMS held the psychedelic concerts so popular in the late 1960s to advertise the capabilities of its instruments. Zinoviev experimented not only with electronics, but also with the audience in the hall, forcing them to participate in creating sounds (rustling foil, for example). He said that then everyone was sure that very soon computers would radically change the idea of music, they would begin to compose it themselves on the instructions of a person. During this time, Zinoviev's synthesizers were used by the Pink Floyd group - they were part of the equipment when recording the soundtrack for the film More, the albums Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother. David Gilmour used his 1972 EMS Synthi Hi-Fli to create the great album The Dark Side of the Moon.
The businessman from Zinoviev was no one and EMS went bankrupt pretty quickly, in the late 1970s, having released twelve models of its synthesizers on the market. Zinoviev handed over his superbly equipped studio to the National Theater, but it perished in a flood.
In the 1980-1990s, Zinoviev was engaged in a variety of activities: design, teaching, joint projects with the author of the ZX Spectrum computer, Clive Sinclair. Zinoviev is an amazing, incredibly gifted person, he constantly invented something, created, changed familiar things. He considered paper speakers imperfect and looked for new sources of sound. He had a video camera that, when pointing at different objects, generated new sounds. He made himself a keyboard, where each button had its own function. He invented his own scales, believing that there should be not eight sounds in an octave, but fifty-six, calling the traditional musical score "tyrannical," making it difficult to work with new sounds.
Peter Zinoviev is an outstanding Russian talent that has grown on fertile British soil. Who knows what would have happened to him if he had been born in the USSR? Would he have become a famous composer, like Eduard Artemiev, or would he have disappeared into obscurity, having experienced the fate of children "from the former"? It's good that his dad and mom met in London - this can be said for sure.
P.S. Watch this video where Zinoviev talks about himself and his work:
https://youtu.be/F_9oSQaYbNQ
https://youtu.be/-bTcf6kGcyg