Buchla was born in
South Gate, California, on April 17, 1937, and grew up in California and New Jersey. He studied physics,
physiology, and music at the
University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1959 as a physics major. He was commissioned by composers
Morton Subotnick and
Ramon Sender, both of the
San Francisco Tape Music Center, to create an electronic instrument for live performance.
Rockefeller Foundation grant made to the Tape Music Center, Buchla assembled his modules into the Buchla Modular Electronic Music System (later known as the Series 100) in 1965, which he began selling commercially in 1966. Buchla's synthesizers experimented in control interfaces, such as touch-sensitive plates. In 1969 the Series 100 was briefly sold to
CBS Musical Instruments, who soon after dropped the line, not seeing the synthesizer market as a profitable area. The year 1970 saw the release of the Buchla 200 series Electric Music Box, In 2005, the
New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference in
Vancouver featured a keynote lecture by Buchla and a retrospective exhibition of his instruments. In 2012, Buchla's intellectual property was acquired by an Australian holding company, Audio Supermarket, which started a new brand called
Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments (BEMI). Buchla was retained as Chief Technology Officer. In 2015,
Fact reported that Buchla had taken the owners of BEMI to court, citing health problems due in part to unpaid consulting fees and asserting a claim to his original intellectual property. The lawsuit alleged breach of contract and "bad-faith conduct" on the part of BEMI's owners and sought $500,000 in compensation. Legal documents filed with the state of California indicate that the court ordered the case to be settled by arbitration in July 2015. In August 2016, the court dismissed the case in light of the fact that the parties had reached an out-of-court settlement. As of 2018, a new company called Buchla U.S.A. has been created to carry on Don's legacy and continue producing his 200e modular synthesizer system, with certain individuals involved in engineering and manufacturing remaining involved. ==Death==