Don Buchla, a pioneer and maverick of electronic music who had a lifelong fascination with the ways that humans, technology and sounds interact.
Mr. Buchla was an instrument builder, musician and composer. He conceived his instruments, including a voltage-controlled modular synthesizer, as tools for creating previously unheard sounds and gave them names like the Music Easel, Thunder or simply the Buchla Box.
His inventions were prized for the flexibility and richness of the sounds they produced and the possibilities they suggested. Mr. Buchla disliked the term “synthesizer,” which suggested to him a synthetic imitation of existing sounds.
He was best known for the many devices he designed for his own company, Buchla & Associates. But in a far-ranging career, he also helped build (and sometimes ran) the Grateful Dead’s sound system in the 1960s, worked on NASA projects and devised early transistorized hearing aids and navigation devices for the blind.