Sarah Belle Reid Premieres Walkthrough and Performance of Rare 1980 Buchla Touché

Electronic musician Sarah Belle Reid premiered an in-depth video walkthrough and performance of the Touché, a rare Buchla-designed polyphonic keyboard instrument, in a program filmed at the Buchla Archives in Vancouver. The video, released January 21, 2026, pairs historical context with a systems overview and multiple sound demos, offering one of the clearest public examinations of an instrument that has been absent from public performance and formal writeups for decades.

The Touché is an unusual hybrid: a bi-timbral, eight-voice polyphonic keyboard that combines digital sound generation, analog processing, and computer-mediated control. David Rosenboom supplied the software that drove the instrument’s computer-mediated functions, and Reid’s walkthrough maps the signal flow between the digital engine, the analog processors, and the keyboard control surface. Only around five Touché units are known to have been built, which makes visual and sonic documentation like Reid’s particularly valuable to collectors, restorers, and museum curators tracking provenance, componentry, and patching conventions.

Reid’s presentation balances practical detail and musical demonstration. The systems overview isolates modules and routing so viewers can see which elements are responsible for voice allocation, timbral switching, and real-time control. The multiple sound demos show the Touché’s bi-timbral behavior in performance contexts, illustrating how its hybrid architecture produces both digital clarity and analog warmth. For studios and archives that chase rare instrument details amid serious GAS, the video supplies operational reference points that are otherwise scarce.

For restorers, Reid’s footage functions as primary-source documentation. Clear shots of front and rear panels, connector types, and onboard processing blocks make it possible to compare surviving units against original configuration. For collectors and curators, the historical context in the video helps establish where the Touché sits in Buchla’s experimental trajectory and in the broader story of late 1970s and early 1980s polyphonic experiments. For performers, the demonstrations reveal practical patching and performance techniques that could revive the Touché in contemporary shows and recordings.

The premiere also nudges scholarship and preservation. With only a handful of units known, every documented run-through, sound demo, and schematic-level observation materially improves the public record. Reid’s filmed performance may prompt owners to re-evaluate dormant machines, encourage museums to prioritize technical conservation, and inspire musicians to adapt vintage hybrid designs into modern rigs with patch cables and feedback effects.

Reid’s Touché video gives readers a usable reference and a listening experience in one package. Expect this documentation to surface in future restoration projects, archivist inventories, and possibly renewed onstage appearances as the community uses the footage to close gaps in the Touché’s sparse historical record.