Pauline Anna Strom, Composer of Enduring Digital Sounds, Dies at 74

Ms. Strom did not address her blindness (“Blindness is more of a nuisance to me than anything,” she once said), although mastering her synthesizers was an experimental process, since in the 1980s when the instruments were still relatively new ‘There were no user manuals for the blind. Ultimately, she thought, her poor eyesight made her music worse.

“In my opinion, my hearing and my inner visualization have developed to a higher level than might otherwise have been the case,” she said in 1986 in a rare interview in her early career to the publication Eurock, also technical standpoint. It is entirely possible to program synthesizers and effects devices, precisely record your own work, and use a mixer. I do all of this with sound. “

“Indeed,” she added, “I prefer to work in the dark.”

Pauline Anna Tuell was born on October 1, 1946 in Baton Rouge, La., The daughter of Paul and Marjorie (Landry) Tuell. Growing up in Kentucky in a Roman Catholic household, she said chants and other types of church music influenced her musical ideas, as did the works of Bach, Chopin, and others.

She was married twice, to Bob Strom and then to Kevin Bierl, but the dates of these marriages and how they ended, like many details of their life, are hard to come by. She moved to San Francisco when her husband – it is unclear which one – was stationed there during the military. Withdrawn by nature, she lived in the same apartment in San Francisco for decades. (“Thank goodness this town is in control of the rent,” she told the listentothis.info website in 2018.)

Her early musical endeavors included some do-it-yourself sound effects like in “Emerald Pool,” but she gradually became more adept at using the multiple synthesizers she had accumulated to get the sound she wanted. She was influenced by the work of the German band Tangerine Dream and the German composer Klaus Schulze, pioneers of electronic music.

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