DENTON, Texas — Accolades and big-name artists have long graced the University of North Texas College of Music and their rich history with the Denton music scene.
Don Henley, Meat Loaf and Norah Jones all passed through Denton while starting their careers in music
But it is a lesser-known name that left a legacy by helping create a whole new form of it.
A 1974 WFAA story archived in the SMU Jones Film Collection went inside an old, white house on Mulberry Street in Denton and found it filled with tape recorders, mixing boards and Merrill Ellis pushing keys on a synthesizer.
The relatively small set-up was the foundation for what is now the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia at UNT, a program Ellis started in 1962 as the Electronic Music Center.
“Merrill Ellis was a visionary,” said Andrew May, the current Director of CEMI. “He had the idea of making a place at UNT for this new direction.”
Considered a pioneer in electronic music, Ellis was on the forefront of creating unique sounds without the traditional music making methods.
“A lot of composers are hearing sounds they cannot get with acoustical instruments of voices,” he said during the 1974 interview with WFAA reporter Arch Campbell.
Ellis worked with Robert Moog to help craft and develop only the second Moog Synthesizer ever at the time, an invention now considered a game-changer in the recording industry.
In addition to the synthetic sound, Ellis used lighting, slides and other visual effects to accompany the music.
“My objective is to put it together musically and artistically and make it count for something,” he told Campbell.
May said nearly all music today features some elements of the electronic world Ellis pioneered.
“In a sense, we are all computer musicians now because everything you hear has been produced on a digital audio station at some point,” May said.
Though Ellis passed away in 1981, his legacy lives on with the Merrill Ellis Intermedia Theater at UNT. It is a state-of-the-art venue with five big video screens, multiple lighting capabilities and the electronic music tools and techniques Ellis helped mold. A grandiose version of what started in the small house on Mulberry.
“I am very proud to say we have followed the tradition of Merrill Ellis,” said May. “We build what we need and design what we need and it responds to the artistic need or students and faculty.”
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