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Ananda Shankar
A pioneering force behind the fusion of
Eastern and Western musical traditions,
Indian composer and choreographer
Ananda Shankar was the son of renowned
dancers Uday and Amala Shankar as well
as the nephew of sitar virtuoso Ravi
Shankar. After studying sitar with
Dr.Lalmani Mishra, he traveled to Los
Angeles, earning international recognition
with a 1970 self-titled release on Reprise
which embraced both raga and
psychedelia through the use of tabla and
mridangam in conjunction with Moog
synthesizers and electric guitars.
Returning to India, Shankar subsequently
created the mudavis, a kind of conceptual
performance which presaged the multimedia innovations of the MTV generation in its
combination of music, dance and visuals. In addition to scoring a series of films and television
projects — winning an Indian National Award for his efforts on the Mrinal Sen feature Chorus —
he composed a number of works for the dance troupe helmed by his wife, Tanusree; during the
mid-1990s, Shankar's recordings became a common source of samples among West Coast
rappers and Anglo-Asian drum-and-bass acts alike, and in 1998 toured Britain with State of
Bengal. At just 56, he died of cardiac arrest in Calcutta on March 26, 1999; Walking On was
posthumously issued on the Real World label the following year.
Review “Walking On” - This is a very groovy release, in the true late-'60s/early-'70s sense of
the word. Sitarist Ananda Shankar, the nephew of Ravi Shankar, has been blending Indian
instrumentation with Western sounds for decades, using rock and jazz
grooves as launching pads for some very inspired jams. His music was
recently rediscovered by DJ and producer Sam Zaman, also known as State
of Bengal. Zaman put together a group of crack musicians to work with
Shankar. The project, as it was now called, appeared at WOMAD and
toured up until the time of Shankar's death in March of 1999. There are
some wonderfully retro sounds on this disc, as well as some uniquely
forward-looking material. "Tori" is pure '60s spy-movie music, with its
swirling flute and funky backbeat. If Mike Meyers decides to do a third Austin Powers movie,
here's his soundtrack. The slow dance groove of the title track features lots of interplay between
Shankar and veena player Dr. Gopal Shankar Misra over a tight drum and bass backdrop.
Hopped-up flamenco, reggae, hip-hop, '70s funk, psychedelia, and even a little musique concrète
make appearances on other tracks. It's all delivered with lavish abandon and a sense of fun. Dig
it.
(1970) Ananda Shankar – Jumpin Jack Flash, Snow Flower, Light My Fire, Mamata,
Metamorphosis, Sagar, Dance Indra, Raghupati
(2000) Walking On – Walking On, Tori, Pluck, Alma Ata, Jungle Symphony, Betelnutters,
Tanusree, Throw Down, Love & Passion, Reverse, Streets Of Calcutta
Paul Beaver & Bernie Krause
For better or worse, Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause
probably had more to do with introducing the
synthesizer into rock music than anyone else. After
buying one of Robert Moog's first synthesizers in 1966,
the partners spent a fruitless year trying to get
someone in Hollywood interested in using it. They
decided to set up a booth at the Monterey Pop Festival
in 1967, and through their exposure there, a trickle of
feelers from acts like the Doors, the Byrds, the Rolling
Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, and others built into a
steady stream of business. Soon Beaver was one of
the busiest session men in L.A. (playing on Martin Denny's Exotic Moog album and the
soundtrack for "Rosemary's Baby," among many other gigs), and he and Krause earned a
contract with Warner Brothers. The three albums allowed Beaver and Krause to explore their
individual interests in a collaborative project. Beaver moved beyond simply using the Moog as a
colorful instrument in relatively conventional pieces. Krause took a microphone and a portable
tape recorder and wandered around San Francisco, recording environmental sounds--monkeys at
the zoo, sea lions around Fort Point, seagulls, clacks of the cable car tow chains, and rumbles of
city busses. They also recorded with studio musicians, including Bud Shank and Howard Roberts,
and a truckload of exotic instruments). They then assembled eight original sound pieces out of
the myriad fragments, creating what (also for better or for worse) can now be seen as a
pioneering work of new age music. Ironically, their most popular album for Warner Brothers,
Gandharva, was recorded from a live performance at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco (which
had become something of a part-time studio, thanks to Cal Tjader, Vince Guaraldi, Duke
Ellington, and others). The pair parted amicably a year or so before Paul Beaver died suddenly of
a heart attack. Krause found that field recording was the calling he'd been seeking through years
of musical odd jobs that included singing with the Weavers, playing in the studio band on "The
Soupy Sales Show," and producing for Motown Records. He went back to college and earned a
doctorate in a field he was already defining, bioacoustics. Since then, Krause has traveled the
world from pole to pole, recording the sounds of nature in the wild. He has recorded everything
from insect larva to bathing hippopotamuses, from crashing ice floes to a cottonwood tree
sucking up water after a rain storm. His library includes over 3500 hours of field records and
documents the sounds of over 15,000 creatures. Through his company, Wild Sanctuary, Krause
has sold over 1.5 million CDs and tapes of natural "sound sculptures" created from these tapes.
He's also written a book, Into a Wild Sanctuary: A Life in Music and Natural Sound, published by
Heyday Books in 1999. Krause jokes that his work in the field comes with "No telephones. No
news. No Monica Lewinsky," but he clearly sees it as a race against time. "In 30 years, 20
percent of the habitats I've recorded have become extinct." From the clubs of vanguard of
California Paul Beaver and Bernard Krause emerged to the end of 60 years ' also, an preelectronic pair of experimenters whom immenser population made part of one than ensemble on
the generis, post-psichedelici and (like the USA). Bernie Krause appeared in his first public
performances in the early 1960's, when he replaced Pete Seeger in the world-renowned folk
group, The Weavers. In 1966, with his late partner, Paul Beaver, Krause was pivotal in the
introduction of the synthesizer to the music, film and broadcast media. Their first album, The
Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music (NS 1967), held a top position on industry best seller charts
for over half a year, and is still considered a standard reference in the annals of music history. In
the years since, Krause has recorded 43 albums on his own label and numerous others, including
Warner Brothers, Nonesuch, Rykodisk, and The Nature Company; collaborated on recordings with
more than 75 noted artists; and contributed to the sound tracks of and 160 major feature films
and television productions both here and in Europe, including such landmark productions as
Apocalypse Now, Dr. Doolittle, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Love Story, and Rosemary's Baby.
In the late 1960's, Krause began his ground-breaking life work in bioacoustics and the recording
of environments throughout the world, much of which has been accomplished with techniques
and technologies for recording, analyzing, and presenting habitat- and
species-specific sounds that Krause has developed on his own. His
album, In a Wild Sanctuary (WB, 1970), earned a place in history as
being the first recording to use environmental sounds as both a central
component of orchestration and as a statement about the
environment. Under the company name Wild Sanctuary, Inc., Krause
continues to share his compelling field experiences through his musical
albums and dramatic sound installations in public spaces such as
museums, zoos, and aquaria. Krause holds a Ph. D. with an Internship
in bio-acoustics from Union Institute, Cincinnati. Among Krause's other
notable and diverse achievements include 10 albums for The Nature Company that have enjoyed
tremendous success (over $7 million gross sales), national recognition as the "Pied Piper" whose
audio wizardry lured Humphrey the Wayward Humpback Whale from the Sacramento River Delta
back to the Pacific Ocean, and the audio technology innovation known as the Intelligent Sound
System(tm) an automated system for public exhibitions and installations that creates nonredundant audio recreations of the natural environment. Krause's Music and Word(tm) Series
captures the unique cultural sounds of several overlooked and endangered human groups,
including the first publicly available documentation of the spoken work and traditional songs of
this now-extinct culture under the title Ishi: The Last Yahi. Krause is also a widely published
author, including his seminal article introducing a controversial theory on human musical
evolution called "The Niche Hypothesis." Today, Krause and Wild Sanctuary, Inc., remains as
committed as ever to the creation of new music and site-specific work designed to heighten
awareness and appreciation of the natural environment.
(1969) Ragnarok Electric Funk
(1970) In A Wild Sanctuary
(1971) Gandharva – Soft/White, Saga Of The Blue Beaver, Nine Moons In Alaska, Walkin’,
Walkin’ By The River, Gandharva, By Your Grace, Good Places, Short Film For David, Bright
Shadows
(1972) All Good Men – A Real Slow Drag, Legend Days Are Over, Loves Of Col. Evol
Sweet William, Bluebird Canyon Stomp, Looking Back Now, Prelude, Child Of The Morning Sun,
Between The Sun And The Rain, All Good Men, Waltz Around Me Again Willie/Real Slow
(1975) A Guide To Electronic Music – Peace Three, Signal Generators, Control Generators, Frequency
Modulation, Amplitude Modulation, Ring Modulation, Filtering, Tape Delay, Peace Three (Recap)
Bruce Haack
Bruce Haack, born on May 4, 1931, was one of
the most musically and lyrically inventive
children's songwriters of the '60s and '70s.
Despite — or perhaps because of — his
intended audience, his music was unusually
expressive, combining homemade analog
synths; classical, country, pop, and rock
elements; and surreal, idealistic lyrics. Haack's
innovations and desire to teach still sound fresh,
making his music a favorite with fans of analog
synths and esoteric recordings. Contemporaries
like Raymond Scott and followers like Luke
Vibert and Add N to X championed his unique
musical vision, which embraced concepts like
"powerlove" and turned household appliances
into synthesizers and modulators. This musical
vision appeared at age four, when Haack
started picking out melodies on his family's
piano; by age 12, he gave piano lessons and
played in country & western bands as a teen.
His upbringing in the isolated mining town of
Rocky Mountain House in Alberta, Canada, gave
Haack plenty of time to develop his musical
gifts. Seeking formal training to hone his ability,
Haack applied to the University of Alberta's music program. Though that school rejected him
because of his poor notation skills, at Edmonton University he wrote and recorded music for
campus theater productions, hosted a radio show, and played in a band. He received a degree in
psychology from the university; this influence was felt later in songs that dealt with body
language and the computer-like ways children absorb information. On the merits of one of his
theatrical scores, New York City's Juilliard School offered Haack the opportunity to study with
composer Vincent Persichetti; thanks to a scholarship from the Canadian government, he headed
to New York upon graduating from Edmonton in 1954. At Juilliard, Haack met a like-minded
student, Ted "Praxiteles" Pandel, with whom he developed a lifelong friendship. However, his
studies proved less sympathetic, and he dropped out of Juilliard just eight months later, rejecting
the school's restrictive approach. Throughout the rest of his career, Haack rejected restrictions of
any kind, often writing several different kinds of music at one time. He spent the rest of the '50s
scoring dance and theater productions, as well as writing pop songs for record labels like Dot and
Coral. Haack's early scores, like 1955's Les Etapes, suggested the futuristic themes and
experimental techniques Haack developed in his later works. Originally commissioned for a
Belgian ballet, Les Etapes mixed tape samples, electronics, soprano, and violin; the following
year, he finished a musique concrète piece called "Lullaby for a Cat." As the '60s began, the
public's interest in electronic music and synthesizers increased, and so did Haack's notoriety.
Along with songwriting and scoring, Haack appeared on TV shows like I've Got a Secret and The
Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, usually with Pandel in tow. The duo often played the
Dermatron, a touch- and heat-sensitive synthesizer, on the foreheads of guests; 1966's
appearance on I've Got a Secret featured them playing 12 "chromatically pitched" young women.
Meanwhile, Haack wrote serious compositions as well, such as 1962's "Mass for Solo Piano,"
which Pandel performed at Carnegie Hall, and a song for Rocky Mountain House's 50th
anniversary. One of his most futuristic pieces, 1963's "Garden of Delights," mixed Gregorian
chants and electronic music and was one of Haack's favorites. Unfortunately,
this work was never broadcast or released in its complete form. Haack found
another outlet for his creativity as an accompanist for children's dance
teacher Esther Nelson. Perhaps inspired by his own lonely childhood, he and
Nelson collaborated on educational, open-minded children's music. With
Pandel, they started their own record label, Dimension 5, on which they
released 1962's Dance, Sing, & Listen. Two other records followed in the
series, 1963's Dance, Sing, & Listen Again and 1965's Dance, Sing, & Listen
Again & Again. Though the series included activity and story songs similar to
other children's records at the time, the music moves freely between country,
medieval, classical, and pop, and mixes instruments like piano, synthesizers,
and banjo. The lyrics deal with music history or provide instructions like,
"When the music stops, be the sound you hear," resulting in an often surreal
collage of sounds and ideas. The otherworldly quality of Haack's music was
emphasized by the instruments and recording techniques he developed with
the Dance, Sing, & Listen series. Though he had little formal training in
electronics, he made synthesizers and modulators out of any gadgets and surplus parts he could
find, including guitar effects pedals and battery-operated transistor radios. Eschewing diagrams
and plans, Haack improvised, creating instruments capable of 12-voice polyphony and random
composition. Using these modular synthesizer systems, he then recorded with two two-track reelto-reel decks, adding a moody tape echo to his already distinctive pieces. As the '60s progressed
and the musical climate became more receptive to his kind of whimsical innovation, Haack's
friend, collaborator, and business manager Chris Kachulis found mainstream applications for his
musical wizardry. This included scoring commercials for clients like Parker Brothers Games,
Goodyear Tires, Kraft Cheese, and Lincoln Life Insurance; in the process, Haack won two awards
for his work. He also continued to promote electronic music on television, demonstrating how
synthesizers work on The Mr. Rogers Show in 1968, and released The Way-Out Record for
Children later that year. Haack's records were about to get even more way-out, however:
Kachulis did another important favor for his friend by introducing Haack to psychedelic rock. Acid
rock's expansive nature was a perfect match for Haack's style, and in 1969 he released his first
rock-influenced work, The Electric Lucifer. A concept album about the earth being caught in the
middle of a war between heaven and hell, The Electric Lucifer features a heavy, driving sound
complete with Moogs, Kachulis' singing, and Haack's homegrown electronics and unique lyrics,
which deal with "powerlove" — a force so strong and good that it will not only save mankind but
Lucifer himself. Kachulis helped out once more by bringing Haack and Lucifer to the attention of
Columbia Records, who released it as Haack's major-label debut. As the '70s started, Haack's
musical horizons continued to expand. After the release of The Electric Lucifer, he struck up a
friendship with fellow composer and electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott. They collaborated
and experimented with two of Scott's new instruments, the Clavivox and Electronium.
Unfortunately, nothing remains of their collaboration, and though Scott gave Haack a Clavivox,
he didn't record with it on his own. However, he did continue on Lucifer's rock-influenced musical
with 1971's Together, an electronic pop album that marked his return to Dimension 5. Perhaps in
an attempt to differentiate this work from his children's music, he released it under the name
Jackpine Savage, the only time he used this pseudonym. Haack continued making children's
albums as well, including 1972's Dance to the Music, 1973's Captain Entropy, and 1974's This Old
Man, which featured science fiction versions of nursery rhymes and traditional songs. After
relocating to Westchester, PA, to spend more time with Pandel, Haack focused on children's
music almost exclusively, writing music for Scholastic Magazine Records like "The Witches'
Vacation" and "Clifford the Small Red Puppy." He also released Funky Doodle and Ebenezer
Electric (an electronic version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol) in 1976, but by the late '70s,
his prolific output slowed; two works, 1978's Haackula and the following year's Electric Lucifer
Book II, were never released. However, Haackula seems to have inspired Haack's final landmark
work, 1981's Bite. The albums share several song titles and a dark lyrical tone different from
Haack's usually idealistic style. Though Bite is harsher than his other works, it features his
innovative, educational touch: a thorough primer on electronics and synthesizers makes up a
large portion of the liner notes, and Haack adds a new collaborator for this album, 13-year-old
vocalist Ed Harvey. Haack's failing health slowed Dimension 5's musical output in the early '80s,
but Miss Nelson and Pandel kept the label alive by publishing songbooks, like Fun to Sing and
The World's Best Funny Songs, and re-released selected older albums as cassettes, which are still
available today. Haack died in 1988 from heart failure, but his label and commitment to making
creative children's music survives. And while Dimension 5's later musical releases — mostly
singalong albums featuring Miss Nelson — may lack the iconoclastic spark of the early records,
Nelson and Pandel's continued work reveals the depth of their friendship with Haack, a distinctive
and pioneering electronic musician.
Review “Dance Sing And Listen” - 1962's Dance, Sing & Listen marks Bruce Haack's debut as
a children's composer. The first part of the Dance, Sing & Listen series, the album includes
medieval, country, classical and pop styles in its embrace, interpreting the songs with a mix of
electronic and acoustic instruments. From the boogie-woogie of "Introduction" to the electronicclassical hybrid of "Medieval Dances," Haack's wide-ranging musical vision has free reign on
Dance, Sing & Listen. "Sunflowers" is an activity song in which children imagine they are
sunflowers, from seed to bloom; behind Esther Nelson's instructions, Haack provides fizzy,
bubbling keyboard effects, a vaguely African guitar line and bongos as accompaniment. In other
hands this might be a simple activity song; with Nelson and Haack's creative approach, it borders
on sci-fi spoken word. Similarly, tracks like "Eine Kleine Gebouncemusik" feature discussions
between Nelson, Haack and the children they recorded the album with, resulting in a paralleldimension version of Kids Say the Darndest Things. The sprightly, keyboard-based
"Gebouncemusik" is a quintessential Haack work, referencing Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik"
as well as Hindenmith's concept of "gebrauchmusik," or "utility music," which can have a specific
musical purpose or be played by anyone. Only Haack, however, could come up with such a
unique array of elements and blend them into something even more distinctive.
Review “Dance Sing And Listen Again” - 1964's Dance, Sing & Listen Again continued Bruce
Haack and Esther Nelson's innovative children's music series. As with Dance, Sing & Listen, this
album blends educational and entertaining songs, and acoustic and electronic instruments. For
the most part, however, Haack's synthesizers play a more restrained part in the music than on
the first album, though the oboe-like strains on "Jelly Dancers" and the electronic square dance
of "Children's Hoe-Down" feature keyboards more prominently. Though Dance, Sing & Listen is
one of Haack's more straightforward works, it does contain one of his strangest works: the
vocal/electronic activity song "Machines," which imagines Nelson and Haack as different kinds of
machines, making appropriately percussive and trilling mouth noises as electronic drums and
sound effects play in the background. More in keeping with the album's general tone are songs
like "What Can She Be," which features Nelson instructing the children to move like different
animals, and "Rehearsal," in which Haack guides an orchestra through parts of a symphony; after
each piece, they discuss how the music made them feel. But with all of Haack's work,
straightforward is a relative term; even standard ideas like "Rehearsal" gain special quirks with
his approach. After playing a moody, acoustic electronic piece, one child says the music made her
feel sad, and "It made me see pictures of sad trees. And it made me think a lot." And Nelson's
songs bear more than a passing resemblance to those of Lucia Pamela, a similarly minded
children's entertainer who wrote songs and made coloring books about her experiences on the
moon. Though Dance, Sing & Listen Again features the Dimension 5 artists at their least
electronic, they sound every bit as eclectic and eccentric.
Review “The Wayout Record For Children” - After a three-year drought of Dimension 5
releases, Bruce Haack, Esther Nelson and Ted Pandel returned in 1968 with The Way Out Record
for Children. This album found the trio edging toward the acid rock-influenced direction they
explored on later releases like Electric Lucifer, but also included activity and story songs like the
ones on the Dance, Sing and Listen series. As with those records, The Way Out Record for
Children features an "Introduction" to the Dimension 5 gang, and movement songs like "Medieval
Dancing." "School for Robots," an ear-body coordination game, features robotic vocals created by
Haack speaking in a monotone and tapping his Adam's apple; this low-budget innovation is just
another manifestation of his practical but innovative approach. The song also reflects Haack's
silly sense of humor in puns like "Greetings, fellow robots. I hope oil goes well with you... Here is
your robot music. Do not rust until you can dance to it." Electronic experimentation is apparent
on the instrumental "Rubberbands," which mixes a bouncy, almost random synth melody with
the elastic "boing" of a Jew's harp. The Way Out Record also features artwork by Haack's friend
and manager Chris Kachulis, who contributes vocals on a few songs as well.
Review “The Electronic Record For Children” - Like The Way Out Record for Children,
1969's The Electronic Record for Children adds more freaked-out fun to the basic menu of
electronic-based story and activity songs shared by all the Dimension 5 releases. This time, Bruce
Haack and Esther Nelson pretend they are on a spaceship orbiting the earth, and this theme
plays out in their between-song banter as well as on songs like "Mara's Moon" and "Clapping with
Katy," where the duo calls a friend on earth to play a clapping game with her. "Sing" and "Upside
Down" are sweet slices of electronic pop, while "Saint Basil," includes a trip to the planet of the
singing mice and a choir of Greek children, and the sound-effect laden instrumental "Listen"
reflects the wilder side of Haack's imagination. As always, The Electronic Record for Children
showcases the sparkling creativity, humor and wonder of Haack and company.
Review “Electric Lucifer” - After hearing late '60s rock & roll from his friend Chris Kachulis,
Bruce Haack added acid rock to his already diverse sonic palette. The result was 1970's Electric
Lucifer, a psychedelic, anti-war song cycle about the battle between heaven and hell. The
underlying concept of this concept album is "Powerlove," a divine force that not only unites
humanity but forgives Lucifer his transgressions as well. But though this album extolls the healing
powers of peace and love, Electric Lucifer uses often menacing music and lyrics to get its point
across. "War" depicts the battle royale between good and evil with a martial beat and salvos
from dueling synthesizers; a child's voice murmurs "I don't want to play anymore, " and a
funereal synth melody replaces the electronic battle march. Haack's marriage of rock rhythms
and his unique electronics creates a sound unlike either his previous work or the era's
psychedelic rock, but songs like "Incantation" and "Word Game," with their percolating beats,
buzzing synths and vocoders, are much trippier than most acid rock. The strangely forlorn "Song
of the Death Machine" sounds a bit like a short-circuting HAL singing "My Darling Clementine,"
while "Word Game" features cool, dark electro-rock and brain-teasing lyrics like "Ray of
sun/Reason/Knowledge/No legends." Kachulis sings on both of these tracks, and his deadpan
vocals complement the weirdness going on around him nicely. His involvement with Electric
Lucifer also includes aiding the album's release on Columbia Records; though it was Haack's only
major label release, Electric Lucifer remains musically innovative and subversive.
(1962) Dance Sing And Listen – Introduction, Clap Your Hands, Sunflowers, Skating Party,
Medieval Dances, My Bones, A Little Discussion And Eine Klein, Gebouncemusik, Coco The
Coconut, Sailing, A Stuffy Story, Pussycats, Trains
(1964) Dance Sing And Listen Again – Introduction, Silent Movies, Tokey, Skating party,
Machines, Fireworks, Children’s hoedown, More Medieval music, Coco Remembers, Jelly Dancer,
What Can She Be, Rehearsal, Trains
(1965) Dance Sing And Listen Again And Again – Introduction, Shadows, Popcorn, Coco
Bouzookee, Pots And Pans, Little Pig, Clocks, A Little Concert, Coco Remembers, More Machines,
Hamburger Song, The Stubborn Bird
(1968) Wayout Record For Children – Introduction, Motorcycle Ride, medieval Dancing,
Coco Bouzookee, School For Robots, Mudra, Accents, Rubberbands, The Saucer’s Apprentice,
Encore, Four Seasons, Tools, Nothing To Do
(1969) Electronic Record For Children – Sing, Mara’s Moon, Dance, Listen, Poppies, Saint
basil, Upside Down, First Lady, Echo, African Lullaby, Spiders, Clapping With Katy, Goodbye
(1970) Electric Lucifer – Electric To Me Turn, The Word, Cherubic Hymn, Program Me, War,
National Anthem To The Moon, Chant Of The Unborn, Incantation, Angel Child, Word Game,
Song Of The Death Machine, Supernova, Requiem
(1971) Together – Maybe This Song, Touch, Rain Of Earth, O.K. Robot, Intermission, Funky
Little Song, Abracadabra, Punching Bag, Right On, Outtermission
(1972) Dance To The Music – Hand Jive, EIO, Friendship, When The Music’s Over, Surprise,
Bored Of Education, Soul Transportation, Squarefinger, Liza Jane, Praxiteles
(1973) Captain Entropy – Captain Entropy, Army Ants In Your Pants, Music, Mallangong, The
Universal Unicycle Show, The American Eagle, Walking Eagle, Metric Conversion, Catfish
(1974) This Old Man – This Old Man, Bods, Elizabeth Foster Goose, Four Dances, Wooden
Bread, Remember, 17 Gifts For Free Children, Shine On, Thank You
(1975) Funky Doodle – Grand March, Short Order, Chicken In The Hay, Big Ten Four, Dance
For Your Mind, Little Brown Jugs, Circles, I Hug Myself, Funky Doodle
(1976) Ebenezer Electric – Introduction, Pro-Log, Ebenezer, Oh-Bah-Humbug, The Ghost Of
Christmas Past, Written In The Snow, I Like Christmas, The Ghost With The Most, God Bless Us
Everyone, Good Night Elephant, Christmas Eve
(1981) Electric Lucifer Book II
The Electronic Concept Orchestra
The Electronic Concept Orchestra was founded in the late 60’s by Mercury A&R rep and Limelight
Records founder Robin McBride. McBride was the man who signed Fifty Foot Hose, among
others, and helped with the distribution of electronic and avant-garde music to a wider audience
in the late 60’s and early 70’s.
Linernotes “Moog Groove” (by Robin McBride) - For years it seemed that no really new
instrumental sounds were being discovered for the world of pop music (except perhaps the "wawa" pedal)—and then it happened. Within the past year electronic music
has exploded upon the scene. After more than fifteen years of
development and experimentation mostly in abstract
avant-garde serious music, electronic music has finally been applied to
songs that really set a groove.This exciting development hasn't happened
automatically. Only within the past several years have there been
electronic music instruments that are compact enough to be used in a
recording studio. At present, of the available instruments, the Moog
Synthesizer is gaining the greatest use (in the background on the front
cover). Developed by Robert Moog, it has been used for effects on rock records for quite a while.
Now with the creation of the Electronic Concept Orchestra it becomes a pop instrument of
amazing versatility. By electronically producing tones with an infinite variety of frequency
characteristics, the "Moog," through the technique of multi-track recording, can create a whole
range of entirely new musical colors.The Electronic Concept Orchestra was formed to create a
musical approach to pop and rock music that is as fresh as Walter Carlos' efforts in the classical
area with "Switched On Bach." Although many "spaced-out" effects can be created with
electronic music, we, have made an effort to put melody, music, and "good vibes" first and
novelty gimmicks second. To that end, the efforts of Eddie Higgins as performer and arranger
have been invaluable. Well known as a jazz pianist, Eddie has entered the world of electronic
music with a real feeling for the fusion of the pop and electronic fields. Relax, loosen up, and get
into the "Moog Groove"!
Review “Electric Love” - The third and last of the Electronic Concept Orchestra (Robin McBride
and Ed Higgins) LPs, Electric Love attempts the seemingly impossible:
making the cold early Moog synthesizer live comfortably with the warm,
romantic sounds of strings. The result is truly the quintessential, easylistening, Moog album. While other similar LPs may tackle the great mod
hits, such as "The Look of Love" and "Love is Blue" included here, Electric
Love sustains the mood through 11 tracks. It is more Barbarella than
2001, more Francis Lai than Jean-Jacques Perrey.
(1969) Moog Groove – Aquarius, Both Sides Now, Feelin’ Alright, Grazing In The Grass, Hey
Jude, Oh Happy Day, Penny Lane, Rock Me, Windmills Of Your Mind
(1969) Cinemoog – Midnight Cowboy, Come Saturday Morning, Recuerdos, Maybe Tomorrow,
Theme From Z, Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head, Justine, What Are You Doing The Rest Of
(1970) Electric Love – Goin’ Out Of My Head, The Look Of Love, Je T’Aime… Moi Non Plus,
Misty, Romeo And Juliet Theme, Like A Lover, Wichita Lineman, I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,
Stella By Starlight, Love Is Blue, This Guy’s In Love With Your Life, Last Summer, The Girl I’ve
Never Met, Mah-Na Mah-Na
Gershon Kingsley
Gershon Kingsley was born Goetz Gustav Ksinski in
Bochum, Westfalia, Germany on October 28,1923. He grew
up in Berlin, but fled to Palestine in 1938 due to the rise of
Nazism. Separated from his family at age 15, Kingsley lived
and worked on a kibbutz (a cooperative farm) in a land that
would become Israel. Here, he became a self-taught pianist
and later performed with local jazz bands around Jerusalem
and Tel Aviv. After serving as a gaffir (mounted patrolman)
and studying at the Jerusalem Conservatory, he came to
America in 1946 with hopes of attending the Julliard School
of Music. The school, however, would not accept him
because he had no high school degree. So, at the age of
twenty-four, he left for Los Angeles, finished high school at
night and attended the LA Conservatory of Music (now
known as Cal Arts). For work, he would play the organ at
several synagogues in the area. After graduating from the
conservatory with a BA in Music, Kingsley began to conduct
for summer stock theater at the "Music Circus" in Sacramento, California. But when Kingsley
moved to New York in 1955, his career really began to take flight. After a season conducting for
the "Melody Fair" musical theater in Framingham, Massachusetts, he became the musical director
for a Broadway production of The Entertainer starring Lawrence Olivier. Then, in 1958, he was
nominated for a "Tony" Award for Best Musical Direction in the Broadway musical hit La Plume de
ma Tante. He conducted and arranged for several Broadway and Off-Broadway productions,
including Porgy & Bess, Jamaica, Ernest in Love, The Cradle Will Rock and Fly Blackbird. Kingsley
earned two "Obie" Awards for his Off-Broadway theatrical work. Around this time, Kingsley also
was also musical director for the Robert Joffrey Ballet, Joséphine Baker and the highly-acclaimed
television special The World of Kurt Weill starring Lotte Lenya. As a composer, Kingsley has
focused primarily on theatrical works both religious and secular. His religious works are inspired
by Jewish and Hebrew texts and are described as "scenic cantatas." They include: A Prophet's
Song of Love, What Is Man?, Shabbat for Today , They Never Had the Chance to Live, Simcha,
The Fifth Cup and Friday of Thanksgiving. Shabbat for Today and The Fifth Cup have been
nationally broadcast and performed extensively throughout the U.S. He also wrote the popular
choral anthem "Shepherd Me, Lord." In 1966, while working as the Staff Arranger for Vanguard
Records, Kingsley collaborated with French composer Jean-Jacques Perrey on a highlyexperimental pop album entitled "The In Sound from Way Out." Here, they combined dozens of
intricately designed tape loops with live studio musicians to produce an altogether new sound
that pushed the envelope of modern music and became an instant hit with the advertising
industry. A second album, called "Kaleidoscopic Vibrations" highlighted the potential of the Moog
synthesizer and produced the tune "Baroque Hoedown," which became part of the Main Street
Electrical Parade at Disney theme parks worldwide. Kingsley soon became one of the foremost
artists of Moog music. In 1969, he released an album entitled "Music to Moog By," which
received enthusiastic reviews and has since become a classic among Moog connoisseurs. In
1970, Kingsley formed the First Moog Quartet (Kenneth Bichel, Stan Free, Eric Knight and
Howard Salat), a four-synthesizer ensemble that was a pioneering effort to bring electronic music
into classical music venues. The group made history when it performed the first live show of
synthesized music ever in Carnegie Hall. The concert, which featured dancers, abstract film
collage and otherworldly music received very mixed reviews. "People were kind of confused
about the concert," says Kingsley. "I understand, because it was just so new." Soon after the
show, Arthur Fiedler, then conductor of the Boston Pops, asked Kingsley to compose a work for
synthesizer quartet and symphony orchestra.
"Concerto Moogo," as it was known, was premiered in
1971 at the Boston Symphony Hall and was televised
across the country. The First Moog Quartet (under
Kingsley's direction) subsequently made a nationwide
tour of universities and performed with several
orchestras, including the Miami, Detroit and
Indianapolis Symphonies as well as the Munich and
Cologne Radio Orchestras in Germany. The next year,
Kingsley's electronic composition "Popcorn," (a
classically-inspired pop song) became an international
hit and inspired hundreds of arrangements and
stylized remakes worldwide and as recently as this
year. Kingsley has also composed extensively for
television and motion pictures. His work has won him
an "Emmy" Award for the music of A New Voice in the
Wilderness, and two "Clio" Awards for outstanding
music in TV commercials. He also wrote theme music
for the American game show "The Joker's Wild" and
the German shows "Kommödchen" and
"Babbelgamm." In the mid 1980's, Kingsley focused on
the then-nascent genre of electronic New Age music and released "Much Silence" on Relativity
Theory Records. This was followed up by "Sanctuary" and "Anima", a collection of Kingsley's New
Age music produced by Kingsley Sound, Inc. In 1992, Kingsley composed two separate works to
commemorate the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage to America: Cristobal, a musical
performed at New York's Union Square Theater; and Tierra, an opera performed at the Gasteig
Concert Hall in Munich, Germany. Voices from the Shadow , a theatrical concert piece based on
the poetry of the holocaust, had its premiere in 1998 at Lincoln Center in New York City. Most
recently, Kingsley has finished work on several projects, including a new version of "Popcorn" to
be released on the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal record label, and "Selma," a cycle of songs
inspired by the holocaust poetry of Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger. He has also completed a new
avant-garde, electronic album entitled "Music Between Chairs."
Review “Music To Moog By” - MUSIC TO MOOG BY (Audio Fidelity) is a gas. "Moog," we
learned from the breezy little booklet that comes with the record, rhymes with "vogue," and it's
the name of the man who constructed that incredible electronic
synthesizing machine which comes close to duplicating almost any
sound. It involves thousands of miniature solid state circuits and
the whole electronic mess is controlled by a keyboard and
switchboard. By adjusting and tuning the sound generators, a
"player" can produce the sounds of most orchestral instruments
(up to 12 simultaneously). The machine can also produce animal
sounds, even wind and water sounds. Well, Gershon Kingsley,
composer, arranger and conductor, has discovered the Moog and
this fantastic album is an example of what he has done with it. We
think he's a genius because this is the first time we've liked Moog
music. It's wild, but it is music. The program is terrific -- "Hey,
Hey," "Scarborough Fair," "For Alisse Beethoven," "Sheila," "Pop Corn" (the last three Kingsley
original) and even "Nowhere Man" and "Paperback Rider (sic)" by Lennon-McCartney. It has
harpsichord, much organ and a whole lot of other synthetic instrumental sounds, and we love it.
Review “First Moog Quartet” - Four mountains of complexity and sound possibilities -- four
Moogs -- were on-stage last night for the first time anywhere in concert, at Carnegie Hall. The
stage was richer by about $25,000, and by the debut of a new,
fascinating, mixed-media concert-happening.You can see that the
science and art of the Moog, an electronic marvel, doesn't come
cheaply. But it earns its cost. It can suggest the timbre of any
orchestral instrument, and initiate sounds of its own, as any
devotee of TV commercials can verify. Inventor Robert Moog,
PH.D., states that "it would take a million years to exhaust fully the
possibilities."The Moog is now about to be promoted as a concert
attraction by no less an impresario than S. Hurok, who presented
last night's event.Through the accuracy of its bewildering but
computer-like scientific instrument board, the Moog can give you a
keyboard-controlled simulation of incredible range, from the bark of a dog to the song of a
nightingale; from the tune-up of an airplane to the clarinet; to its unique swishes, moans and
grunts that are really out of this world.Gershon Kingsley, German-born Broadway musical director
who has been experimenting with the Moog for some years, was in charge of the concert, in fact
the program read: "Gershon Kingsley's First Moog Quartet." Moog, who invented the instrument
only a few years ago, was on hand to take a bow after having heard his four offspring perform
for about two hours. They had as collaborators: four at the keyboards, six tambourine jinglers, a
percussion battery, electric guitar; Negro virtuoso drummer Danny Barrajanos on Congo Drums;
and four singers who performed songs and recited poetry, even from the Bible. The projected a
range of music and vision that included a 16th century "Ricercare" by Gabrielli, an arrangement
for voices and Moogs of Handel's "Water Music;" to music by the Beatles, by Kingsley, himself, by
Jimmy Giuffre; to rock 'n' roll. The poetry and songs ranged from atmospheric images to protest
songs; the slides and movies from abstract images to baby cartoons. Kingsley was the m.c.conductor and played a tambourine. At the end he thanked the "god of electricity, for giving us
clear circuits for two hours." He had trained the musicians to play the Moogs. In the process they
created while they re-created, including inventing a practical system of notation. Everything onstage was professionally handled, and at times the result was exciting, as much for possibilities
as for present realization. He proved the skeptics wrong. TV performer, Walter Carlos, among
others has said the Moog couldn't be performed live.
(1969) Music To Moog By – Hey Hey, Scarborough Fair, For Alisse Beethoven, Sheila,
Popcorn, Twinkle Twinkle, Nowhere Man, Sunset Sound, Trumansburg Whistle, Paperback Rider
(1970) First Moog Quartet
(1971) Concerto Moogo
The First Moog Quartet
The First Moog Quartet was formed by Gershon Kingsley in 1970. When Kingsley one day
demonstrated the Moog's capabilities to Sol Hurok, an influential New York promoter and
impresario, Hurok asked Kingsley if he could get together a group of musicians for a live
performance. Many at the time considered the Moog to be a studio-only instrument, incapable of
live performance. But Kingsley jumped at the opportunity. He called Bob Moog to order four more
Moog modular synthesizers and immediately began to audition players from the Columbia,
Berkeley and Julliard schools of music. Hurok arranged
a date at Carnegie Hall in New York for the group's
debut performance. Seldom does such a well-known
venue play host to an unknown act, but Hurok was
convinced that this music needed to be heard. So, on
January 30, 1970, four Moogs took the stage along
with some singers and live musicians. During the
highly-experimental show, abstract slides and film
were projected onto hanging curtains and several
narrators read from poetry as the Moogs produced
otherworldly sounds as well as some familiar classics.
The reaction from critics (and the audience) were
mixed -- some in praise, some in scorn and other in
utter confusion. But the fact remains that The First
Moog Quartet had made history by giving the firstever electronic music concert in Carnegie Hall. After
this show, Hurok began to promote the group with a
tour of several colleges and universities across the
country. Traveling in a caravan, the group packed up
the four Moogs and other equipment and set off to
play at Harvard University, Boston University, Marquette University, Kent State University,
Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Purdue University, Iowa State University,
Clemson University and Culver Military Academy. An unexpected result of the Carnegie Hall show
appeared when Arthur Fiedler, then conductor of the Boston Pops, asked Kingsley to compose
some music for the Moog Quartet and symphony orchestra. Concerto Moogo (see also Orchestral
music) and Confrontations were products of this combination of new and old. After performing
alongside the Boston Pops, the First Moog Quartet went on to perform with several other
orchestras: the Boston Pops, the Detroit Symphony, Grand Rapid Symphony, Indianapolis
Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Miami Philharmonic Summer Pops and the Cologne Radio
Orchestra.
Hot Butter
Despite the wide range of music Gershon Kingsley has
composed, he is most well-known for a 1972 instrumental
dance hit called "Popcorn." Kingsley recalls that he wrote the
primary melody to "Popcorn" in about 30 seconds. The song
was first released in 1969 as part of a Kingsley solo album
called "Music To Moog By." LINK TO: MOOGBY Then the First
Moog Quartet, while on their nation-wide tour of college and
universities, used "Popcorn" as their encore song. In 1972,
"Popcorn" was recorded by a group of musicians under the
band name Hot Butter. Stan Free, who was a member of the
First Moog Quartet, played the Moog on this recording. Hot
Butter made one US Top 10 record and promptly disappeared. Having previously recorded some
unsuccessful singles under his own name in the 60s, Free took on the name Hot Butter and
recorded the cleverly titled "Popcorn", an instrumental which reached the UK Top 5 in 1972.
Subsequent singles attempted to update early rock instrumentals such as "Pipeline" and "Tequila"
but they did not reach the charts.. The song quickly became an international hit, with cover
versions sprouting up all over the world. It hit Number 1 on the German charts and sold over one
million copies in that country alone.
Hugo Montenegro
Hugo Montenegro was a
composer, arranger, and conductor,
who is primarily known for his
movie work in the '60s, as well as
his adaptations of film scores like
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Montenegro began his musical
career in the U.S. Navy, where he
arranged scores for various military
bands. After he left the Navy, he
completed school at Manhattan
College, then he began a
professional music career. Initially,
Montenegro was the staff manager
to Andre Kostelanetz at Columbia Records in New York, which eventually led to a job as a
conductor/arranger for several of the label's artists, most notably Harry Belafonte. By the mid'50s, Montenegro was making his own albums of easy listening orchestral music. Montenegro
moved to California in the mid-'60s and began to write film scores, starting with Otto Preminger's
Hurry Sundown in 1967. That same year, he recorded a version of the theme to The Good, the
Bad and the Ugly, which was written by Ennio Morricone. Featuring an arrangement that relied
on a chorus, electric instruments, and special effects, the single was a major hit, reaching
number one in the U.K. and number two in the U.S.; internationally, it sold over a million copies.
An album titled Music from "A Fistful of Dollars" & "For A Few Dollars More" & "The Good, the
Bad and the Ugly" appeared shortly after the single's release, and it reached the Top Ten in the
spring 1968. Later in the year, Montenegro released a single of the theme from Hang 'Em High,
which was a lesser hit, as was the album of the same name. Montenegro began to branch out
after the Hang 'Em High album, recording a diverse array of albums, ranging from show tunes to
electronic experiments. Throughout the late '60s and '70s, he continued to score films, including
Lady in Cement, The Undefeated, The Wrecking Crew, Tomorrow, and The Ambushers, among
many others. He continued composing and recording until his death in 1981. The above picture
was chosen for no other reason than the hot chicks. Hugo is in the background.
Review “Moog Power” - When the first Moog synthesizers were made available to the public in
the late 1960s, their appearance spawned a series of cash-in albums built around their sound
that lasted well into the early 1970s. Usually, these albums reinterpreted the pop chart hits of the
day in a synth-oriented fashion. One of the earliest and best
albums in this vein is Hugo Montenegro's Moog Power. On this
album, Montenegro works with his usual group of session
musicians (including keyboardist Mike Melvoin and whistler Muzzy
Marcellino) to cover a series of 1969 vintage pop hits in a slick,
loungey style that is given a retro/futuristic edge by its use of
Moog synthesizer. To his credit, Montenegro deploys the
synthesizer with taste and subtlety, using it to flesh out the sound
of his crisp arrangements instead of allowing it dominate them.
Highlights include a cleverly-arranged medley of "Hair/Aquarius"
that allows Melvoin to take the medley into the space age with an
array of otherworldly synthesizer lines, and a minimalist version of "You Showed Me," whose airy
combination of acoustic and electronic sounds is reminiscent of what Air would later achieve in
their quieter moments. Montenegro also penned a nifty original with "Moog Power," a mostly
instrumental tune that uses the Moog to create a thick bottom end to support its funky, jazzy
groove. The only track that misfires is "Touch Me," due to its too-fast tempo and its use of the
Moog to create some silly sci-fi laser gun sounds during its verses. Otherwise, Montenegro keeps
the songs tight, smooth-sounding, and subtly futuristic. Ultimately, Moog Power is probably a
little too kitschy for the average listener, but anyone who appreciates lounge treatments of pop
music or early electronic-oriented pop will find plenty to enjoy on this well-crafted disc.
Review “Mammy Blue” - As his career progressed, easy listening artist Hugo Montenegro
began to push his unique, loungy interpretations of pop music in ever more adventurous
directions by incorporating state-of-the-art engineering techniques and musical instruments. On
1971's Mammy Blue, Montenegro pushed his experimental aims forward by incorporating the ARP
synthesizer into his unique arrangements of several recent pop hits. However, his touch as an
arranger and producer remained very classic in style, always aiming to craft a sound that will
appeal to listeners of any age. The result is a somewhat schizophrenic but always entertaining
blend of forward-thinking sonics and old-fashioned pop instrumental craftsmanship. A good
example of this blend is the album's instrumental interpretation of "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey,"
which utilizes the synthesizer to spacey effect on the verses but ditches it in favor of jaunty, jazzband brass on the bouncy chorus. Other standout tracks include "Superstar," which plays up the
ghostly beauty of the melody with an ethereal combination of strings and electronics, and "YoYo," which is transformed from a bubblegum soul tune into an energetic instrumental duel
between synthesizers and frantic percussion. The proceedings frequently get kitschy, but none of
the cuts are dull and everything is impeccably crafted; for instance, doing a pop-styled
instrumental medley of "If I Were a Rich Man/Fiddler on the Roof" is a rather arch concept, but it
succeeds because Montenegro uses his skill as an arranger to bring out a surprising funkiness in
the first tune and revs up the latter tune's tempo to bring the medley to an exciting, headspinning finish. In short, Mammy Blue is a solid choice for anyone who enjoys lounge music at its
most ambitious.
Review “Love Theme From The Godfather” - When it came to making adventurous yet
accessible easy listening music, Hugo Montenegro had few peers. The string of easy listening
albums he recorded during the '60s and '70s attracted a cult of fans by combining exotic
instrumentation and experimental production techniques with a knack for a catchy, pop-flavored
touch arrangements made the proceedings catchy and easily accessible. One of his best
examples of his unique style is 1972's Love Theme From the Godfather, an album that
transformed a diverse array of pop tunes and film themes into exotic easy listening through
arrangements that piled on space-age synthesizer and wild sound effects designed to show off
quadrophonic engineering techniques. The experimental tone is established from the get-go with
"Norwegian Wood," which transforms the Beatles' Indian-styled pop tune into a lush, heady
cinematic fanfare full of swirling strings, swinging brass, and rumbling percussion. Other standout
moments include "Me and My Arrow," which is transformed into synth-driven carnival music
complete with crowd-noise sound effects, and the title track, which layers on fuzz guitar and
trippy electronics to transform what was a delicate film theme into a surging, funky instrumental
that would fit in on the soundtrack of a '70s cop show. Montenegro also throws a couple of
originals in, the standout being the album closer "Stutterology"; this quadrophonic-engineering
showcase alternates a light, cheeky theme played on xylophone and keyboards with dark,
suspenseful string passages over a rumbling percussion track. Montenegro's refusal to play the
tunes straight may strike some listeners as gimmicky and eccentric, but no one can deny the
craft and skill that went into this recording. Ultimately, Love Theme From the Godfather's
combination of strong material and fearless experimentation makes it one of the most
entertaining and consistent albums in Hugo Montenegro's catalog. Anyone interested in exploring
his singular style would do well to start here.
Review “Hugo In Wonder-Land” - After recording a string of experimental easy listening
albums that explored everything from pop songs to classical music, Hugo Montenegro focused his
skills on interpreting the work of one composer on 1974's Hugo in
Wonderland. This time, Montenegro reinterpreted the work of
Stevie Wonder in an instrumental format, focusing mainly on
material from his early-'70s renaissance, but also throwing in a few
more classically Motown-styled items from his late-'60s period. To
stay in touch with Wonder's then-current style, Montenegro made
extensive use of ARP and Moog synthesizers on a number of the
tracks. The end result is a little campy here and there, but often
quite effective. Hugo in Wonderland is at its best when it plays the
material straight: an effectively jazzy rendition of "Too High"
swings with abandon and the mellow, string-enhanced version of
"All Is Fair in Love" that closes the album is quite lovely. The
transformations of the songs to purely instrumental affairs also shows off how strong these songs
are as pure music: a good example is "Living for the City," which reveals the stomping, funky
melody that was hidden beneath that song's social-consciousness story lyric. The problem that
keeps Hugo in Wonderland from being uniformly excellent is that Montenegro occasionally gets
carried away with his use of electronics; the effectiveness of the album's versions of
"Superstition" and "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" is hampered by the kitschy, sci-fi
synthesizer lines that dominate their arrangements. Despite this problem, the album remains a
unique and likable affair that will entertain lounge enthusiasts and provide an interesting curio for
Stevie Wonder completists.
(1969) Moog Power - Dizzy, Don’t Leave Me, Hair/Aquarius, MacArthur Park, Moog Power,
More Today Than Yesterday, My Way, The Greatest Love, Touch Me, Traces, You Showed Me
(1971) Mammy Blue – All I Can Do, Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, Superstar, Medley: If I Were
A Rich Man & Fiddler On The Roof, Mammy Blue, I Feel The Earth Move, Peace Train, The Night
They Drove Old Dixie Down, Zingaro, Yo-Yo, Movin’ On
(1972) Love Theme From The Godfather – Norwegian Wood, Medley: Baby Elephant
Walk/Moon River, Me And My Arrow, Air On The G String, Quadimodo, I Feel The Earth Move,
The Godfather Waltz, Love Theme From The Godfather, Pavanne, Stutterology
(1974) Hugo In Wonder-Land – Living For The City, Too High, Superstition, You Are The
Sunshine Of My Life, My Cherie Amour, Higher Ground, Don’t Worry ‘Bout A Thing, Shoo-BeeDoo-Da-Day, You’ve Got It Bad Girl, All In Love Is Fair
(1975) Rocket Man – Blastoff, Rocket Man, The Bitch Is back, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,
Philadelphia Freedom, Take Me To The Pilot, Your Song, Lowdown Hoedown, Daniel, Lucy In The
Sky With Diamonds, Splashdown
Jean Michel Jarre
Celebrated as the European electronic music
community's premier ambassador, composer
Jean-Michel Jarre elevated the synthesizer to
new peaks of popularity during the 1970s, in
the process emerging as an international
superstar renowned for his dazzling concert
spectacles. The son of the famed film
composer Maurice Jarre, he was born August
24, 1948 in Lyon, France, and began studying
piano at the age of five. Abandoning classical
music as a youth, Jarre became enamoured of
jazz before forming a rock band called Mystere
IV; in 1968, he became a pupil of the musique
concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, joining the Groupe de Recherches Musicales. His early
experiments in electro-acoustic music yielded the 1971 single "La Cage; " the full-length Deserted
Palace followed a year later. Jarre's early works were largely unsuccessful, and give little
indication of the work to follow; as he struggled to find his own voice, he wrote for a variety of
singers including Francoise Hardy, and also composed for films. Seeking to push electronic music
away from its minimalist foundations as well as the formal abstractions of its most experimental
practitioners, he slowly developed the orchestrated melodicism of his 1977 breakthrough effort
Oxygène, an enormous commercial hit which reached the number two spot on the UK pop
charts. The follow-up, 1978's Equinoxe, was also a smash, and a year later Jarre held the first in
a series of massive open-air concerts at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, the estimated one
million spectators on hand earning him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Only in
the wake of 1981's Les Chants Magnétiques ("Magnetics Fields") did Jarre mount a proper tour,
travelling to China with a staggering amount of stage equipment in tow; the five performances,
performed backed by some 35 traditional instrumentalists, later generated the LP Concerts in
China. 1983's Music for Supermarkets instantly became one of the most collectible albums in
history — recorded for an art exhibit, only one copy was ever pressed, selling at a charity auction
for close to $10, 000. The master was then incinerated, guaranteeing the record's rarity. Jarre's
next proper release was 1984's Zoolook, which failed to connect with audiences with the same
success as its predecessors; a two-year hiatus followed before he resurfaced on April 5, 1986
with an extravagant live performance in Houston celebrating NASA's silver anniversary; in
addition to the over one million in attendance, it was also broadcast on global television. RendezVous appeared a few weeks later, and after another highly visual live date in Lyon, France, Jarre
assembled the best material from the two events as the 1987 concert LP Cities in Concert—
Houston/Lyon. Revolutions, featuring the legendary Shadows guitarist Hank B. Marvin, followed
in 1988, and a year later a third concert LP, dubbed simply Jarre Live, hit stores. After 1990's En
Attendant Cousteau ("Waiting for Cousteau"), Jarre mounted his biggest live experience yet, with
an attendance of over two and a half million fans converging on Paris to see him perform in
honor of Bastille Day. The decade to follow proved surprisingly quiet, however, and apart from
the occasional live appearance Jarre was largely removed from the limelight; finally, in 1997 he
issued Oxygène 7-13, updating his concepts for a new musical era.
Review “Oxygene” - Jean Michel Jarre, son of film composer
Maurice Jarre, is one of the true pioneers of electronic music.
Oxygene is one of the original e-music albums. It has withstood the
test of time and the evolution of digital electronica. Jarre's
compositional style and his rhythmic instincts were his strong points
in 1976. While his popularity has escalated exponentially over the years, he never quite achieved
the quality of this amazing recording. The innocence and freshness provide most of its charm.
Jarre's techniques and ability provide the rest. This epic CD will appeal to fans of Tonto's
Expanding HeadBand, Tangerine Dream, Synergy, Kraftwerk, and Klaus Schulze.
Review “Equinoxe” - As the follow up album to Oxygene, Equinoxe offers the same
mesmerizing affect, with rapid spinning sequencer washes and bubbling synthesizer portions all
lilting back and forth to stardust scatterings of electronic pastiches.
Using more than 13 different types of synthesizers, Jarre combines
whirling soundscapes of multi-textured effects, passages, and
sometimes suites to culminate interesting electronic atmospheres.
Never repeating the same sounds twice, it is obvious that the
science fiction hype of the late 70's played a large part in the making
of this album. Computerized rhythms and keyboard-soaked
transitions scurry by, replaced by even quicker, more illustrious ones
soon after. There is always a pulsating beat or a fluttering tempo
happening somewhere in each of the tracks, which are titled as a
numbered sequence one to eight. Each track harbors its own energy
and electronic fleetness, but none are identical in sound or pace. So much electronic color is
added to every track that it is impossible to concentrate on any particular segment, resulting in
waves of synth drowning the ears at high tide.
Review “Les Chants Magnetiques” - Les Chants Magnetiques was the third of Jarre's albums
in a row to update Tangerine Dream's atmosperic sequencer trance for a synth-pop and
mainstream crossover audience. The side-long "Les Chants Magnetiques Part 1" is the capstone
of the album, while parts two through five move through driving electronic pop and several
passages more indebted to Jarre's past in the musique concrète scene. It's often just as melodic
and inventive as Oxygène, though not as consistently creative.
Review “Zoolook” - On the first departure of his career since
1977's Oxygène, Jean-Michel Jarre combined an actual band and
processed vocal samples — recorded in 25 different languages —
with his rich, melodic synthesizer pop. The rhythm is often propelled
by guttural vocal snippets, as on "Ethnicolor" and "Zoolookologie."
That's not half as disconcerting for those used to his previous work
as the album's art-funk backing: Adrian Belew on guitar, Marcus
Miller on bass and Yogi Horton on drums, plus Laurie Anderson on
one track. Though Zoolook is interesting throughout, the tracks with
Jarre alone are often the best, reprising the classic Oxygene sound.
(1977) Oxygene – Oxygene 1-6
(1978) Equinoxe – Equinoxe Pt. 1-8
(1981) Les Chants Magnetiques – Les Chants Magnetiques Pt. 1-5
(1984) Zoolook – Ethnicolor, Diva, Zoolookologie, Woolloomooloo, Blah blah Café, Ethnicolor II
(1986) Rendez-Vous – First Rendez-Vous, Second Rendez-Vous, Third Redez-Vous, Fourth
Rendez-Vous, Fifth Rendez-Vous, Last Rendez-Vous
(1993) Chronologie – Chronologie Pt. 1-8
Jean Jacques Perrey
Recording both as a solo artist and
in collaboration with Gershon
Kingsley, Perrey helped popularize
electronic music with a series of
albums in the 1960s that used Moog
synthesizers, the ondioline, and
magnetic tape. His work was never
intended to be part of the avantgarde, as Perrey himself cheerfully
declared in his liner notes. His goal
was to popularize electronic music by
deploying it in happy, simple tunes
and arrangements. That's why his
music falls far closer to easy
listening/space age pop than any sort
of cutting edge — and that is also why his music sounds more cheesily nostalgic than futuristic
these days. In the early '50s, Perrey became fascinated by the ondioline, a keyboard instrument
that anticipated the synthesizer with its emulation of other instruments. He dropped out of
medical school to become a sales representative for the ondioline, and by the early '60s he'd
moved to the U.S. to work in television, radio, and the recording studio. His '60s albums for
Vanguard, both as a solo act and half of Perrey & Kingsley, were his most widely circulated,
giving Perrey a chance to demonstrate his arsenal of electronic instruments, treatments, and tape
manipulations. The actual results were bouncy and childish, perhaps betraying more of Perrey’s
considerable background in radio/TV jingles than may have been intended. Treated more as
novelties than innovations, they came back into vogue when Perrey was profiled in RE/SEARCH's
Incredibly Strange Music book in the 1990s. Perrey returned to France in 1970, where he
continued to work in radio, TV, soundtracks, and other musical projects. By the '90s he had
begun recording again, first in a collaboration with French electronica duo Air, then with an
album of his own, Eklectronics.
Review “The Amazing New Electronic Pop Sound Of Jean Jacques Perrey” - "What I
have tried to do," wrote Perrey in the liner notes to this album, "is to
bring the electronic sonorities to popular music." This he
accomplished via the ondioline, Moog, magnetic tapes, electronic
instruments, and other gizmos. He also wrote or co-wrote most of
the material on this disc, which sounds like nothing so much as late'60s instrumental "mood" music albums as refracted through a
slightly more ambitious, electronic lens. It's really not something you
can put on again and again, but it's kind of fun nonetheless. The
arrangements have a kind of desperately trendy go-go-type charm,
borrowing occasionally from familiar folk and pop melodies like "Frere
Jacques" and "Georgy Girl."
Review “Moog Indigo” - After establishing himself at the vanguard of electronic music as one
half of Perrey & Kingsley, Jean Jacques Perrey continued to pursue his own uniquely space-age
brand of humor-oriented pop throughout the 1970s. One of the best examples of his work during
this time is Moog Indigo, an album built around Perrey's experiments with the Moog synthesizer.
This album has been popular with the electronica crowd thanks to the presence of "E.V.A.," a
funky synth excursion that became popular with remixers (Fatboy Slim turned in a memorable
remix of this tune on Best of Moog). The remainder of the album
divides its time between funky lounge-pop and experimental tracks
that mix avant-garde electronics with novelty pop. One of the big
highlights in the lounge arena is "Soul City," a funky instrumental
where Moog synthesizers take the place of horns in a guitar-heavy
slice of R&B. There is also a swinging take on "Hello Dolly" that
sounds like cocktail jazz from another planet. As for the strictly
novelty-styled tunes, the most memorable is "Gossipo Perpetuo," a
clever tune that mixes tape loops designed to sound like chattering
voices with a fast-paced synthesizer samba groove to create a
genuinely smile-inducing slice of novelty pop. Serious electronic music fans may find Moog
Indigo's humor-oriented style too lightweight, but everything presented here is tight and catchy
and there is no denying that Perrey has assembled his songs with amazing technical skill. In the
end, Moog Indigo is a solid pick for lounge fans with a sense of humor.
(1967) The Happy Moog - Blast Off Country Style, In A Happy Moog, In A Latin Moog, March
Of The Martians, Moog Foo Yong, Paris 2079, Re-Entry To The Moon, Saturn Ski Jump, Short
Circuit, Space Express
(1968) The Amazing New Electronic Pop Sound Of Jean Jacques Perrey - Mary France,
The Little Ships, Island In Space, The Mexican Cactus, Porcupine Rock, The Little Girl From Mars,
Mister James Bond, Frere Jean Jacques, Brazilian Flower, In The Heart Of A Rose, The Minuet Of
The Robots, Four, Three, Two, One, Gypsy In Rio
(1970) Moog Indigo – 18th Century Puppet, Cat In The Night, Country Rock Polka, E.V.A.,
Flight Of The Bumblebee, Gossipo Perpetuo, Hello, Dolly!, Moog Indigo, Passport To The Future,
Soul City, The Elephant Never Forgets, The Rose And The Cross
Cool And Strange Music Magazine Interview (1998) - Hello, Jean Jacques! This is a thrill
to talk to you, I've been waiting a long time for this!
“Yes, we first corresponded by letter four years ago!”
We've sent many letters and faxes since then. Well, I would like to talk with you about some of
the things not covered in the Incredibly Strange Music book. Tell me about your project in
Vancouver with the dolphins.
“Well, it's "top secret." We cannot talk about it very much in detail, because I have a
moral contract with the associates that worked with me in Vancouver, even though
they are all dead now. When I started working with them, I was 32, but they were
older than me (about 55.) But I am still working on this project because it is the
project of my life. But in your magazine you can say that I am working on a project
for helping insomniacs. We've done studies on people who are mentally disturbed.
This is related to the dolphin project. It will not be music for recreation, it will be very
serious. It is due in the year 2000. So before the year 2000, I cannot say very much
about the dolphin project. When it comes out, I think that we will be able to reveal
what we have done with the dolphins. We have communicated with them, of course
not verbally. They gave us the direction to go with our studies of sleep relaxation and
soothing the mentally disturbed. It also deals with therapies for autism, that's also
one aspect of it. It is a scientific record for medical research. So, in the year 2000 I
will consecrate myself to this big project, which is the project of my life.”
That sounds very exciting.
“You will be surprised!”
Your style has always included wacky sounds in the form of tape loops. How did you learn to
create these tape loops?
“Before I came to the United States, I met a man named Pierre Schaefer at the Studio
of Contemporary Music Research in France. He showed me how to put prerecorded
sounds together on tape. He was using the technique to create "serious" music, but
when I came to the U.S. I wanted to use the technique to create humorous, popular
music. I told him that I was going to America and was going to develop the process in
a humorous way. I had his benediction.”
Listening to your tape loops, I'm totally amazed. It sounds like they must have been
mathematically timed out. I can't understand how you could do that in the '60s, without
computers, its just amazing.
“It was very easy, first you have to determine the
timing - the tempo, when you have the tempo it
corresponds to a certain number of centimeters
and millimeters. For instance, a quarter note
equals a certain length. I had a special unit to cut
exactly the length. For instance, a half-note was
double the quarter, a full-note it was four times,
an eighth-note it was half of this. Then I cut the
tape with a special ruler.”
You mean you would you take a piece of tape and
measure out markings on the tape before you cut it?
“That's it, you've got it exactly! The sounds were
prerecorded, and of course, I recorded them for
making a loop at the same volume. It's very important because it has to be exactly
the same volume on the VU meter, I recorded everything with the needle right at
zero. I think it is a very important part of my life as a musician. It was really a kind of
an invention of a sampler, without the sampling machine being invented yet!”
Were you influenced by people like John Cage and Karl Stockhausen?
“No, not at all. I liked the modern music, contemporary music of course, but it was
not my way of expression. I prefer to do popular and humoristic sounds, instead of
doing classical electronic music, even contemporary classical music.”
Tell me about your song, Baroque Hoedown, which was used as the theme for the Main Street
Electrical Parade at Disneyland. You mentioned in past interviews that you were commissioned to
do that piece. Was it actually a composition you had written before you had met Disney and did
it have a separate song title?
“No, no, no. The journalist who wrote that must have made a mistake. I was not
commissioned, because we did it with Gershon Kingsley on the record, on the second
record.”
Yes, "Kaleidoscopic Vibrations".
“That's right. Just put the sound on the record and then in 1972 the people from
Disneyland chose the theme by themselves. The song was published by the Vanguard
Society, and Disney made a deal with them and have used the music since 1972 and
are still using it here in Disneyland France.”
You must be pleased, I understand that 75 million people have seen that and have heard your
music. That must be quite a thrill.
“Oh, yes!”
I was in Disneyland with my wife about three years ago, we were standing there at nighttime,
watching the Electrical Parade go by, listening to your incredible music. And of course, they did a
wonderful job to of writing all of the countermelodies with all of the Disney themes intermingled.
“They really made a good arrangement, because I have heard the French version. The
French version is different and the Japanese version is also different.”
Oh, really?
“Yes.”
You mean the Japanese recording that was released of Kaleidoscopic Vibrations?
“All of the Vanguard recordings have been released by King Records in Japan.”
And you say the it is a different arrangement in Japan?
“Yes, because you see, in every country Japan, France, USA they have a staff of
musicians which adapt the song for the people of that country.”
Oh, I see. You're talking about the Disney production.
“Yes, just the Disney production. They just asked the publisher to buy the license to
use exclusively the tune.”
Another question about Disney, one of the interviews I read said that you had worked on some
short animated movies with him.
“Oh, that was a long time ago.”
Tell me about that, it sounds very exciting.
“I was a guest on a television program, I think it was the Johnny Carson Show, I
can't remember for sure. Walt Disney was a guest on the show, too. This was in 1962,
three years before Walt died. Of course, by that time he was not involved very much
with the productions of his company. After the show he came to me and he said, "You
have a fantastic instrument." It was an Ondioline, the early French synthesizer. He
said to me, "I would like you to come to California. I would like you to help provide
music for some cartoons." So he made arrangements with his staff of musicians in
Hollywood. When I came to Los Angles, I spent one week with his staff. That was
really something fantastic for me.”
You don't remember the names of the cartoons, do you?
“No, no. (Laughs) You see, I just played the music watching short film clips, I did not
even know the cartoon title. It was only in portions, spots.”
Was it music you had written, or were you just playing the
Ondioline to their songs?
“I played the Ondioline according the music which
was written for it. Maybe one day you will see a
cartoon and recognize my music!”
I see, speaking of amazing sounds, just recently I have
discovered the music of Andre' Popp. Delirium In Hi-Fi has
become a big favorite of mine. When I listen to it, I hear
some of the same kind of humor that I hear in your music. I
was wondering if you know him, or are you familiar with his
music?
“Yes, I met him in the '50s, he was starting at about the same time as me. We were
friendly and we spoke about music. He said, "I also want to do popular music, but
humoristic." I said, I want to do the same. He went his way, I went my way. He did
not use many electronic instruments, because he is a very, very fine musician.”
He's more of a symphonic musician?
“A little bit more symphonic, yes.”
And Roger Roger, are you familiar with his music?
“Yes, Roger Roger, I have recorded one title in his studio. He died ten years ago. Now
his widow still owns and runs the studio.”
Would you consider either one of them to be influential for your music?
“Andre' Popp, no. Roger Roger, yes. Because he was like, for me, a master. Because
first of all, he was a complete musician and a good arranger, a good musician. Which
I am not, I'm not an arranger.”
I'm just amazed by your arrangements.
“But they're not my arrangements.”
Who did the arranging, then?
“On the first two Vanguard records, Gershon Kingsley did all the arrangements. On
the two other records I had Harry Breuer's help, who was a fine, fine musician, good
help and also Angelo Badamenti, who is now the composer for many David Lynch
films.”
So they would take your melodies and then write arrangements to them?
“Yes. I would be playing the synthesizer on top of those tracks, in Vanguard's
recording studio.”
That's amazing, because I know that you don't read music.
“No.”
So you would have all these complex arrangements to play your music on top of.
“You know how I did it? Because I made it track by track. When it was too quick, I
slowed down the speed of the track by half. When you slow the speed, you have halftempo.”
I've turned those records down to 16 rpm many, many times, to try and figure out how you did
this or that. Some of the harmonies, sometimes sounds like three or four synthesizers, in those
days you could only play one sound at a time. It sounds very lush, very rich. It must of taken
hours and hours.
“Yes, for me to do a record it took one year to do all the taping.”
Now, what year did you record "The In Sound From Way Out" with Gershon Kingsley?
“1965. We started to record in 1965, and it came out in 1966.”
By the time of your album, "The Amazing, New Electronic Pop Sound...," the Moog sounds are
much more polished. You have much more control over the instrument, I think.
“Yes, because I was more used to the instrument,
that's why. I always wanted to keep the marriage
between the Ondioline, and the Moog synthesizer.
And also between the loops and the crazy
sequences of musique concrete.”
How involved was Harry Breuer in making "The Happy
Moog"? His name is on it, but isn't it all you?
“It was Harry and me. Harry played keyboards
because he played mallets: marimbas and
vibraphone. He played all these instruments. It
was quickly done. So he played on the record - it
was also a kind of collaboration.”
Now, was that recording done purely in your studio, because it has a different sound than the
ones done at Vanguard?
“Because I improved my studio in the meantime; instead of just having the 4-track
recorder, Igot an 8-track recorder. I could do more sophisticated work on the 8-track,
with the improved electronics. When I brought my tape into the studio at Vanguard,
they had a 16-track. We'd transfer the 8-track to the 16-track, and then we put the
(backing) musicians on top of it. I had better control of the Moog because of my 8track machine.”
I understand the early days of the Moog, it would go out of tune a lot and was very hard to keep
in tune. Was that true?
“Yes, the first Moogs were very hard to keep in tune. We had to tune it all the time every 6 or 7 minutes it had to be tuned.”
Did Robert Moog send a representative to help with the synthesizer? I know a lot of times he
would send people, like Paul Beaver to help with the recordings to make sure that people would
be able to use the instrument.
“He came himself, he came to the studio several times. Because, in 1966 we got the
first Moog, the big Moog. He was sometimes changing the modules with improved
electronics. When he had something to change he called, came over and he replaced
some pieces inside because he discovered it made a better sound or a new sound. He
was a big help, very nice.”
So he was actually in the studio when you recorded those records? Robert Moog?
“He came sometimes as a friend, to see if we needed something.”
What did you think when you had used the Ondioline for so long, and it was so small, and then
all of a sudden you had this huge console Moog synthesizer, with all these switches and buttons?
What did you think?
“Well, I was afraid.”
Afraid to touch it?
“I wasn't really afraid, but I was
perplexed. I am still using the Ondioline.
I am going to do a show in Brussels
soon. On the 1st of July, I will play the
Ondioline there.”
That's amazing that you've gone back to how
you started, basically. After all these years,
you going back to the Ondioline.
“My life is a loop!”
It's very similar to Robert Moog, he's gone back to the Theremin. Just like he started out in high
school, making them out of radio parts. Now he's started his own new company to produce
Theremins.
“Yes, and also he's going to build more Moog synthesizers. He's going to build the
same cabinets as in the 1960's, but it will cost a little bit more.”
Oh really? When I was in high school I was able to play one of the console Moogs at one of the
local schools. That was a really big thrill for me. Those are very collectable now, its very hard to
find those.
“Yes, in France you cannot find an old Moog, it's impossible. People want to buy the
big Moogs, but no one wants to sell theirs. Of course, you can find the Mini- Moog,
Micro-Moog: small units, that's all. But not the big units.”
I've noticed that a lot of your music sounds like it has a lot of ragtime influence. Particularly on
"The Happy Moog," and a couple of other albums, too. Were you influenced by ragtime?
“No, that was Harry Breuer. Because he specialized in ragtime. He recorded for the
Audio Fidelity Company, which I don't know if it still exists now, but he made a
record of all ragtime for them. He was not only using ragtime , he could adapt to any
kind of music. He was a fine musician - he played on many commercial sessions. We
did a lot of commercials together. So, he could adapt himself to any kind of music,
that's what I call a true musician.”
Now speaking of commercials, I know that you have won a couple of Clio Awards. One for the
Volkswagon commercial?
“No, that is a mistake. Let's go back. In 1968, Gershon and I won a Clio Award for the
No-Cal drink, the drink without sugar in it. So Gershon and I together won, in 1968.
The Volkswagon commercial was the first commercial I did in the United States, in
1961 with the Ondioline, but it had nothing to do with the Clio Award.”
I see, and what about the song, "The Savers"?
"The Savers," was the tune which won the Clio Award, it was the one with Gershon
for No-Cal.”
You say you have recorded many, commercials. Do you have recordings of all the commercials
you've done?
“I've lost the tracks. I still have some, but they are in very bad shape. They are on
recording tape, and recording tape doesn't last very long. I could probably save a few
initial sounds from my library, but not all.”
You recently transferred a lot of your tape loops onto your Kurzweil, it that correct?
“On my Kurzweil, I have all my bank of sounds and loops on hard disk.”
So, now you don't have to worry about the tape breaking down!
“No more, that's a good thing about technology.”
Now I know you left the US for good in 1970, for family reasons. Then you worked with the
ballet company, is that right?
“That's right.”
Then, you recorded several albums of cartoon music?
“Yes, MP2000 (Montparnasse) was the name of the company. Now, presently the
company who owns the catalog is EMI, who intend to republish them in CD form.”
Fantastic.
“Well, that's what I've heard. I have to inquire about it, because somebody told me
about it recently. That they intend to make first a compilation of the best tunes I did
with this company.”
I've noticed that your daughter, Pat Prilly is credited a lot of your songs.
“Yes, she's a very fine musician.”
Did she actually write the songs that her name was on, or would you put her name on some of
your own songs?
“No, she did not write all the things, but she gave me the ideas. When she came to
New York, she was only 15 years old. She played the organ, but she wanted also to
compose. She gave me the departure of the tune, which is very important. So in the
studio we doubled up together, it was like a family composition, you see!”
That's great, I never knew that. So she would actually be playing next to you on the organ?
“On the organ, yes. Not in the Vanguard studio, but in my studio at Carroll's Music.”
It's been almost 30 years since you left the U.S. Why the long gap of time between then and now
in the public eye?
“Well, because I was completely forgotten. I was waiting, completely demoralized. I
did not know what was happening with my music in the USA, or in England. Many
people, many hip-hop artists, DJ's and rappers were sampling "E.V.A," (from 1970's
Moog Indigo. Artists like DJ Premier. Guru from Gang Starr, Ice T. And many of the
DJ's just took out the first two bars, and made a song out of it, then rapped over the
melody.”
How do you feel about people sampling your music without getting your permission or paying for
it?
“For me its an honor, you know, I don't mind. I encourage them to do that because
it's like recognition you see. For me, it's very gratifying.”
A lot of them don't even put your name on the record, I don't think that's right.
“It doesn't matter, because now it is recognizable.”
That's a very generous attitude, actually.
“In a way, sampling is becoming part of the music's life. I feel gratified for that.”
You're doing a lot of live performances again. Do you enjoy performing?
“I am enjoying it very much, it was my first beginning. When I finished my medical
studies, I discovered the Ondioline, and I went into demonstrating for the inventor of
the Ondioline. I demonstrated the instrument in many towns of Europe. Then I decide
to put together a 20-minute act of "Around the World in 80 Ways." So I played it in
France, Paris...everywhere. That's the time I met Jean Cocteau, Edith Piaf, and
Charles Trenet.”
When you came to the U.S., I know that you did a lot of performances on American television
and radio.
“Yes, I did Arthur Godfrey on radio. I did the Mike Douglas Show. I did a lot of kids
shows, Captain Kangaroo.”
So, you were demonstrating the Ondioline on "The Captain Kangaroo Show"?
“Yes, but not only demonstrating, but illustrating his stories with sounds.”
In 1993, the Incredibly Strange Music book came out, with your interview in it. I think it brought
a lot of interest to your music. Have you noticed that book has made an impact?
“You know Mr. Vale, he's the director of
RE/Search, [Now known as V/Search,
who publish the ISM books.] He came
to find me in France, and we met in
Disneyland Paris. That got me in touch
with a lot of people, who people did not
know my address. It's thanks to him.
For this, I am very grateful to him,
because everything started again,
thanks to Vale.”
Your manager, Lisa tells me that you're going
to be coming to the U.S. to do lectures at
some Universities. That sounds very exciting.
“Well, that depends on her because
she's arranging my calendar. If it comes
together, I will make a tour from town
to town on the West Coast.”
Will that be just by yourself or with other
musicians?
“No, at the Universities I will only have a technician with me. Lisa will come also.”
I understand that you will be demonstrating your techniques for making the tape loops.
“Yes. That's very attractive to universities. I did that in England and had a lot of
success.”
You have been doing some live shows in Europe, with some live musicians. Any possibility of
bringing your show with the live music to the U.S.?
“You know, it would cost a lot of money to bring all the materials: instruments,
musicians. If we had a solid contract, I could do it. Maybe I'll do it when I have made
a record in the U.S.”
Klaus Wunderlich
Klaus Wunderlich was born to a policeman in the
Saxony town of Chemnitz in 1930. As a teenager he
worked for the local opera rehearsing singers but soon
chose popular music over classical. By 1951 he was
ready to tour West Germany, which led to a standing
gig at the Tiny Cabaret Simple in Mannheim. Here he
was playing winsomely in a beer hall, and the owner
and patrons liked him enough to buy an expensive
organ. Then Telefunken found and signed him.
Wunderlich experimented with the Hammond, as all the
great pop organists have done, to discover and add to
its range of extraordinary sounds. It was not long
before he was using organ and early synthesizer to
reproduce strings, horns, and so forth. To overcome the
early synthesizer's one-note-at-a-time limitation, he
became an expert at multi-tracking, effects, and other production wizardry. The magic was not
all technical, however. Wunderlich, like a benign Black Forest gnome, played music that pandered
to popular taste but also pushed the boundaries for keyboardists. He wrote some great tunes and
arranged many others in a zany way not seen since Lenny Dee, whose career was peaking as
Wunderlich picked up the baton. Wunderlich shared Ethel Smith's affinity for Latin and Brasilian
rhythms, Lenny Dee's zany pop sense, and Jean-Jacques Perrey's lighthearted invention and
technical facility. A long series of albums for Telefunken included some Moog albums and demos
for the Wersi super-organ, which was something like a Hammond stuffed with Moog capabilities.
The Hammond Pops and other Wunderlich albums are notorious, mainly because the music and
jackets are rife with cheese and cheesecake. There is a lot of "mush" to sift through, to be sure,
but fine gems twinkle there too, as if out of a fairy tale by the brothers Grimm.
Review “Sound 2000, Vol. 1” - It is only fitting that a German
keyboardist, particularly this one, should make a Moog record.
Sound 2000 follows the success of Hot Butter's "Popcorn," and
indeed "Corn-Flakes" is a conscious and worthy sequel. The other
major track is "Krimoogulus," an original on a crime theme. While
these moments make it essential for the Moog fan, much of the
album seems overly concerned with sound and technique.
Wunderlich's skill at multi-dubbing and Moog replication of the
standard instruments (except percussion) is phenomenal, to be
sure, but he could have taken arrangements in the upbeat
"Popcorn" style a lot further. As an introduction to the Moog for his
usual customers, however, it more than serves its purpose.
Review “Uraltedelschnulzensynthesizergags” - According to
Wunderlich's own translation, it is a "hit parade of synthesizered
old evergreens," meaning Moog renditions of [German] cheesy
chestnuts. A companion album to Sound 2000, this one benefits
greatly from having a theme, however dubious it may sound. In
fact, it may be the only Moog album of the day to tackle this
material in quite this way. At least two tracks feature electronic
whistling, itself a singular achievement. The album never quite
reaches the full-on impact of Wunderlich's best, but neither is it a
sleeper. "Glow Worm (Moskito-Killer)" may be tasteless but it supplies the kind of inspired hilarity
one expects from both Wunderlich and Moog albums. Good humor and creativity make this a
charmer all the way through. And at the very end, Wunderlich's own liner notes admonish us,
"Should you not like the record please buy all the copies available and destroy them!!!"
Review “Sud Americana, Vol. 3” - The true test of any Hammond organist, for all time, is
how well he or she measures up on Latin and Brazilian tunes. Thank Ethel Smith and Walter
Wanderley for that; otherwise it might still be polkas and "Skaters' Waltz." Süd Americana 3
(Latin Festival) delivers the goods and then some. First, there are 14 tracks, so delete a couple of
dogs — if you can find any — and you'll still have a great standard dozen. "Latin Hustle" is an
interesting disco novelty, and "Baia" turns back the clock further to the age of exotica. Probably
no one needs to be told that the killer cuts are the sambas, however. The use of Moog on some
of these is welcome, although more of the wacky Wunderlich inventiveness would have been
nice. "One Note Samba" risks a bit more, perhaps because of the Perrey-Kingsley Moog
precedent. Another way to look at this album is as one that takes in all periods of the man's
work. Several tunes are remakes or versions of tunes performed also on his Wersi organ
demonstration albums. In any case, Latin Festival finds the master at his peak and at play, and
what a joy it is.
Review “Sound Explosion” - This is the one. The song selection, arrangements, playing style,
and production here hit all the high points of the Klaus
Wunderlich experience. One of several albums demonstrating the
Wersi super-organ, the sound exploding in Sound Explosion is
that of a missing link between organ and Moog, or at least an
organ souped up enough to sound like a Moog but without the
engineer. The chestnuts here are wacky, upbeat, and pure
synthesizer cheese as only "Wunder-Klaus" can invent it.
"Caravan" naturally is a strong highlight, and even "Chattanooga
Choo Choo" chugs by at full steam. The closing track "Slalom
Beat," however, is one of the best things Wunderlich has ever
done. An original, funky, exotic number at four minutes long, it is
simply the cat's meow. The jacket photo of dynamite sticks
resting atop the keyboard accurately indicates the blast inside.
Review “Fascination Di Wersi Mento” - Fascination is one of at least three albums
demonstrating the Wersi super-organ. Generally, this is the one for those who like things on the
sappy, easy-listening side. "Bubblegum," however, is as much a sequel to Hot Butter's "Popcorn"
as Wunderlich's own "Cornflakes" from Sound 2000. And the version of "Tico Tico" here definitely
distances the tune by light years from Ethel Smith. "In the Hall of the Mountain Kings" is also hip
in a cheesy way, and of course "Exodus" rivals Hugo Montenegro's version of "My Way" for best
cut to end a set of Moog music. Nice photos of the Wersi super-organ on the jacket complete this
delightful, obscure treasure for the pop Moog or organ fan.
Review “WersiTime, Vol. 2” - WersiTime 2 is by far the most common and deluxe of at least
three albums to date demonstrating the Wersi super-organ — super-organ, meaning a monster,
mutant device reputedly cramming everything a Moog could do into a Hammond-esque package,
or so it seems with Wunderlich at the console. There are a solid 28 tracks, and the brevity of
each is not damning. Many are very useful as production music, from classics such as "Cherry
Pink" and "Girl From Ipanema" to the standout "Theme From Shaft." That's right, the cheesy
German keyboard master plays a funky soundtrack number on super-organ. As if that weren't
enough — and it is indeed already too much — the inside of the gatefold is filled with pages
detailing how to play like Klaus in your own home. Gilding the glaze on the gateau is a series of
photos of the several Wersi models. Wunderlich even hams it up, mugging for the camera in
shots as crazy as his best music. Wersi seems to suggest time for humor and some great,
certainly unpretentious but advanced organ music; what could be better?
(1973) Wersitime, Vol.1 – Wersirama, Der Tongenerator Ein Marchen!, Oszillator-Swing Mit
Netzteil, Der “Wackelton”, Jazz Oder Nie, Wersitronic, Yesterday, Der Gedruckte Ton, Der
Richtige Ton In Allen Lagen, Klange In Fertigbauweise, Klange Aus Einzelteilen, Der Konzertsaal
Im Wohnzimmer, Getretene Tone, Der “Gashebel”, Freia Fahrt Fur Wersi, Ich Bin Ja So Verliebt,
Fest Register, Sakrale Klangfarben Ausschnitte Aus, Effekte – Percussion Ausschnitte Aus, Sustain
Ausschnitte Aus, Hawaii – Effekte Ausschnitte Aus, Wersimatic Ausschnitte Aus
(1973) Sound 2000, Vol. 1 – Cherokee, Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head, Lotto-Zahlen,
Blue Tango, Felicidade, To The Spring, Cornflakes, La Paloma, Humoresque, Dufter Zahn,
Charade Krimoogulus
(1973) Fascination Di Wersi Mento – American Patrol, Theme From Love Story, An Der
Schoenen Blauen, Donau, Exodus, Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head, Tico-Tico, Solveig’s-Lied,
In The Hall Of The Mountain Kings, Sentimental Journey, Ole Guapa, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
(1974) Sound Explosion – Moritat, Rosen Aus Dem Suden, Klaviwersi Rag, Chattanooga Choo
Choo, The Green Leaves Of Summer, In A Little Spanish Town, Caravan, Goin’ Out Of My Head,
Komm’ Mit Mir Ins Chambre Separee, Theme From Tschaikowski, Swinging Mozart, Slalom Beat
(1974) Uraltedelschnulzensynthesizergags – Anvil Polka, Canary - Cha Cha Cha, Birthday
Serenade, Souvenir, Flibbertigibbets, Entry Of The Gladiators, The Mill In The Black Forest, Glow
Worm, The Clock Is Playing, Bummel-Petrus Blumenlied, Sleeping, Beauty’s Wedding
(1975) Sound 2000, Vol. 3 – The Sound Of Music, Deep Purple, Tristeza, Moonlight In
Vermont, Wedding Day, Moon River, Moonlight Serenade, Pennies From Heaven, Adagio
Cantabile, Blues, Theme From “Furst Igor”, Prelude Cis-Moll Opus 2 Number 3
(1976) Sud Americana, Vol. 3 – Amor Amor Amor, Eso Es El Amor, Summer Samba, Rumba
Tambah, Let’s Do The Latin Hustle, Cu-Cu-Ru-Cu-Cu Paloma, Canto De Ossanha, Besame Mucho,
Mas Que Nada, La Parranda, Baia, One Note Samba, Ole Guapa, Brazil
(1976) WersiTime, Vol. 2
Lothar & The Hand People
One of the weirder psychedelic groups of the late '60s, the New York-based Lothar & the Hand
People took special pride in augmenting many of their tunes with the theremin, a then-futuristic
instrument most famous for its use in horror movies (as well as the Beach Boys' "Good
Vibrations"). Playing eccentric satirical rock, good-time folk-rock, and experimental psychedelia,
their material wasn't nearly strong enough to elevate them to the rank of innovators. Although
their first album is their best, they are most fondly remembered for the trance-inducing "Space
Hymn," an FM radio favorite for many years.
Review “Presenting… Lothar And The Hand People” - This group may be one of the more
fondly remembered psychedelic cult bands of the late '60s, but their debut album hasn't dated
that well. Their determinedly freaky material has some period
charm, but the songwriting and singing really aren't all that hot.
There are other problems: the frequent use of "Lothar," the
group's theremin, sounds gimmicky rather than futuristic. They
vacillate between good-time New York psychedelia in the style of
The Youngbloods (who did it much better) and satirical shockrock of The Mothers (who also did it much better), and the
styles don't mix especially well. What sounded adventurous and
far-out at the time can be a bit flat and embarrassing out of the
context of the era. The saving grace of the CD reissue is the
addition of six bonus cuts from their first three singles. Of
variable quality, they nonetheless show The Hand People playing
it straighter and, for the most part, the psychedelic folk-rock on
these rare tracks was more effective and tuneful than the material on their LPs. The undoubted
highlight is the fabulous "L-O-V-E (Ask For It By Name)," an explosive slice of pop-psychedelia
that ranks as one of the best hit-singles-that-never-were of the late '60s.
(1968) Presenting… Lothar And The Hand People – Machines, This Is It, This May Be
Goodbye, That’s Another Story, Kids Are Little People, Ha (Ho), Sex And Violence, Bye Bye Love,
Milkweed Love, You Won’t Be Lonely, The Woody Woodpecker Song, It Comes On Anyhow, Paul
In Love, Have Mercy, Let The Boy Pretend, L-O-V-E (Ask For It By Name), Rose Colored Glasses,
Every Single Word, Cosmic Strip
(1969) Space Hymn
The Moog Cookbook
After hearing their rich and
textured songs, it's hard to
believe that the Moog Cookbook
is only a duo (comprised of
Roger Manning and Brian
Kehew). Manning first came to
the public's attention as part of
the sadly ignored retro-rockers
Jellyfish, who released a pair of
critically acclaimed albums, then
split up in 1994. Manning then
formed two new bands,
Imperial Drag and the Moog
Cookbook, who couldn't have
been more different from each other. Imperial Drag was an excursion into early-'70s glam rock,
while the Moog Cookbook played synthesized versions of popular rock hits by other artists,
performing in space-suit disguises and adopting the aliases Meco Eno and Uli Nomi. Signed to
Restless Records, the duo released their self-titled debut in 1996, which featured recent
alternative/modern rock hits from the likes of Soundgarden, Green Day, and Weezer. It became a
popular underground favorite, with early support from MTV, who featured the band in a Week In
Rock episode, as well as the Foo Fighters (Dave Grohl asked the band to write music for the
opening segment of a Fighters video). Due to the success of the debut, the Moog Cookbook
returned to the studio, eventually producing Ye Olde Space Bande in 1997. This time, the band
tackled classic rock, covering standards originally written by Kiss, Boston, Led Zeppelin, and
others.
Review “The Moog Cookbook” - The Moog Cookbook's self-titled debut is a mix of the
obscure, the intriguing, and the humorous: a near-masterpiece of '80s and '90s alterna-rock hits
redone on vintage '70s Moog synthesizers. Although many may
pass the band off as a goof, upon closer inspection, the duo's
electronic restructurings of these covers are both entrancing and
fascinating. It's almost impossible to imagine how somebody could
redo the fiery Hendrix stomp of Lenny Kravitz's 1993 hit "Are You
Gonna Go My Way?" as an icy computerized piece, but the Moog
Cookbook somehow find a way. What about Nirvana's alienated
anthem "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as a Stevie Wonder funk
workout? Or Pearl Jam's "Evenflow" as a techno dance rave-up? All
of these wacked-out versions can be found here. Also included is a
cheesy lounge version of R.E.M.'s "The One I Love," a furious take
on Neil Young's "Rockin' In the Free World," and a rendition of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun"
with a Latin feel. The Moog Cookbook's debut is one of the most enjoyably silly releases to come
along in ages.
Review “Ye Olde Space Bande” - After achieving notoriety with
their self-titled album in 1995, the duo known as the Moog
Cookbook decided to follow it up with a set of classic rock hits.
And the results on Ye Olde Space Bande are just as good as their
humorous debut. It's hard to imagine a synthesized makeover of
songs by such hard rock/heavy metal artists as Kiss, Van Halen,
and Ted Nugent, but the duo somehow finds a way of transcribing these favorites. A unique host
of special guest rockers, both old and new, are present (Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh, the MC5's
Wayne Kramer, the Go-Go's' Charlotte Caffey, and the Eels' 'E', among others), who help add to
the inspired, party-like atmosphere. All ten tracks are great, but the best are a space-age funk
version of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" (with the middle breakdown section containing
snippets of the Who, Pink Floyd, and others) and a patriotic version of Kiss' "Rock and Roll All
Nite." Also included is a techno makeover of Boston's "More Than a Feeling" and a roboticized
take on Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love." Highly recommended.
(1996) The Moog Cookbook – Black Hole Sun, Buddy Holly, Basket Case, Come Out And Play,
Free Fallin’, Are You Gonna Go My Way, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Even Flow, The One I Love,
Rockin’ In The Free World
(1997) Ye Olde Space Bande – Born To Be Wild, Cat Scratch Fever, Sweet Home Alabama,
More Than A Feeling, Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love, Whole Lotta Love, Ziggy Stardust, 25 Or 6 To 4,
Hotel California, Rock & Roll All Night
Synthmuseum.com Interview (1997) - Monday, 17 November 1997, Boston, MA, USA Today The Moog Cookbook came to town. They played across the river in Cambridge at a club
called the Middle East. What a show! The band, two
spacemen named Meco Eno (Brian Kehew) and Uli
Nomi (Roger Manning), came out onto the stage to the
sound of Gleeman Pentaphonics rendering a majestic
introduction to the Weezer hit single "Buddy Holly".
They took their places, each behind his own rack of
synthesizers and played a fantastic set of instrumental
synthesizer renditions of your favorite modern and
classic rock hits. If you haven't heard both of their CD's,
do yourself a favor and get them. Where else can you
hear a Moog IIIC modular, ARP 2600, DKS Synergy,
Oberheim 8-Voice, Davoli Sint, Minimoog, Mellotron,
Steiner Synthacon, and many others on one CD? The
Moog Cookbook (Restless Records, 1996) Their debut
self-titled CD contains 10 all-synthesizer renditions of
songs such as Weezer's "Buddy Holly", Green Day's
"Basket Case", and the not-to-be-missed "Smells Like
Teen Spirit" by Nirvana. Ye Olde Space Band (Restless
Records, 1997). As the title implies, this recording has
10 classic hits including "Born to be Wild", "Cat Scratch
Fever", "Hotel California", and even the KISS hit "Rock
and Roll All Night". The next day, Tuesday, 18
November 1997, I got a chance to meet with half of the duo. Brian Kehew graciously brought
over a portion of his collection of vintage product literature, spec sheets and advertisements. So
we sat and scanned, and talked for an hour or two. The Synthmuseum now has its work cut out
for next year and a half! Our conversation meandered back and forth between The Moog
Cookbook, and whatever we happened to be scanning at the time. What follows is a portion of
that interview: First a bit of relevant history: In 1968 Wendy Carlos released her album,
Switched-On Bach, which proved that the synthesizer could actually be used to make interesting
and complex music. As Bob Moog explains:
"All the record producers had to have their Moog record in 1969. We got orders from CBS, NBC,
Electra, a lot of other guys. And these guys didn't want just 'one of this and two of that....' They
said, 'Give me your biggest system,' and they expected to make money like Carlos did. I could
play you some of these records. A few of them still stand up. But mostly they were cynical, inept,
opportunistic things: Throw together a group, lay down some strings and horns and vocals, leave
some space for a novelty melody line from the synth. That was the scene in '69,... 'Moog'
records."
--Bob Moog [excerpted with permission from the book Vintage Synthesizers by Mark Vail,
copyright Miller Freeman, Inc]
These records often featured silly, hasty arrangements of popular records (Beatles, Bacharach,
Buck Owens, etc.) This period, from 1968 to the early 1980's, was the "Golden Age" of
synthesizers. It was then that synthesizers were constantly being refined and re-configured. Rock
bands such as ELP and jazz musicians such as Chick Corea were constantly testing the
boundaries of these synths. Everyone was always looking for the "next best thing". Then came
the "dark age" in the late 1980's and early 1990's. All of a sudden keyboards and synthesizers
were "out" and guitar rock was "in". Few bands had synthesizers, or at least admitted to it. It
was then that people like Brian Kehew and Roger Manning started buying vintage keyboard castoffs. Suddenly the instruments they always saw in advertisements and dreamed of owning were
unwanted and extremely affordable. By now they have quite a collection. Roger and Brian met
through a classified ad in a Los Angelos newspaper. Brian was selling an Optigan, what Brian
refers to as an "obsolete, evil instrument". They immediately bonded over their love for vintage
synths and The Moog Cookbook was born.
It says in your bio that the idea for Moog Cookbook was suggested by Roger's girlfriend?
“I think that she was one that first had the actual idea. This was strictly for Roger
initially that he should use the synths and do a, what we call a Moog album, which is
those old '69 records that are so goofy. And they collected those. And they were in
their own world doing what I was doing in my place which was buying old keyboard
and old albums. We had alot of the same records and quite a few different ones.
There's a pile of them out there, of those goofy, you know, just bought a synthesizer
and we're learning how to use it by playing cover tunes. There's definitely a certain
style of music. The funny part is, it's an interesting mixture because there's alot of
people who didn't know how to work the [synthesizer] very well. It was pretty
complicated to pop into a modular and get going with it. So a lot of people had the
help of people like Walter Sear on their records... You'd have a programmer in but
they'd have some jazz guy playing the keyboard. And people often came up with
accidental sounds or even ones that were inappropriate. You know, the glide was too
slow to get to the notes it was suppose to or the attack was too slow and it's hilarious
to listen to this when you know how to work a synth. And it's very, very pro
synthesizer when you hear those albums. They're [mixed] way up front and they're
not covered up. So it's kind of a good period to hear some keyboards from. We love
those albums alot. His girlfriend thought about it. But Roger and I, of course, had all
these keyboards that people just wouldn't let us use on their records because it was
just too goofy of a sound. I mean, that was a few years ago when it was all guitars
and no one had a keyboard. There were not even Hammond bands floating around
again.”
And you guys bank on that goofyness to carry Moog Cookbook.
“Yeah, we're definitely poking fun at the same stuff we love. And I stab my keyboard
with a knife in the show [a reference to Keith Emerson], and little jokes like that
keyboard people will know. We like that stuff very much, but everytime we hear
"From the Begining" by ELP we laugh when we hear the keyboard solo. It's just goofy
but yet it's really cool too. We like it a lot, you know, we grew up with it. And even
stuff we didn't grow up with, the old Perrey & Kingsley albums and stuff that I've had
for about ten years and they were already fifteen years old [when I got them],
they're incredible records.”
You are also an avid synth literature collector.
“I love the period when you'd
see early synth catalogs,
probably before '72 or '73,
everyone looked like a
scientist. Nobody had long
hair in those catalogs. They
weren't pushing that aspect
of it. They had guys in lab
coats and glasses working the
gear. And then, when
Emerson started getting in
the Moog catalogs, '74, '75
especially, and then Herbie
Hancock, Billy Preston and so
forth, they were saying "Let's
push these toward musicians
because it's cool."
And they realized how lucrative it was to have Stevie Wonder endorsing your product.
“And then it would finally be more imporant for musicians than for scholarly people.
But we like the scholarly aspect of all this stuff, and remember the days when
evrybody learned about electronic music by going to a little tiny lab room with a fourtrack Teac and an ARP 2600 and a bunch of acoustic tile on the wall. You know, doing
four-track pieces in a room.”
What is your background, professionally?
“I come from an engineering, producing, kind of background. Studio work for other
people, mostly. Never been in bands too much. Always avoided that because I always
treated it as a hobby, but it just turned into a hobby that became bigger. I really
enjoy studio work, it's a lot of fun, and I like to work on everything from huge
progressive rock albums to cheap punk rock albums with 20 songs cut in an hour and
the whole spectrum of that. So I have that studio experience coming to what I do.
And I also taught for a while, recording, at a university, Cal State, where I graduated
from. It's a really good recording school.”
[Note: Brian's partner, Roger Manning, has spent much of his time in bands. Many recognize
Manning's name for his former band, Jellyfish (with co-songwriter, Andy Strummer) and, more
recently, Imperial Drag.]
Are you surprised at the amount of attention that the Moog Cookbook CD's are getting?
“Yes, very surprised. Although I thought it would get attention... you know, we're
getting fan mail from Turkey and places like that.”
The Moog Cookbook has quite a reach.
“It's the target audience. Our favorite fans of The Moog Cookbook are people that
pretty much grew up in the 70's. They might have even used synths back then or at
least they went to music stores, like we did, and looked at them 'cause they couldn't
afford them. And alot of [our fans are] people who grew up in classic synthesizer
backgrounds, like listening to ELP and Wendy Carlos and people like that. And [there
are] people who've even had some [Morton] Subotnick, or [Milton] Babbit kind of
backgrounds too, it's kind of cool for us. We like people that grew up with Billy
Preston and all of the '70 stuff. That was such a wide spread field, if you think about
it. Roger and I are constantly amazed by old Downbeat magazines and old Keyboard
magazines where you have one page is Herbie Hancock, and the next page is
Stockhausen, and the next page is Keith Emerson. And it's amazing. Things are a little
more controlled now-a-days, where not everyone listens to such a wide range of
music. Everybody's got their own field they like to listen to. So that is a good period
for what we like. We keep telling people we're just keyboard nuts. Whether they're
nice pianos or cool Hammond organs, or Mellotrons, or Minimoogs, or even ARP
String Ensembles, we just love that kind of stuff. Even new keyboards, I mean we
love the fact that you can record with bright silver things with touch screens on
them. It's such a great idea. They don't sound that good, but it's such an interesting
thing to have people do. Ten years ago we were kind of desperate. Ten years ago was
the dark period when people weren't making keyboards who cared anything. It was
all D-50s and things like that, you know LA Synthesis and so on. And now they're
getting some hip ideas, ribbon controllers on synths again, and stone pitchbend
wheels and mod things, it's pretty cool.”
So how do you approach the arranging process for each song?
“We try to come up with the concepts first. Like we'll have a song, let's say it was
Don't Fear the Reaper, which we decided not to do. But we'll listen to it, listen to the
chord changes and see what might be appropriate for it, will it work as a two-step
country song, what about a jazz piece, what about a fast disco number, and then
we'll try to fit it and see what fits. We'll find something that's appropriate like on the
Boston song [More Than a Feeling from the album The Moog Cookbook Plays the
Classic Hits] when we heard the chord changes going over a modern techno kind of
dance beat it worked really well. And then we said "That's it!" Or in the case of Hotel
California when we conceptualized and said, "It's such a long song, let's take each
section to a new style of music." A kind of theme-and-variations element. The
arrangement itself. And it worked pretty good.”
And I loved the "Old MacDonald" and all of that in Sweet Home Alabama, especially in you live
show.
“That was another idea we had. Whenever you listen to Keith Emerson stuff or Rick
Wakeman or a lot of people like that, almost every classic keyboard player would
throw quotes into their piano solos. Whether they're playing "Popeye" or whatever,
they like to throw a quote in there. So we think that's really funny, and stupid in a lot
of ways. We like it, and it makes everyone perk their heads up and pay attention, so
we decided to overdo that and just put quotes from all these really, really ridiculous
Americana things, over and over, back to back until you just almost wanted to throw
up. And it makes it work good. And when we found a way to do that live it was
interesting, too. And all those kind of things take away from the fact that we can't
play the album perfectly live. We do other things like the props and the arrangements
and the different goofy things we'll come up with. And people don't notice that it
doesn't sound just like the record.”
You've put a lot of thought into your live show.
“Exactly. We're painfully aware of the situation where [sometimes] there's nothing
for us to do. There's even a few moments where one guy just can't play for awhile,
'cause the other guy's doing something and there's no part to come in on, so you
have to dance around or do a tap dance or something.”
So, back to the arrangement process... after you get the concept, then what happens?
“Well, we actually try to fill the room up with keyboards so we'll have a lot of colors
on the palette at that point. We
can't ever get all the keyboards
into one room. I don't know how
many keyboards we have
altogether, but it's too much and
too big and too heavy and too likely
to break if we move it. So we'll get
one Polymoog out, you know, the
basic keyboards that we always
have, and we always have a
Jupiter-8 around and we always
have a Minimoog and we always
have a couple of things we like to
rely on...”
Like the Moog Source in your live show?
“It doesn't necessarily sound that much better than the other ones so we don't use it
that much studio-wise, we will pull it out 'cause it's got a good vibrato control on it,
very basic stuff, and [we are] very used to playing that live. So for things like the
solos in Hotel California [the Source] worked out great because you can use both
those wheels pretty easily and it [has] a good, clear tone that really cuts through. We
actually like a lot of one-oscillator instruments. Fatter is not always better, especially
with things like bass tones. You'd be surprised. When you're not trying to fill up a
huge space it's sometimes better to go with a single oscillator and go with something
pure that really cuts. We like the Sonic-6. It has amazing routing capabilities. Of all
the little synths like that it does some of the coolest stuff. It has two LFO's going to
an oscillator. It's kind of neat. You can do a lot of good spacey effects with it and a lot
of weird stuff. So we pile [synths] up in a room and we just grab things and try them
out. We've also got to have a few basics, like an ARP String Ensemble, around.
Because nothing else that will do that sound so you've got to have it in the room.”
This second CD, did you have more of a budget?
“More of a budget but we can always do the same thing with no budget or more
budget, depending how much time we want to put into it. It took more time, which
ended up costing more money, but just because we had more money to spend, we
got to spend more time on it. I don't think it sounds that different, we try to keep it
the same, but sometimes we work very quickly, we'll be done in a couple of hours on
certain soungs that are simple. We want a simple, Kraftwerk-y kind of sound, we'll
stick with it and play it that way. Other times, like "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" by Van
Halen, we built the track up. The [ARP] 2600 is almost the whole song. We did kick
drum with an ARP sequencer and a 2600, "Boom, Boom-Boom." And we did the snare
drum with an ARP sequencer and the 2600, and we did the toms with an ARP
sequencer and the 2600. Even the high-hats in fact, so the whole [drum] track is built
up one layer at a time, you know, and then Bass and then so forth. We went through
it and put stuff together so it took a long time.”
Did you find that the 2600 added some kind of cohesion to the song?
“It didn't sound better.. I really don't think it really sounds better, and I don't think
most people would notice, but for us it was a good experiment to try to get a drum
pattern that wasn't a preset from some 6-piece drum machine or a modern drum box.
It was kind of nice. We added a new feel to it.”
You even used live drums occasionally.
“Yeah, Roger plays very well, and we needed that for some tracks. "Whole Lotta
Love" wouldn't sound right, I think, without it. We don't work steadily, we don't have
a schedule. We'll show up some day work for two hours, other days for 10. And then
we'll take a week off and so forth.”
Do you then talk about what's going to happen at each session?
“Oh yeah, but we don't fight about it, we just discuss it nicely until we get out our
opinions... We'll try a hundred sounds in one setting. Roger tries sound #50. I laugh.
At the same instant he [laughs] and we both realize that that's the sound. So we have
pretty similar tastes in that. We can even trust each other. Like, I'll leave the studio
and he'll do stuff on his own, and I won't censor it, you know, 'cause I know it's going
to be good. And the same with me, he lets me alone and lets me do some things on it.
And we work best together. That's for sure. And Hotel California took the better part
of two weeks because there were so many arrangement things to do. The "Switched
on Bach" section, alone, took about 2 days. That was done the old way. We did that
one on the Moog III modular and went crazy and patched in two notes at a time, or
one note or five notes to make it work. And that's the only way to get it to sound
right. Then again, most people wouldn't notice it , they just think it sounds funny. But
people who know the Clockwork Orange soundtrack, for example, would definitely
get a laugh out of it, appreciate it.”
So as synthesists do you do much synth work or guest appearances?
“Yeah we both do. Roger gets called in for sessions a lot. We just did some stuff for
Aimee Mann's new record where they needed real spaceshippy kinds of sounds in a
cartoon/Jetson's kind of way and Roger's been working on call for a couple of bands
doing keyboard tracks. Usually they want The Moog Cookbook, kind of synthy stuff.
Although, we're both capable of doing something more substantial and lose the eery
and space stuff.”
How did this pair-up with the David Grohl and Foofighters come about?
“Dave Grohl loved our version of [Smells Like] Teen Spirit when he heard it so we got
him a tape of the first Moog Cookbook songs. I was having lunch with him and Pat
Smear one day and I mentioned I was going to Japan to play and he said, "What's
your band?" and I mentioned it to him and he's like, "That's one of my favorite
records! I have it in my car right now. I only have 10 CD's in my car and it's in my
car!" So he was already a big fan before I even met him. And then when they came to
do their video, they just called up and said, "We're doing this video that needs a
Muzak section and you guys are perfect for it. So can you have it done by
tommorow?" "As a matter of fact, we can," [we said]. So we popped it out. They only
needed 15 seconds or 10 seconds to work with but we gave them a whole song. It
wasn't that much harder for us to do the whole thing anyway. We put it together and
it's going to be out as a B-side in Europe.”
You also have an association with Mark Mothersbaugh (of Devo).
“Mark's a nice guy. He's the busiest person I've ever met. But he always has time for
us. He heard a demo tape we did before we had a record. It was like, Wow, Devo likes
our stuff!”
You have alot of people, guests apearing on the latest CD.
“We wanted that for the first one but aside from Mark Mothersbaugh, no one knew us
that much. When the record got finished, that's when people paid attention to it. A lot
of people were interested, like Wendy and Lisa were going to play on it and other
people like Eddie Jobson were interested in it.”
How'd you hook up with these people, from your studio experience?
“Yeah, some are friends, some are studio people.. Mark Mothersbaugh, we gave him a
demo tape one day, we saw him walking down the street and we put it in his hand.
And he came after us at one point, chasing us down, like "This is incredible!" We kept
pushing him to get involved and he liked that idea and we finally got him involved on
the Van Halen tracks ["Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love"]. And E from the Eels is a big fan of
ours, Michael Penn and his fiancee, Aimee Mann, are good friends. And Charlotte
Caffey from the Go Go's is a good friend of ours and she's actually a great keyboard
player in the pop context. She's been really good at that, so she fit right in when she
played on 25 or 6 to 4 it actually sounded like the Moog Cookbook exactly. I mean
she could have played half the tracks and it would have sounded like us. We have a
few more chops but she has a melodic sensibility that works great for what we do.
We would have loved to incorporate more people like Chick Corea and Emerson and
people like that, if we could find them, get in touch. And we'd like to have Eddie
Jobson and some people we really look up to to this day, not because of what they
used to do but [because] they're all great keyboard players. And they'll probably get
what we do more than anything because they went through that period, but they
might have bad memories, too, I don't know. I don't know how many of these people
have a sense of humor and we definitely require that of everybody who steps in the
door. The Eels just hired us for their B-side that's coming up. We enjoyed doing that
one alot and actually we wished we could have released that one, too. Although it's
not a big song, "Novocaine for the Soul" was a pretty good video single for MTV for a
while, great tune to work with. And we're looking to do more of that. We really want
to have people call us up and ask us to do songs of theirs if they're appropriate or
songs people know. So it makes sense for us to do those kinds of things.”
What else would you like to do?
“We would love to do tribute albums... Grateful Dead, Neil Young or anything, we
could do anybody's cover and it would definitely be an interesting addition to a
tribute album. And we'd really like to try branching off to... If Oscar Meyer wants a
new version of their [Oscar Meyer Weiner] theme song, done in a cartoony movie
kind of way, I think it could make a great commercial. We've actually been called
asked if we want to go work in the new "Lost in Space" movie, they asked us to do
some theme music for it. So we gave them two different things, one was very funny,
one was very serious, soundtracky type things. There are possiblilites there, that we
can use what we do to write original music and do serious stuff with it too...”
How did you guys approach this whole live thing. It must have been rough figuring out exactly
what you were going to take and what you had to leave behind.
“Yeah, originally it was intended not to be played live. We just thought it was going
to be a studio project and leave it at that. But then too many good offers came up
that we [decided we] should try something. We realized that, as opposed to hiring 6
other musicians to go out with us so that we could play all of these other parts which
we multi-tracked and put together, we're going to have to do it with two guys. And
that leaves us two hands apiece. We also had to choose a selection of keyboards that
would give us a variety of sounds and also be reliable and also not be too big and also
be, you know, cool-looking, too. We didn't want to have the really dumb stuff. Things
like a Chroma could be taken out, I suppose. It'd be likely to break. It doesn't look so
hip. It doesn't look so much fun. I really always wanted to have a Minimoog sitting up
on top here. Because it's the most visible and fun to tweek around, and I do a lot of
knob twisting as we play.”
VSM: How much have you played out?
“A dozen or 20 shows, maybe. We did some Japan shows, we did some in LA and San
Francisco, and played MTV here and in Europe.”
Have you had any major problems with the Minimoog?
“No, except for the Minimoog occasionally transposing up and down a third as I was
playing it. But JL at Music Tech fixed that problem and it's stable as any modern
digital keyboard now. It just will not go out of tune. Which is great. We've changed
our set up from... I think [for] quite a few of the shows we've just changed the set up
completely. If we are playing in Los Angelos I can take out a Polymoog and a Sonic
Six, we've done that before. There's times when we've just played mono synths.
When we did MTV we had a Prophet V, two Minimoogs, and an Oberheim 2-Voice. It
all depends on what our set up is.. do we need a lot of variety? Like for the full live
touring show we do now, we need stuff with presets mostly. So Roger has two
Sources on the road and a JX-3P.Just real basic sounds, you know the real bright
clear sounds that we need to use. And I have the Minimoog with the Sequential
Programmer, which is the only way I can deal with Minimoogs is to have it
programmable. And then I have the new CS1x.”
Now with the CS1x do you feel like you are betraying some type vintage "code of honor"?
“Well yes and no. We actually like all keyboards whether they are acoustic or
mechanical or electro-mechanical or analog or digital. We have all of it, you know.
And we really like a lot of
digital stuff too. I think it
definitely doesn't sound as
good as the real thing. But I
can split the keyboard and
put effects on one half of the
keyboard and things like
that, too. And I need
something that is touchsensitive to get across some
of the feel we have in the
music. So to find it in a real
analog synth that is not
going to break down is hard.
And there's very few analog
synths that can do that
anyway. [The CS1x is] not
bad, it's bright blue, so it's
kind of visual and spacey
looking. It weighs about one
half pound and it's
replaceable if something
happens to it, which is
crucial. Obviously we'd like to have a whole bank of keyboards around us. We'd like
to put on the Asia 5 tour ourselves and be surrounded by a Wakeman pile, or a Jeff
Downs pile or something. It'd be great. Even to have three keyboards apiece would
be nice. It'd give us more options. But we can barely carry the stuff we have. We
don't have a road crew. So it's hard enough to set up the stuff we have. On our [most
recent shows] it was actually fun to end up taking out the Sequential [700]
programmer and the Steiner Master-Touch. Those are two of the coolest boxes that
people just didn't use.”
Now your Minimoog is connected to your Sequential System 700? How does that work?
“The 700 programmer, which is pretty happening, the way it works is it has two
envelopes built in. One envelope goes to the amp and one envelope goes to the filter.
So basically it replaces the envelopes that are in the Minimoog, that's very simple.
And it has a CV output for pitch so I can have an octave up, two octaves down,
whatever pitch I want. It has three outputs for pitch if you want. So, I can program
each oscillator if I wanted to, I could do chords on the thing. And that's great for a
2600, when you want to do it that way. You can store octaves and transpositions on a
2600 and then filter it and amplitude control.”
So are you triggering the Sequential from the Minimoog?
“The trigger from the Minimoog goes into the Sequential and tells it to start the
envelopes.”
And the Sequential, in turn, is controlling the Minimoog?
“Yeah, And then the pitch will go to whatever pitch you tell it to go to. And then the
filters and envelope run the the amp and filters. Pretty simple idea. It doesn't change
your oscillators on and off, it doesn't change your waveforms, it doesn't change your
routing, but that's enough of set up to do live. I can go from "Popcorn" to a fat and
buzzy bass sound, to a short flutey lead tone at the press of a button.”
You know I was watching you the other night. And I couldn't figure out how you were
programming the Minimoog so fast on the fly like that.
“As soon as I got that box, I couldn't believe it. Finally I can do what people should
have been doing all of these years... you know, Emerson had a little programming
system, and it was not too hard to do that but it's real nice to have it all preset and
programmable. And if people had it, they could really play the real thing live alot
more. And I've had no problems with it so far, so..”
And Roger has a Source?
“Roger has two Sources. He used to have three, but two is all he needs now. One and
a backup, kind of thing. They are great simple keyboards for the live stuff, especially
because they are programmable. And you have the Moog filter which is important to
the sound. We really want that sound.”
I didn't think that they were that reliable.
“They're not. That's why we have a spare on the road. And he's had quite a few
breakdowns here and there. The touch panel in front is the scariest part. It's also the
coolest looking part of the keyboard, it's got the blue and orange space age design to
it. And it looks good, it's silver, and it's got the big Moog name on the back and it
looks good for us on stage. We were very aware of how things look alot of times, too.
We would really like to have a 2600 around if we could with a programmer hooked up
to it, Just to do sound effects-type things. It's be great to watch us work the sliders
on it, it's facinating to see, but we just can't handle it, we know it'd break on the
road.”
Roger also plays a JX-3P?
“The JX-3P which I think will never break, they're pretty reliable. That or a Juno kind
of thing. Roger really likes those sounds that are really pure and bright and clear, sine
wavy, kind of clear things. Those work really good for that. And then of course,
delays, and distortion pedals and things like that help us out, too, to get a sound a
little more like the record. It really makes alot of sense to have more little things like
that, that you can do alot with. Roger playing with the delay unit and stuff, gets a
good spacy tone off a sine wave that people recognize. When it's just the dry thing,
sometimes it's a little boring. That's one of the things we love to do is process things.
We run synths through other synths all the time, we run them through pedals all the
time and it really adds alot to the sound, I think. At least it takes you out of the realm
of sounds that we've always heard before. I keep telling people, I can't wait to get
the Con Brio [ADS 200] up and running so I can put it through my Marshall. And see
what it sounds like.”
Talk about that Steiner Parker unit. Tell me all about it.
“The Steiner's Masters Touch is what they call it. It was made for the Crumar
company. I think it came with one of their synths and I can't remember which one,
the Stratus or something, it was right around that period. And it was an optional
accessory. It had two tubes that came with it. Basically they have a breath controller
to blow into. And it puts out a CV range from 0 to 10 volts kind of thing. And you can
control any thing with that. So when you are blowing you can open up and close the
filter on the Minimoog for example. Great controller. They have a sealed tube, which
is actually called a bite control, although you can use it for anything. That one you
can squeeze because it's sealed at one end. And then you can change the CV out 0 to
10 volts and control anything you want. On mine I pulled all of the stuff off it and put
really long surgical tubes in it so I could step on it and stuff on stage. It makes a
good visual. But you can actually have someone twenty feet across the room, sitting
at the mixer, blowing into it, controlling the brightness while somebody's across the
room playing the keyboard.”
So it works on air pressure.
“And if you tied a knot in the hose, it would be a basic bite controller where you could
step on it. It's one of the best controllers to put under your foot. You can, with subtle
foot pressure, make a thing open and close, you can do volume control, for example.”
It would be very intuitive that way.
“It's real simple. It's not like a pedal where you have to move the whole leg and stuff,
you just kind of lean a little bit on it. Or you can sit on it or put it under your armpit or
something, it doesn't matter. And alot of people like that because, even when they
are not keyboard players, they feel that they can have some fun controlling it. [Note:
A favorite Moog Cookbook thing to do live is to throw the long surgical tube off the
stage at the crowd and let people pull and stretch it, controlling the Minimoog.] The
other parts of the control are... it has a little touch plate, kind of like an ARP PPC, on
the later Odysseys. The plate is a piezo type unit. It outputs a temporary change, in
other words when you squeeze it, it notices the a change, but when you stop there's
no more change, even if you are pushing down hard. It notices the travel.”
The travel?
“While it's changing it changes, but while it stops nothing comes out. So you can use
that for, let's say, virbrato for a keyboard. Or I put it into the oscillator sometimes
and I just tap on it and I gets a little squirrely sound. It sounds a little bit organic.
But it's not really going to do pitch bend, cause once you've pushed hard, it will stop
and there won't be any change. But it measures the change. It's a weird one. And the
neatest part [of Steiner's Masters Touch] is it has an audio in and out with its own
low pass filter. So you can have a guitar player for instance, blowing on the tube, and
doing a breath control filter on the guitar. Or, which I like to do, playing a DX7
through the thing, for an analog filter. It warms it up like crazy, it sounds great. And
you get this really cool, funky, almost like a Mutron kind of idea where the filter is
opening and closing on cue. But, we're still not done.... He built the thing in with the
resonance and a filter itself so that when you blow harder, not only does the filter
open up, but the amplitude gets a little bigger and the resonance increases a bit. Now
if you look at what a trumpet does, if you start blowing harder, it gets brighter,
louder and it gets more focused because it starts resonating hard at that one
frequency. So it's really good for just playing a Minimoog through [it], for example. It
makes the thing sound more like a real instrument, expressively, because as you are
blowing harder, its shreiking a little bit more and when you are blowing softer, it's
getting darker, and more muted, and more mellow, and it's an amazing controller,
and running anything through it makes it sound more full.”
Is the Steiner-Parker Lyricon built upon that same concept.
“It's similar, but a controller in general - not necessarily the resonant filter part. I
don't know anything that has built upon [the Master Touch], cause it's such a good
combination of packages. I would buy it for just the breath controller/ CV alone, and
it has a good four or five other things on it.”
So how many things can happen at once. Can you only have one controller at a time?
“Everything has a separate output. There's the breath controller, the bite controller,
and the touch controller, each one of those things has a separate output. It has
switch trigger and V-trigger outs.”
And the three sliders?
“They have an amount control for the breath controller one. And then they have
resonance and filter.”
So what's up next? Are you guys going to do some more touring?
“Yeah, we're going to see how things go. We kind of take what's offered on the plate
and go with it. They say, "Do you guys want to go to New York?" or Washington or
something, and we say yes or no, depending on our schedules and moods.”
Now who is responsible for the maintenence of all these synths in your collection.
“There's two guys, basically, allthough we have a [number] of different people that
help out too. Kevin Lightner, and JL [of Musictek in LA] are probably the two people
we use the most. Kevin's and JL are really in demand, so we sometimes put things on
the back burner and wait for it to get finished. But anybody out there of any quality,
which is not only good repair people but inventive and clever and creative, and they
know what people like. Like JL has developed lots of amazing [things] for keyboards
over the years, because he's been doing it for so long. He knows more than anybody
in the country, probably, how to do some of these things. He's just amazing at
tweeking things out.”
Keyboard repair techs are a bit of a dying breed aren't they?
“Yeah, well there's a few coming in, but not many. And a lot of the old guys that did
it, I don't think they were very creative, they would just read the schematic and
replace the part that's broken. But both those guys (Kevin Lightner & JL) and a few of
the guys like Smith-Weir Labs and stuff are creative when they do it. And they have
to be because there's parts that aren't available or there's initial flaws in the
keyboards that need to be fixed.”
And can be fixed now with new technology probably better than before...
“For sure, I mean JL's working with Dave Kean to get the Emu Audity running again,
a big project like that. Let's see, repair guys... There's a few other people we haven't
counted who do certain things like when Roger has Wurlitzer work that needs to be
done, or we have Hammond work for a different guy.
So basically if you rig breaks down while you're in Boston, you're screwed?
“Yeah, although I don't expect it to break down, in other words, thing might go weird
with it and I can fix basic synth connections and a few broken parts and I can even
solder stuff on the road. And I've done that before but that's about it. I mean, it's not
going to go away and if it does I can rent one in a lot of towns now.”
What do you think is going to make synths sound better? Is it the recent analog resurgence?
“That is an interesting question because I'm very picky, being a studio person. You
can hear the difference between a different period of audio, like descrete audio,
where things are wired point to point, or when things have chips and IC in them and
all that. Or when you use transistors stuff verses tube, you can here the difference in
there. And there are very few synths that live up to the quality of what we want to
hear. Like the Minimoog, for example, or a modular synth, it has that fidelity that's
really good, but as soon as you hear a Prophet V you go, "what happened to the
sound?" And then when you get into the preset stuff, and digitally controlled
oscillators and so forth too, it just loses some of that punch. And the clarity of the big
CS80 sound as opposed to an OB-8 where it's just not there. And even that sounds fat
compared to modern synths. You know, it's that whole perspective thing. If you hear
an OB-8, you think, that sounds incredible, but when you hear a modular playing the
same note, it blows it away. So I think the tricky aspect [is] because modern things
[use samples]. As shown over and over again, you can't just sample something and
have it sound as good as the original, I don't know why. Somethings just can't repeat
like a sample repeats, like of a modular sound, you can't just sample four minutes of
cycling and make it do the same thing. So the audio question is a big thing but the
Yamaha CSX1 is a great sounding copy of an analog. Even so, there's something
that's just not correct about the fidelity. It's just like it's one window removed from
pure sound, a real synth.”
My philosophy is that it's the flaws that are not reproduced. No one reproduces the tuning drift in
a filter or the voltage steeling from one module to the next.
“Then again, that's part of what makes a Minimoog sound fat is drifting and grinding
oscillators a little bit. If it was perfectly locked in phase, it wouldn't sound fat
anymore. That's part of the thing, why we like the Polymoog, for example, it's got
these oscillators all over the place, shifting. It's not a fake chorus put on top of the
cofiguration, it's actually, there are notes detuned and with different pulse widths
and stuff, it sounds amazing. It just makes a difference in the tone.
And it's true, it's very possible for someone to build in those problems. Yamaha's SY
series had some nice randomness, as far as you can have random LFO's on each note.
Each one can be at a different speed or a synth where you can have variable attack
times, just random, plus or minus 5 percent on the attack would be nice. Those are
things that make things sound more interesting and cool. Like the Mellotron sounds
great because every note has a different pitch, vibrato and timbre to it. The Mellotron
sounds more like the real thing than a sampler even though the fidelity's worse.
People realize it, they say, why does it sound so good, yet the fidelity is not really as
good as a modern 16 or 20 bit sampler.”
There is another aspect of that philosphy though. People are going back to 12-bit samplers and
drum machines because they like the imperfections in that sound and they're finding out that "Oh,
that stuff sounded great".
“Kevin Lightner is the first person I know of that talks about lower sample rate. And
it's maybe not his idea, but the first person I know that said, you know, 8-bit sounds
good. Like for the PPG Wave or an early Fairlight sample, people don't argue that the
early sound they were make still sound good, yet by today's standards it's crappy
sampling. Especially with an 8-bit oscillator, a digital oscillator with an analog filter,
it's a great sound.”
It doesn't sound like the sample, like the real sound, but it makes a totally different sound in
itself. I think that's the whole point of synthesis is to make a totally different sound than existed
before.
“Also the fact that it is not sampling higher frequencies makes it a warmer sound,
that it doesn't really have the high end. Again, you can't find any synth these days
that gives you variable sampling rates, down to the low level that we are talking
about. What about 100Hz sampling rate? It's an amazing grinding sound if you've
ever been able to play with stuff like that. Or like 50 Hz sampling rate. It's just
incredible sounding. But no one does it.”
People are now trying to go back to using vintage synths.
“A lot of the reason is because the interface is just great. Anyone can figure out how
to use a Minimoog. They don't even have to know how it works. It looks interesting
enough and not too intimidating. You can get in there and have fun with it and learn
how things go and you will probably get a sound most of the time on it. It sounds
good when you play the simple things. Like a guitar and an amp. If you have an amp
and a great guitar you don't need alot of pedals, you're happy with the tone, so all the
bells and whistles don't necessarily have to be there. If you can get them and still
keep the good sound, that's even amazing too. But, again, knobs on the top is
something people are going back to now.”
What kind of things are you looking for in a synth?
“I love controllers. I'm starting to understand why people like Bob Moog and Tom
Rhea and all these people where screaming about having better controllers. Everyone
likes the Nord Lead. Why do they like it so much? They like the left hand stuff. I
mean, it sounds good and all that, but everyone's crazy about that little wooden thing
and that little stone [modulation wheel] at the end of the keyboard. It's a great idea
and it feels good for the human hands to touch that instead of a piece of plastic.
Anyone who's ever played a Yamaha pitch ribbon is crazy about those and really
misses it. If you took it off the keyboard you would feel something big was missing.
So, there are a lot of options out there. And again, there's touch control with
keyboards (keyboard action). When I play a Chroma or a Prophet T-8, that's what's
missing in all of these Prophet V's and Juno-6's and stuff. You really can't express
yourself near as much [without good keyboard action]... And I really wish things like
the Minimoog had that. It doesn't though. It would be ten times better if it did. And
to have lever controls... Mark Mothersbaugh played on our album, did a keyboard solo
on a Davolisint which is an Italian Synthesizer. The thing that was neat about [the
Davolisint] is it had two oscillators. They could both be radically detuned from each
other with different vibratos. But the coolest part was this lever controller. You pull
down on it. It wouldn't go up in pitch it would go down. And it had a hydrolic thing
where it would slide back up slowly. You would pull it down like a tremelo bar and it
would rise up slowly it wouldn't snap back. It'd go "BRRRRRR, BRRRRRRR" almost
like a Bigsby Vibrato on a guitar. And that was very original, but it was the coolest
feature on an instrument. It really made you want to use that part. So if you could
somehow buy a MIDI ribbon controller and a MIDI breath controller... which... You
know, I think the Steiner Parker thing just kills me everytime we use it. Roger has
one now too. I have two of them in case one of mine goes out... But it's such a great
thing to go and plug into a filter and step on it with your foot or blow into it when you
want a pitch to change or speed up a vibrato by blowing on it.”
Talk about how your Minimoog was just recently stabilized.
“I shipped the Minimoog to JL at Musictek. It was actually a perfect Minimoog, I
mean it worked great, in a lot of ways, it was cosmetically nice and the Keyboard was
really good and so forth. I had no problems with it, but it would ocassionally drift.
And I've always had this problem with the original Minimoogs that don't have the
later oscillators. I actually have heard differences. They sound different to me.
Whether that's good or bad, they do. And I've play the very first Minimoog and some
of the very last ones and they all sound different. And it's not just a question of
calibration, there's differences there. And there has to be, they changed the circuitry.
Not better or worse, though, because the first ones sound a certain way and the later
ones sound a certain way and I wouldn't prefer one or the other. They all sound good.
But some are darker, some are buzzier, some are sharper, some are softer. And this
one was good but it kept changing sometimes, transposing during a live show. And I
couldn't have it going up and down a third like things happen to do. I took it to JL at
Musictek and he did a few tweaks on it. There was some correction to the resistors to
the oscillators, if you move them, you can stabilize them so they won't drift. And it's
not a big change, but it helps out a lot. And also there was a problem, which I didn't
notice before. When you raise or lower the filter, that actually make the oscillators go
flat, it drains a little bit of the current to the oscillators and makes it go a little bit off.
So, I didn't hear it because usually when you are raising and lowering the filters, the
tone changes so much you don't notice the pitch. But you can see it on a tuner, for
example. And that's true of most any Minimoog. It does that. So if you can put a little
buffer in there so that the filter action doesn't affect the pitch. There's quite a few
things that can be done on those things. I'd like to have a few mods done, I don't
really want to change the Minimoog and drill it out and so forth. I would like to have
a couple more mods done to it. I'd really like to have a range for the pitch bend, I'd
like to have a range for the modulation wheel, things like that. And syncing the
oscillators, all these cool things people used to do. Sending envelopes to the
oscillators instead of giving it LFO. But, I really don't want to drill it out so hopefully I
can find another Minimoog I can mess with someday and tweak out one like Herbie
Hancock would have and so forth.”
And the Chick Corea Minimoog you have doesn't work?
“I've got that Chick Corea Minimoog and JL found for me, yesterday, a really beat up
Minimoog that works.”
Oh really?
“Really beat up. Like the case is in horrible shape and the keyboard is screwed. Which
is what's good about this other one [the one from Chick Corea]. The problem is, if I
get that one, that would probably be the one I keep stock because it's the Chick
Corea one although it has new guts so it doesn't really matter. I don't mind mods so
much. if people are using instruments, I think that's really a good thing. I've seen
over the years where people have put Talor or Floyd Rose's in guitars and it ruins the
value. A lot of modifications give you something more usable without detracting
anything from the original quality. A Floyd Rose on a guitar changes the tone and
changes the way it plays and all of those kinds of things, and changes the way you
tune it. That is a big difference. But on a Minimoog, having a sync switch doesn't ruin
the original keyboard it adds something to it. The worst part of what we like to do is
repair stuff. Because keyboards are constantly breaking. I was talking to a friend of
mine who was getting into it just for the investment purposes. He's a guitar dealer...
The problem with [collecting synths] is that, buying a guitar, you only have two or
three pickups and two or three knobs and that's all you need to deal with, but a synth
has many, many, many parts and you have to really know how to work it to find a
problem before you buy it. I often buy a keyboard thinking it's great and test most of
the features and then get home and find out that it's got a flaw, a major flaw,
somewhere deep inside it that causes a problem. And that's always bad news. A few
instruments like the CS80 and things like that, you just cannot get fixed by people.
Even the repair men I know will not deal with it because it's too much trouble. Or an
Optigan, which is.. you know.. you can fix it but as soon as you put the screws back
in, it's broken again with something new. Certain instruments are not that reliable.
Chamberlins are notoriously bad too. Some instruments are worth some trouble and
worth some time but the more you use it the more you realize that you don't want to
spend your time fixing things. You should be making music.”
You have to enjoy synths in order to collect them..
“I literally learned a lot about repairing things by having to do it myself, I couldn't
afford any repairmen at 50 bucks an hour, 60 an hour to fix everything. It's funny
because it speaks to us keyboard players. And I think you go through the same thing,
you learn a lot about your instrument and learn to love it and appreciate it, when you
get in to fix it. When I first met Roger and I was showing him how to clean J-wires on
keyboards and connectors and things like that. And [there are] a lot of things anyone
can do themselves that's not even scary and no worse than cleaning out your ears,
it's very simple stuff to do. But the main problem with old keyboards is reliability.
They're just not that good at it. Especially certain things like ARP sliders, things like
that, bound to break off, impossible to replace.”
What are your favorite synths?
“Wow... Always the Minimoog... but above that, the 2600. The 2600 is just so
powerful and I grew up with them and”
Is that what you learned Modular synthesis on?
“Yeah, I started with an ARP Odyssey when I was a kid so it's very similar. I just
went nuts on the 2600. For what it is, it has a great selection of modules, three
oscillators is a good amount, and the filter is great, the LFO options are neat on there,
if you have the right keyboard that is. Also I'm crazy about playing the Chroma. I love
a Prophet T-8 for the same reason, it's just a really good sounding fidelity, good
sounding filters and oscillators, but controllable with your hands, which is so
important, I think. And I love the Synergy. I use the Jupiter-8 more than anything, I
don't know why, it's got everything and it's fast. The Jupiter-8 gets used the most.
And Roger's nuts about the SEM Oberheim stuff, the Two-Voices and Eight-Voices.
He's got Chick Corea's Eight-Voice. And we've used that a bit on some of the tunes.
But he loves SEM stuff and he loves the Oberheim sound in general.”
Does he have a Two-Voice?
“I have a Two-Voice and he has a Two-Voice, too. And that's an amazing keyboard.
Sometimes when I have a session, that's the one I'll take along, if somebody wants
goofy synth sounds because it has a sequencer, a sample-and-hold, it has enough
oscillators to do weird stuff, you can process things through it. It's really portable
and it's going to be in tune and it's going to run when I get to the session. Roger also
likes the YC-45D, the Yamaha Organ from the 70s that has pitch ribbon and it's all on
the [Chick Corea] "Return to Forever" album. An incredible sounding organ. Roger
has a Gleeman Pentaphonic which is pretty amazing. They sound very bright and
clear and buzzy. Nothing sounds like it. We featured it on a whole separate track, the
intro to "Buddy Holly" on the first record, it was all Gleeman, except for one sound,
which we're not giving away to people. It wouldn't do a slow enough glide so we
used one other synth for a long glide note. But we are basically featuring all Gleeman
on that track and it's really shiny and sparkly. It's an amazing synth. It's not a big
enough keyboard for me though. It just really drives me crazy to only have two
octaves but it's polyphonic.”
You like the Polymoogs..
“Yeah, well you saw the back cover of our last record [their self-titled debut release,
"The Moog Cookbook"]. We were surrounded by four Polymoogs, two Minimoogs and
a Sonic Six. We have one extra Polymoog that we didn't have in the picture. But we
love them so much, they're such great sounding keyboards. We use them all the time.
And at the time we were buying them, they were cheap. Like they went for 150
dollars or so... The problem is they kept breaking. Roger and I each had the
"Keyboard" version and the synth version. And eventually we just got to the point
where there were just too many keyboards, always breaking. And I finally got one
from Mark Vail [author of the book, Vintage Synthesizers]. He got it from Dominic
[Milano, then editor] of Keyboard Magazine. I was up there one time asking about
Polymoogs. He said "I've still got the original we used for the first review."
No way!! It must have been in mint condition!
“Yeah, it was perfect. And they never used it that much. It was amazing. So I was
really happy. I can't tell you how much we use that thing. We use it all the time.”
And it's funny people I talk to are like, Oh no, it's not worth buying and so forth..
“You know what it is? You put it on the preset buttons, it is awful. It sounds like a
bad organ. If you get into programming it, and get it chorusing naturally and you
really can play, like for example if you're a keyboard player, if you're good at chords
and voicings and things, it's one of those excellent keyboards. With a great keyboard
player, tone is so good. Like in "More than a Feeling" [on the latest CD], for the
chorusy glossy, 12-string guitar kind of sound, we used the Polymoog. It just
shimmered and it filled up space and it's got a fat low end, like a Minimoog does and
it really sounds a lot like that Minimoog tone.”
Anything else you want to say.
“We like the good and bad stuff. We like stuff that's really powerful like the Oberheim
8-Voice and yet we'll happily plug in a Yamaha CS-10, because sometimes a pure
sound is better. A simple sound, a sine wave with no attack and no decay, just a test
tone kind of sound works great for some things. We're lucky we're in a group where
we can use every keyboard for its best feature. Once even. If this keyboard does an
amazing bomb noise, I'll find a place to use it. And it's a studio project, we don't have
to worry about duplicating it live so much. It's really great to be able to pull things
out and sit in a room with keyboards like you've always dreamed about. We've finally
got to a point where we have pretty much everything we want to get. Now we're at a
point where we can say, Yeah, lets do a choir sound. Do we want to use the vocoder
choir, do we want to use the Mellotron choir, the Chamberlin? Do we want to do
something on the 360 system? And it's always fun to roll those out. Everytime we go
towards a new keyboard though, it doesn't fit in so well with what we're doing.
We've actually tried using modern sounds just for a few tricks and they don't really
sound the same. It doesn't really fit into the tonality of what we're doing. Luckily I've
gotten to the point where I'm not so crazy about keyboards that I don't have. The
few things I do have, I'm really happy that I know how to use them. I've gotten rid of
stuff I don't use. I used to collect every keyboard. I had one Vox and Farfisa and this
kind of stuff. And I got them and I never used them. You know, they sound great but
they're too big and I don't want a collection, I want stuff I can use. Roger's more into
having one of everything. And there's a purpose to that too cause everything is
different. The Minitmoog sounds a little different than the ARP Pro Soloist. So when
we get to use them on our project, that's really good. And also in the case of
investment he's made great pains, everything he buys is 10 cents on the dollar. Dave
Kean is restarting his studio. Though I'm not going to be involved this time. It's not
Oddities anymore so we're not doing that. He's got a regular studio that's going to
pop up with a friend of his.”
Is he going to put the Museum back up again.
“Sort of.. Dave kept saying all along, and I kept agreeing with him museums are a
bad idea. Museums aren't really.. they're places you look at things. You don't use
them and stuff. If you use them, they're going to break. So you might as well be
recording them which makes it a studio more than a museum. Nobody calls a
collection of Microphones a microphone museum, it's a studio. You know, no
workman collects tools, they just have all of these tools they use. So, in this case it's
great to have everything up and running so you can plug it in and use it. And I have a
studio I'm just starting up with my old mixing board from the last place with a
twenty-four track machine and it's going to be the back half of somebody else's
studio. I'm going to put a lot of my keyboards in there and have a room I can do all
this stuff in to get out of my house for a while. A place to set up the big stuff. And
that will be fun. It will be really amazing to have another place to work and Dave will
be available to me anytime I want and vice-versa.”
I hear Dave Kean has quite a collecton.
“It makes you not want to collect synths, though cause it makes you realize how
much you'll never get.”
Mort Garson
Somedays, Mort Garson's name seems to pop up on just about every other 60s recording I flip
past. Conducting the "Love Strings" on Liberty, arranging for the Lettermen on Capitol, providing
background to Laurence Harvey reading poetry on Atlantic, accompanying Doris Day on
Columbia, experimenting with the Moog on A&M. Garson pushed out some serious quantities of
product in the 1960s. Mort Garson was born on July 20, 1924, in New Brunswick, Canada. He
studied music at Juilliard and worked as a pianist and arranger before getting pulled into the Army
near the end of World War Two. Garson could carry out any or all of the musical chores on any
given session: composer, arranger, orchestrator, conductor, and even pianist if that was required.
With lyricist Bob Hilliard, he wrote one of the great lounge hits of the 1960s, "Our Day Will Come,"
a hit for Ruby and the Romantics and more recently covered to perfection by k.d. lang and Take 6
for the soundtrack of the otherwise forgettable movie, Shag. Garson spent the mid-1960s on a
flurry of accompaniment jobs: two Doris Day albums (Sentimental Journey and Songs for Latin
Lovers), Mel Torme's great Right Now! album of contempo tunes like "Secret Agent Man," Glenn
Yarborough's highly successful cover of Rod McKuen songs, The Lonely Things, and Glen
Campbell's even more successful By the Time I Get to Phoenix. He also appears to have been a
favorite of producers when the job involved soft pop vocal groups and string ensembles, since his
handiwork appears on albums and singles by the Lettermen, the Sandpipers, the Sugar Shoppe,
the Hollyrdige Strings, the Sunset Strings, and the Love Strings. The most highly prized Garson
albums among exotica fans are his electronic albums of the late 1960s. Zodiac: Cosmic Sounds,
featuring Paul Beaver on a variety of electronic instruments with voice-overs by Cyrus Farrar on a
suite of Garson originals covering the 12 signs of the zodiac, was the first album recorded on the
West Coast to include Robert Moog's new Moog synthesizer. Garson returned to the Moog for his
album Electronic Hair Pieces, a choice artifact of the late 1960s, featuring a mod model with a
wired-up skull on the cover, versions of "Hair," "Good Morning Starshine," and other hippy-dippy
tunes, and liner notes by Tom Smothers. The Wozard of Id, a psychedelic satire with Bernie
Krause providing a rich array of environmental sound effects and Nancy Sinatra (credited as
"Suzy Jane Hokum") as Dorothy, is another favorite. Garson appears to have had a philosophy
of, "No job too silly to take seriously." For A&M, he composed and arranged a series featuring a
whole album for each sign of original tunes with heavy use of electronics. He wrote an album
called "Plantasia" that you were supposed to play to make your indoor plants grow better. When
someone had the bright idea of putting out a record of music-and-moans to capitalize on the bestseller, The Sensuous Woman by "Z," Garson was their man. He wrote an electronic "Black Mass"
album that probably spun at many an acid party, and followed that with one called, Ataraxia
designed to accompany meditations to the mantra of your choice. Garson also worked in
television and film, scoring all creations great and small, from "The Son of the Blob" to "Kentucky
Fried Movie" to National Geographic specials.
(1967) Zodiac Cosmic Sounds (with Paul Beaver & Cyrus Faryer) - Aries, Taurus, Gemini,
Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces
(1969) Electronic Hair Pieces - 3-5-0-0, Aquarius, Be In, Easy To Be Hard, Frank Mills, Good
Morning Starshine, Hair, Let The Sunshine In, Walking In Space, Where Do I Go?
(1969) Wozard Of Iz (with Jacques Wilson & Bernie Krause) – Prologue, Leave The Driving
To Us, Upset Strip, Never Follow The Yellow-Green Road, Scared Crow (Thing-A-Ling), The InMan, Man With The Word, They’re Off To Find The Wozard, Blue Poppy, I’ve Been Over The
Rainbow, Big Sur, Killing Of The Witch
(1971) Music For Sensuous Lovers By “Z” – Climax 1, Climax 2
(1971) Lucifer: Black Mass – ESP, Exorcism, Incubus, Solomon’s Ring, The Evil Eye, The
Philosopher’s Stone, The Ride Of Aida (Voodoo), Voices Of The Dead (The Medium), Witch Trial
(1975) Ataraxia: The Unexplained, Electronic Musical Impressions Of The Occult Tarot, Sorcerer, Déjà vu, Astral Projection, Séance, I Ching, Cabala, The Unexplained, Wind
Dance
(1976) Plantasia – Plantasia, Symphony For A Spider Plant, Baby’s Tears Blues, Ode To an
African Violet, Concerto For Philodendron And Pothos, Rhapsody In Green, Swingin’
Spathiphyllums, You Don’t Have To Walk A Begonia, Mellow Mood For Maidenhair, Music To
Soothe The Savage Snake Plant
Morton Subotnick
Long at the vanguard of American electronic music,
composer Morton Subnotnick also pioneered the rise of multimedia performance through his extensive work in connection
with interactive computer systems. Born in Los Angeles on
April 14, 1933, he attended the University of Denver before
earning his master's at Mills College in Oakland, California,
where he studied composition under Darius Milhaud and Leon
Kirchner. (From 1959 to 1966, Subnotnick himself taught at
Mills as well.) His earliest major work was 1959's Sound
Blocks, the first of his compositions to focus on the
relationship between musical, visual and verbal components;
much of Subnotnick's subsequent oeuvre pursued the same
ideas, with later pieces like the multi-part Play! and 1965's
Lamination I including films, lighting effects, pre-taped
material and other media elements.
In 1967, Subnotnick released the landmark Silver Apples of
the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a
recording company (Nonesuch); realized via the Buchla modular synthesizer which he in turn
helped design and develop, the album sold remarkably well, its success widely perceived as
recognition of the home stereo system as a legitimate medium for present-day chamber music.
Now composing specifically for the vinyl format, with works consisting of two halves to fit their
respective sides of each LP, Subnotnick returned with The Wild Bull a year later, shortly followed
by the two-part Reality. Touch, completed in 1969, was his first piece recorded on four-track
technology; it was followed in 1970 by Sidewinder. All shared sophisticated timbres, contrapuntal
textures and pulsing undercurrents — in fact, many were so rhythmic they were adapted for
modern dance performances. Subnotnick's next major plunge into multi-media was 1973's Four
Butterflies, a piece for four-track tape and three films; a pair of orchestral compositions, Before
the Butterfly and Two Butterflies, followed in 1975. Concurrent was his work on the "ghost box,"
a modification device designed to control real-time sound processing by means of a pitch and
envelope follower in addition to taped voltage controlled components including an amplifier, a
frequency shifter, and a ring modulator. As neither the tape with the control voltages nor the
ghost box itself contained any actual sounds, Subnotnick dubbed the end result a "ghost score,"
introducing the concept in 1977's Two Life Histories; much of the work which immediately
followed expanded upon the idea by bringing together live performers and ghost scores, resulting
in pieces including Liquid Strata, The Wild Beasts and The Fluttering of Wings. With 1981's
Ascent into Air, written for live performers and a 4C computer, Subnotnick's innovations in realtime sound processing reached their peak; not only did he spatially locate and modulate the
timbres of live instruments in a qudraphonic field, but he employed his players to serve as
"control voltages," determining where the computer-generated sounds were placed, how they
were modulated and so forth. Computer technology assumed greater and greater importance in
Subnotnick's later work, with pieces like The Key to Songs, Return and all my hummingbirds have
alibis taking full advantage of MIDI technology. Latter-day compositions — among them Jacob's
Room, a multimedia opera premiered in 1993 — also regularly made full use of computerized
sound generation, specially designed software and "intelligent" interactive computer controls.
Review “Silver Apples Of The Moon” - Over the course of thirty minutes, Silver Apples of the
Moon presented a change for serious electronic music. Unlike many
other early synthesizer records, the music here is continuous, powerful,
almost overwhelming. The work is also reliant on a breathtaking variety
of sounds: clicks, chirps, buzzes, gongs, hums, sirens. Some of these
are de rigeur for an academic synthesizer record, but many continued to
sound fresh decades after its recording. Silver Apples of the Moon
deserves credit not just because it's one of the earliest albums produced
by a modular synthesizer, but because it's a great piece of music. A
1994 reissue by Wergo added Subotnick's 1968 work "The Wild Bull" to
the CD program.
Review “Sidewinder” - When it became clear that quadraphonic sound was not going to catch
on in any meaningful numbers, Morton Subotnick reined in his forces in turn, composing
"Sidewinder" and every subsequent electronic piece for Columbia in two-channel stereo. With the
shrinkage of available channels came a scaling back in theatricality, for "Sidewinder" is a subtler,
quieter, less flamboyant piece of work than its wilder predecessors, though no less absorbing
once you enter its sound world on its own terms. Though the title came as a suggestion after the
piece had been conceived, each part of "Sidewinder" opens with the distant shaking of a
distinctly snake-like electronic rattler. Moreover, the power of suggestion conjures images of
parched desert landscapes invaded by sinister, relentlessly grinding machines. Yet to be
transferred to CD, Sidewinder marked a turn inward for Subotnick that would last through most
of his pure electronic work of the 1970s.
Review “Four Butterflies” - Though the majority of Subotnick's "butterfly" pieces were to be
composed later during his "ghost score" period, this electronic canvas was the first outbreak of
his preoccupation with that enigmatic insect to surface on LP. Set in four brief sections separated
by two tiny interludes, Four Butterflies finds Subotnick burrowing further inward, restricting his
palette of electronic colors ever more economically. The silences are longer, the overall volume
level is low, and sometimes one thinks that these floating, mysterious, pitchless butterflies have
vanished altogether. More crucially, the dramatic pacing that marked Subotnick's more exciting
earlier electronic scores for the phonograph record is mostly lacking here, though there is
structure in the form of a three-part development (larva-cocoon-butterfly) that he would use
extensively in the future. "Butterfly No. 3" rises to a nice climax and reprises an agitated idea
from "Touch," and "Butterfly No. 4" begins with a quietly insistent repeating ostinato, but for the
most part these are very reticent creatures. The original LP has yet to be reissued.
(1968) Silver Apples Of The Moon – Silver Apples Of The Moon Pt. A, Silver Apples Of The
Moon Pt. B, The Wild Bull Pt. A, The Wild Bull Pt. B
(1971) Sidewinder – Sidewinder Pt. I, Sidewinder Pt. II
(1974) Four Butterflies – Butterfly No. 1, Interlude, Butterfly No. 2, Butterfly No. 3, Interlude,
Butterfly No. 4
(1976) Until Spring – Until Spring (Part I), Until Spring (Part II)
Perrey & Kingsley
In the mid-'60s, Frenchman Jean Jacques Perrey— an
electronic musician who had helped popularize the
Ondioline, a keyboard which produced sounds similar
to the violin and the flute — teamed up with American
composer and arranger Gershon Kingsley for a couple
albums of then-futuristic electronic pop. Using tape
recorders, scissors, and splicing tape, they recorded
variations on pop motifs that, while kitschy from a
latter-day perspective, represented the state-of-the-art
in electronic sounds at the time. Two LPs, The In
Sound From Way Out and Kaleidoscopic Vibrations,
were released by Vanguard in the late '60s. Perrey also recorded several albums of Moog music
as a solo artist, and came back into vogue in the 1990s with a feature in the book Incredibly
Strange Music. Everyone from Stereolab and u-Ziq to The Beastie Boys and hip-hop superproducer Timbaland featured ideas borrowed from Perrey & Kingsley prominently on tracks of
their own, while Perrey began recording again, both on his own and with fellow Frenchmen Air.
Review “The In Sound From Way Out” - From a technical standpoint, this early attempt to
bring electronic music to the masses is commendable. The result of (according to the liner notes)
275 hours of work and several miles of tape, these electronically
modified sounds were combined with electronic sounds from
oscillators, tone generators, and feedback loops to create something
resembling pop melodies. Live musicians then embellished these
materials with both electronic and natural instruments. The problem
is, the end product — certainly after 30 years have removed the
novelty value of electronic tones — is cheesy enough to skirt the
boundaries of kitsch, with a boxy, mechanical texture and a musicbox-run-amok feel that makes it sound like a direct ancestor of Hot
Butter's 1972 hit instrumental "Popcorn." There is a goofy charm to
the mischievous placement of burps, gurgles, animal noises, and naive outer space-tinged
themes. But with material that would be far more at home on the soundtrack of a children's TV
cartoon than a work of contemporary composition, this album is more of a curiosity than
anything else.
Review “Kaleidoscopic Vibrations: Spotlight On The Moog” - The duo's second album, as
the title indicates, had them adding a Moog synthesizer to their
Ondioline and electric keyboards. It was still largely devoted to
kitschy electro treatments of standards on the order of "Strangers in
the Night," "Lover's Concerto," "Third Man Theme," "Winchester
Cathedral," and "Moon River." There was more of a sense of pop
orchestration on selections like "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and the
eerie "Carousel of the Planets," with their theremin-like tones; there
were also rock beats on "Lover's Concerto" and "Pioneers of the
Stars," the last of which didn't sound too far removed from the
futuristic instrumentals of Joe Meek proteges the Tornados. The
entire album was included on the Vanguard Perrey-Kingsley box set The Out Sound From Way
In! The Complete Vanguard Recordings.
(1966) The In Sound From Way Out - Unidentified Flying Objects, The Little Man From Mars,
Cosmic Ballad, Swan’s Splashdown, Countdown At 6, Barnyard In Orbit, Spooks In Space, Girl
From Venus, Electronic Can-Can, Jungle Blues From Jupiter, Computer In Love, Visa To The Stars
(1968) Kaleidoscopic Vibrations: Spotlight on the Moog – The Savers, Umbrellas Of
Cherbourg, Strangers In The Night, One Note Samba – Spanish Flea, Lover’s Concerto, Third Man
Theme, Fallout, Baroque Hoedown, Winchester Cathedral, Carousel Of The Planets, Toy Balloons,
Moon River, Mas Que Nada, Flight Of The Bumblebee
VANGUARD RECORDS PRESS RELEASE
July, 1966
YOU'RE IN FOR A SHOCK - A HAPPY ONE!
This is the wackiest record Vanguard has ever put out
-- and good music too, as well as a lot of fun. You can
even dance to the music, but don't try whistling it.
Everything that the new art of electronic sounds can
do, combined with some slightly bewildered regulation
instruments, is here applied to a set of bouncy
numbers, some with familiar tunes , others newly and
delightfully composed. The IN SOUND FROM WAY
OUT. What is the IN SOUND FROM WAY OUT! ?
Atoms of pop music exploded into fresh patterns. It's
electronic sound of pop music from the future. A
sample of the strange new pleasure of a world which
belongs to the space age. A sample of the electronic "Au Go Go" that might be heard soon from
the juke boxes at the interplanetary way stations where space ships make their rest stops. How is
it produced? A new process called "Electronic Sono-synthesis" was created by Jean Jacques
Perrey. To produce these syntheses not only musical instruments from electronic sources (Jenny
Ondioline, Martenot Waves, etc.) but also sounds of natural origin (i.e. musique concrete) were
used. These sounds were modified, transmuted, transformed, to the point of changing their
harmonic structure - making out of them new, unprecedented original sonorities. Each sound thus
created was then prerecorded on tape, classified, cataloged by frequency and timbre. At the time
of composing the "musical phrase", each sound was "isolated" and selected according to its
nature. The sonorities were then painstakingly assembled by splicing each bit of tape together
manually with micrometric precision to form the "melodic line" and / or the rhythmic structure of
the piece chosen. The synthetic rhythmic-melodic tape track thus created was then carefully
synchronized with music played by live musicians on both electronic and natural instruments as
well as with electronic sounds produced by oscillators, tone generators and feedback loops.
Finally, through a complicated process of intricate overdubbing the likes of which we believe have
never been done to this extent on records, a multi-channel tape master was produced embodying
a synthesis of all electronic and natural elements. The perpetrators of this riot of new sounds are
Jean Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley. Perrey, a Frenchman who has devoted his life to the
study of electronic music, decided to take the mystery out of the machines that threatened to be
the masters of men. Kingsley, a gifted composer of classical music, has an impressive Broadway
background behind him as a conductor and arranger. Together Perrey and Kingsley pooling their
considerable talents, have produced a record of musical joy and wit. So switch in to the switchedon IN SOUND FROM WAY OUT.
Raymond Scott
Composer, bandleader and inventor
Raymond Scott was among the
unheralded pioneers of contemporary
experimental music, a figure whose genius
and influence have seeped almost
subliminally into the mass cultural
consciousness. As a visionary whose name
is largely unknown but whose music is
immediately recognizable, Scott’s was a
career stuffed with contradictions: though
his early work anticipated the breathless
invention of bebop, his obsession with
perfectionism and memorization was the
very antithesis of jazz's improvisational
ethos; though his best-known
compositions remain at large thanks to
their endless recycling as soundtracks for
cartoons, he never once wrote a note
expressly for animated use; and though
his later experiments with electronic music
pioneered the ambient aesthetic, the
ambient concept itself was not introduced until a decade after the release of his original
recordings. Born Harry Warnow in Brooklyn on September 10, 1908, he was a musical prodigy,
playing piano by the age of two; following high school, he planned to study engineering, but his
older brother Mark— himself a successful violinist and conductor — had other ideas, buying his
sibling a Steinway Grand and persuading him to attend the Institute of Musical Art, later
rechristened the Julliard School. After graduating in 1931, Scott— the name supposedly picked at
random out of the Manhattan phone book — signed on as a staff pianist with the CBS radio
network house band conducted by his brother; finding the repertoire dull and uninspired, he
began presenting his own compositions to his bandmates, and soon bizarre Scott originals like
"Confusion Among a Fleet of Taxicabs Upon Meeting with a Fare" began creeping into
broadcasts. Scott remained a member of the CBS band until 1936, at which time he convinced
producer Herb Rosenthal to allow him the chance to form his own group; assembling a line-up
originally comprised of fellow network veterans Lou Shoobe on bass, Dave Harris on tenor
saxophone, Pete Pumiglio on clarinet, Johnny Williams on drums and the famed Bunny Berigan
on trumpet, he dubbed the group the Raymond Scott Quintette, debuting on the Saturday Night
Swing Session with the song "The Toy Trumpet." The Quintette was an immediate hit with
listeners, and Scott was soon offered a recording contract with the Master label. Dissent quickly
broke out in the group's ranks, however, as Scott's obsessive practice schedule began to wear
out his bandmates; Berigan soon quit, frustrated because the airtight compositions — never
written down, taught and developed one oddball phrase at a time — allowed no room for
improvisations. Still, for all of Scott's eccentricities, his records flew off the shelves, their dadaist
titles ("Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals," "Reckless Night on Board an Oceanliner"
and "Boy Scout in Switzerland"), juxtaposed melodies, odd time signatures and quirky
arrangements somehow connecting with mainstream American audiences. Hollywood soon came
calling, with the Quintette performing music for (and sometimes appearing in) features including
Nothing Sacred, Ali Baba Goes to Town and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Upon returning to
New York, in 1938 Scott was tapped to become CBS' next music director; around the same time
he expanded the Quintette to big-band size, and by 1940 quit his network position to lead his
ensemble on tour. He returned to CBS in 1942, however, assembling the first racially-mixed
studio orchestra in broadcast history. In 1941, Warner Bros.' fledgling animation department
bought the rights to Scott's back catalog, with music director Carl Stalling making liberal use of
the melodies in his groundbreaking cut-and-paste cartoon soundtracks; Quintette favorites like
the rollicking "Powerhouse" soon became immediately recognizable for their regular appearances
in classic Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig clips, the same music supporting the crazed
antics of Ren & Stimpy and others half a century later. Indeed, generations upon generations of
young viewers have received an unwitting introduction to avant-garde concepts through their
repeated exposure to Scott and Stalling's music, although none of the former's compositions
were written with cartoons in mind; by the time Warner Bros. began using Scott's music on a
regular basis in 1943, he had already moved on to new projects, including a lucrative career
authoring commercial jingles. In 1945, Scott wrote incidental music for the Broadway production
Beggars Are Coming to Town; the year following, he teamed with lyricist Bernard Hanighen on
the musical Lute Song, which yielded another of his best known songs, "Mountain High, Valley
Low." Also in 1946, Scott founded Manhattan Research, the world's first electronic music studio;
housing equipment including a Martenot, an Ondioline and a specially-modified Hammond organ,
it was advertised as "the world's most extensive facility for the creation of Electronic Music and
Musique Concrete." After his brother Mark's 1949 death, Scott took over his duties as the
bandleader on the syndicated radio favorite Your Hit Parade, with his second wife Dorothy Collins
soon assuming the position as the program's featured vocalist; that same year, he also scored
theatrical productions of Peep Show and Six Characters in Search of an Author.
Of all of Scott's accomplishments of 1949, however, none was more important than the
Electronium, one of the first synthesizers ever created. An "instantaneous composing machine,"
the Electronium generated original music via random sequences of tones, rhythms, and timbres;
Scott himself denied it was a prototype synthesizer — it had no keyboard — but as one of the
first machines to create music by means of artificial intelligence, its importance in pointing the
way towards the electonic compositions of the future is undeniable. His other inventions included
the "Karloff," an early sampler capable of recreating sounds ranging from sizzling steaks to jungle
drums; the Clavinox, a keyboard Theremin complete with an electronic sub-assembly designed by
a then 23-year-old Robert Moog; and the Videola, which fused together a keyboard and a TV
screen to aid in composing music for films and other moving images. In addition to hosting Your
Hit Parade, Scott continued recording throughout the 1950s, issuing LPs including This Time with
Strings, At Home with Dorothy and Raymond and Rock and Roll Symphony. Additionally, he
cranked out advertising jingles at an astonishing rate, scored countless film and television
projects and even founded a pair of record labels, Audiovox and Master, while serving as A&R
director for Everest Records. During the mid-1950s, Scott assembled a new Quintette; the 1962
edition of the group was its last. The year following, he began work on the three-volume LP set
Soothing Sounds for Baby, an "aural toy" designed to create a comforting yet stimulating
environment for infants. As electronic music produced to inspire and relax, the records fit snugly
into the definition of ambient suggested by Brian Eno a decade later, their minimalist
dreamscapes also predating Philip Glass and Terry Riley. By the middle of the 1960s, Scott began
turning increasingly away from recording and performing to focus on writing and inventing; a
1969 musical celebrating the centennial of Kentucky Bourbon was his last orchestral work, with
his remaining years spent solely on electronic composition. Among his latter-day innovations was
an early programmable polyphonic sequencer, which along with the Electronium later caught the
attention of Motown chief Berry Gordy Jr., who in 1971 tapped Scott to head the label's
electronic music research and development team. After retiring six years later, he continued
writing — his last known piece, 1986's "Beautiful Little Butterfly," was created on MIDI
technology. By 1992, Scott's music was finally rediscovered by contemporary audiences, with the
Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights compilation appearing to great acclaim; he died on
February 8, 1994 at the age of 85.
Review “Soothing Sounds For Baby, Vol. 1” - Designed for babies one to six months old, the
first volume of Raymond Scott's dreamy, engaging Soothing Sounds for Baby series emphasizes
soft synth tones, repetitive melodies, and relatively simple
arrangements. Keeping in mind a young baby's attention span, Vol. 1
also contains shorter, more numerous pieces than the following albums.
Vol. 1 begins on a minimal, hypnotic note with "Lullaby," an
appropriately trance-inducing, 14-minute song featuring twinkly
keyboard figures and some airy synths. The reverie continues with
"Sleepy Time," which combines a delicate, drifting melody with a gently
rhythmic bass line. As Soothing Sounds for Baby progresses, it grows
livelier, more complex, and increasingly percussive. "Music Box" retains
the hovering synth sound from earlier in the album, but sets it atop a perky rhythm. "Nursery
Rhyme" is the most experimental track on the album, featuring a singsong melody along the lines
of "Three Blind Mice" or "This Old Man" that jumps from key to key. Backed by a complex,
syncopated rhythm and slightly atonal harmonies, as the song unfolds it becomes more
improvised and spontaneous. Finally, "Tic Toc" takes the album's minimalism to its extreme,
consisting of a clockwork, two-note melody that fades in and out of focus. As it explores sonic
distance instead of melodic progression, the song achieves the same effect as the beginning of
the album — hypnotic and very soothing indeed. With each listen, Soothing Sounds for Baby, Vol.
1 reveals something new, retaining its freshness for young and older babies alike.
Review “Soothing Sounds For Baby, Vol. 2” - As the second volume in the Soothing Sounds
for Baby trilogy, Vol. 2 was designed by Raymond Scott for infants six to 12 months old.
Correspondingly, it features fewer, but longer and more complex,
rhythmic compositions. The first song, "Tempo Block," is a transitional
piece, combining Vol. 1's sprightly keyboard melodies with a slightly
tribal rhythm tapped out on an electronic bongo. "The Happy Whistler"
increases in rhythmic syncopation and melodic counterpoint, featuring a
circular bass line and alternately warbling and whistling keyboards over
lumbering drums. Soothing Sounds for Baby, Vol. 2's final piece, "Toy
Typewriter," is perhaps the most avant-garde of the series. The song
consists of exactly what its title indicates: a toy typewriter, played
masterfully by Scott to produce subtle, shifting rhythms that sound like
proto-jungle breakbeats. With 26 keys and the space bar, he achieves a deceptively simple,
calming, and active effect. As with the whole series, on "Toy Typewriter" Scott does the near
impossible, packaging progressive musical ideas in a simple, accessible way. Even more
impressively, the overall sound of Soothing Sounds for Baby has barely dated at all. Though the
concept of space age music for babies is rooted in the naively futuristic outlook of the early '60s,
the series' kitsch factor is remarkably low. Thanks to its clean, spacious production and minimal
arrangements, Soothing Sounds for Baby remains progressive yet playful, rewarding listeners
who pay close attention to its pretty, introspective compositions.
Review “Soothing Sounds For Baby, Vol. 3” - After exploring melody in Vol. 1 and
percussion in Vol. 2, Soothing Sounds for Baby, Vol. 3 integrates and alternates between the two
concepts, resulting in the series' greatest musical contrasts.
Appropriately for its intended age group of 12 to 18 months, Vol. 3
contains the series' most intricate pieces. The arrangements take center
stage on the album's three pieces, particularly on the opening song, "Tin
Soldier." A fittingly stiff, metallic snare anchors dancing, banjo, and
harpsichord-like synth melodies, then reaches farther orbits with some
of Raymond Scott's signature spacy keyboards. "Little Miss Echo" follows
with one of the series' loveliest, most ambient works. Appropriately
spacious-sounding, the song floats on giant synth washes topped by
sonarlike flourishes and supported by a delicate, stately bass line. Its
minimal percussion harks back to Vol. 1's spacy melodies, but "Little Miss Echo" is more serene
and complex, with sophisticated melodies and harmonies that predict artists like Stereolab and
Laika almost 30 years before their existence. The album's final track, "The Playful Drummer,"
explores percussion's tonal, melodic potential in a very different take on melody and rhythm. As a
keyboard plays a constant oompah rhythm, Scott is the playful drummer, experimenting with
melodies and patterns on his electronic drums, never quite settling into a predictable pattern over
the song's 15-minute stretch. Instead, "The Playful Drummer" skips and jumps from high to low,
fast to slow, tossing in some snippets of feedback for good measure. One of the more
disorienting but interesting pieces of the Soothing Sounds for Baby series, the song showcases
Scott's undiluted artistic vision. Much like a baby itself, Soothing Sounds for Baby is playful and
ever-changing, revealing its hidden logic and maturity over time.
Review “Manhattan Research, Inc.” - Subtitled "New Plastic Sounds and Electronic
Abstractions," Manhattan Research, Inc. is an excellent compilation of electronic pioneer
Raymond Scott's works from the '50s and '60s. Nothing that has been
recorded since within the field of electronic music has obscured the
originality and genius of these works. Even the amusing tracks of
corporate advertisements for the likes of cough drops, fragrances, and
Twinkies demand repeated listening for their fascinating use of
electronics. Tracks like "Bandito the Bongo Artist," "Cindy
Electronium," and "The Pygmy Taxi Corporation" are just as intriguing
as their titles. And the packaging — from the compilation of tracks to
the exhaustive liner notes, photographs, and interviews (including a
fascinating one with Scott associate Robert Moog) — is a clinic in
reissue presentation. Not only detailing some of the instruments he
developed for use in his compositions (the Clavivox, Circle Machine, etc.), it also documents other
inventions and aids, like the Videola, which enabled him to score films conveniently as he
watched them. Absolutely essential for any electronic music fan, and completely out of this
world, regardless of century. Every library should own a copy of this as well — Scott's name
should be just as well-known as Beethoven.
(1997) Soothing Sounds For Baby, Vol. 1 – Lullaby, Sleepy Time, The Music Box, Nursery
Rhyme, Tic Toc
(1997) Soothing Sounds For Baby, Vol. 2 – Tempo Block, The Happy Whistler, Toy
Typewriter
(1997) Soothing Sounds For Baby, Vol. 3 – Tin Soldier, Little Miss Echo, The Playful
Drummer
(2001) Manhattan Research Inc. - Manhattan Research Inc Copyright, Baltimore Gas &
Electric Company, Bendix: The Tomorrow People, Lightworks, The Bass-Line Generator, Don’t
Beat Your Wife Everynight, B.C. 1975 (Gillette Conga Drum Jingle), VIM, Auto-Lite: Sta-Ful
(Instrumental), Sprite Melonball Bounce (Instrumental), Sprite Melonball Bounce, Wheels That Go
(Jim Henson short film), Limbo The Organized Mind (Musique concrete soundtrack for Jim
Henson film), Portofino 1, County Fair, Lady Gaylord, Good Air (Take 7), IBM MT/ST The
Paperwork Explosion (Industrial film for IBM, soundtrack by R Scott), Domino (Sugar company),
Super Cheer, Cheer: Revision # 3, Twilight in Turkey, Vicks: Medicated Cough Drops, Vicks:
Formula 44, Auto-Lite: Spark Plugs, Nescafe’, Awake, Backwards Overload, Bufferin: Memories
(Original), Bandito The Bongo Artist, Night and Day, Baltimore Gas & Electric Company (395),
K2r, IBM Probe, GMGM 1A, The Rhythm Modulator. Ohio Plus, In The Hall of The Mountain
Queen, General Motors: Futurama, Portofino 2, The Wild Piece (a.k.a. The String Piece, Take Me
To Your Violin Teacher, Ripples (Original Soundtrack to Jim Henson film, R Scott soundtrack)
Cyclic Bit, Ripples (Montage), The Wing Thing, Cindy Electronium, Don’t Beat Your Wife Every
Night (Instrumental), Hostess: Twinkies, Hostess: Twinkies (Instrumental), Ohio Bell: Thermo
Fax, The Pygmy Taxi Corporation, Baltimore Gas & Electric Company (Announce copy Take 1),
Baltimore Gas & Electric Company (Complete version), Lightworks (Slow), The Paperwork
Explosion Instrumental, Auto-Lite: Ford Family, Auto-Lite: Ford Family (Instrumental), Raymond
Scott Quote/Auto-Lite Wheels, Bufferin: Memories (Demo), Space Mystery (Montage), The Toy
Trumpet, Backwards Beeps, Raymond Scott Quote/Auto-Lite Sta-Ful, Lightworks Instrumental,
When Will It End ?, Bendix 2 The Tomorrow People, Electronic Audio Logos Inc.
Electronic Musician Article
“Circle Machines And
Sequencers” (2000) - A case of
mistaken identity has emerged. Was
Raymond Scott a quasi-jazz alchemist
from the late '30s Swing Era whose
melodies later underscored Bugs
Bunny and Ren & Stimpy cartoons?
Or was he the unsuspecting
godfather of the modern genres of
techno, electronica, and ambient
music? These two historical roles
might seem incompatible, yet they
coexist within the same enigmatic
figure. The two roles aren't paradoxical; instead, they exhibit an idiosyncratic continuity...
SCOTT'S SECRET SCIENCE
Many of Scott's playful riffs - originally recorded from 1937 to 1939 by the Raymond Scott
Quintette - are genetically encoded in almost every human being, thanks to their use by Warner
Bros. music director Carl Stalling in 120 episodes of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes animated
classics. More recently, these and other themes were featured in a dozen episodes of
Nickelodeon's Ren & Stimpy Show. The popular rediscovery of Scott's original novelty jazz
recordings (which began with the 1992 Columbia CD release Reckless Nights and Turkish
Twilights) led to a belated reappraisal of Scott's timeless - and long forgotten - genius. His music
has been covered by the Kronos Quartet, Rush, They Might Be Giants, Don Byron, Louis
Armstrong, Gwar, Benny Goodman, Foetus, Devo, Holland's Metropole Orchestra, the Beau
Hunks, and countless other admirers. David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet said his first
introduction to Scott's music in 1992 "was like being given the name of a composer I feel I have
heard my whole life, who until now was nameless. Clearly he is a major American composer."
Awareness of the other side of his career, as an electronic music pioneer, began in 1997 with the
reissue of Scott's 1963 Soothing Sounds for Baby trilogy. These albums, largely overlooked upon
their original release, contained gentle - and all-electronic - works meant to calm and delight
infants. Scott's pioneering and little-heard explorations of synthesized rhythmic minimalism and
low-key ambience foreshadowed the subsequent conjurings of Terry Riley, Phillip Glass,
Kraftwerk, and Brian Eno. That most of Scott's ethereal music was performed on vacuum tube
and transistor-rigged music machines - ones he designed and built - made the reemergence of
these recordings seem like the Dead Sea Scrolls of electronica. But Soothing Sounds for Baby
couldn't possibly prepare the world for the exotic artifacts found on the recent two-CD set,
Manhattan Research Inc. The 69 tracks on Manhattan Research Inc. cover Scott's
groundbreaking electronic work from 1953 to 1969. Forays into abstract musique concrete can be
heard alongside decidedly nonkiddie collaborations with a young, pre-Muppet Jim Henson. In
addition, Manhattan Research Inc. presents some of the first TV and radio commercials to
employ electronic music soundtracks. The package moved Can's Holger Czukay to disbelief. "This
is from the fifties and sixties? Raymond Scott belongs to the phalanx of unique people like Les
Paul, Oscar Sala, and Leon Theremin, to whom we owe so much in developing our own musical
identity today," Czukay says.
ELECTRIFIED SWING
Before Scott embarked on a professional music career in 1931 - at his older brother's insistence
he intended to pursue engineering. As a result of his fascination with technology, Scott's
knowledge of radio and recording studios showed a sophistication rarely seen among composers
and bandleaders. Throughout his life, Scott explored music technology with a Nobel laureate's
dedication. He revolutionized the art of microphone placement, and spent many of his band's
recording sessions in the control room, monitoring the mix. A June 1937 article in Down Beat,
titled "Engineer-Musician Electrifies Swing World With Ideas," described Scott's New York City
apartment as "divided into two parts: in one the dominant note was the piano and phonograph;
and in the other was all sorts of recording equipment, with microphones all over the place and
long wires trailing across the floor." The feature explored Scott's science of "creative acoustics,"
which involved using a mic to manipulate and capture sounds that differ from those heard by the
naked ear. A November 1937 Popular Mechanics feature, "Radio Music of the Future," described
Scott "placing a `dead` microphone beside the piano and then turning it on only after the keys
have been struck [to] catch the ghostlike effect" of aftertones that are "ethereal, disembodied,
[and have] a sense of great space."
MANHATTAN R&D
As a composer, Scott was a strict perfectionist with little tolerance for improvisation, which
triggered the ire of many jazz purists. He earned notoriety as a session tyrant and was commonly
criticized for treating his sidemen and vocalists as hardware. "All he ever had was machines only we had names," said drummer Johnny Williams. Singer Anita O'Day, who worked briefly with
Scott's early 1940s big band, called him "a martinet" who "reduced [musicians] to something like
wind-up toys." In 1946 - the same year he composed the score for the Mary Martin/Yul Brynner
Broadway production Lute Song - Scott established Manhattan Research Inc. to expand the
horizons of electronic sound generation. From 1950 to 1957, Scott financed his technological
excursions by conducting the orchestra on NBC's cornball, but highly rated, chart-countdown
show, Lucky Strike's Your Hit Parade (a gig he allegedly despised for its banality). Raymond and
his second wife, singer Dorothy Collins, were seen on the little screen in millions of American
households every week. However, few suspected the alter ego lurking behind the conductor's
forced stage smile. Scott advertised Manhattan Research Inc. as "the world's most extensive
facility for the creation of Electronic Music and Musique Concrete." A slogan for his venture was
"more than a think factory - a dream center where the excitement of tomorrow is made available
today." By spending more of his time soldering circuits and less with union-scale sidemen, Scott
eventually dispensed with the human element altogether. He was more comfortable around
machines; Scott spoke their language - or taught them to speak his. As Electronic Music
Foundation president Joel Chadabe says, "Scott's music is so perfectly crafted, so lyrical and
easy, so completely charming and good-natured, that it seems all the more wonderful, even
mysterious, that much of it was created with the sophisticated and complex technology he
invented. Scott developed his instruments to make his music and did it so well that what you
hear is the music." The inventions evolved according to the whims of Scott's boundless curiosity.
In March 1946, he patented an electromechanical synthesizer called the Orchestra Machine. An
obscure ancestor of the tape loop-based Mellotron, it featured a keyboard that could simulate an
ensemble of traditional musicians. "This machine is a device incorporating a number of multiple
soundtrack units, that may be selected as would the musical instruments in an orchestra," Scott
wrote in the patent disclosure. "The entire mechanical driving system's speed may be varied in
order to select any particular musical pitch." Two years later, he began a decade of work on a
behemoth sound-effects generator that he eventually christened Karloff (after horror-film legend
Boris Karloff). Scott demonstrated the unit to columnist Joseph Kaselow of the New York Herald
Tribune. "The heart of the unit is a control panel with some hundred or so buttons and dials from
which Scott can get an infinite number of rhythms and sound combinations - treble, bass,
beeping, swishing, honking - you name it," Kaselow said. "Scott's machine, actually a control
console which selects, modifies, and combines sounds produced by electronic means, has 200
sound sources and is capable of quickly producing infinite and varied musical and electronic
effects. The machine uses several electronic tone generators, and others can be added. The
control panel directs pitch, timbre, intensity, tempo, accent, and repetition. It can sound like a
group of bongo drums. It can give impressions which suggest common noises. It can create the
mood of musical tone-poems. And it can also produce limitless emotional variations to suit a
variety of musical styles. All, of course, if Scott is at the controls."
WALL OF SOUND
A 20-year-old Columbia University student
named Robert Moog and his father were among
the privileged few who witnessed Scott's
obsessions in action. At the time, the Moogs
were building theremins in their basement. Scott
wanted to obtain the instrument's electronic
subassembly, and so he invited the Moogs to
tour his facility in Manhasset, New York. "First,
Raymond showed us his recording studio. Then a
very large room with a cutting lathe and all sorts
of monitoring and mixing equipment," Moog
says. "The entire downstairs was a dream
workshop consisting of a large room with
machine tools of the highest quality; a
woodworking shop; an electronics assembly
room; and a large, thoroughly equipped
stockroom of electronic parts. My father and I
were there with our mouths hanging open." This
encounter commenced a social and professional
relationship between Moog and Scott that lasted for nearly two decades. "When I first worked for
Scott in the early 1950s, he had a very large laboratory," Moog says. "One room was completely
filled with rack upon rack of relays, motors, steppers, and electronic circuits. Raymond would go
around and adjust various things to change the sound patterns. I'd never seen anything like it. It
was a huge, electromechanical `sequencer.` " Scott called it his Wall of Sound. Scott used the
Moogs' theremin module in the first prototype of his keyboard synthesizer, the Clavivox, which he
patented in 1956. A few years before meeting the Moogs, Scott fashioned a toy theremin for his
daughter Carrie. "I must have been 11 or 12, which would be around 1950 or 1951," says Carrie
Makover. "I had seen a Broadway play called Mrs. McThing which used a theremin, and I loved
the way it sounded. But after my dad built it, I discovered I couldn't play it. So he took it back
and made it into something else." The resulting synthesizer allowed a player to glide smoothly
from one note to another without a break over a 3-octave keyboard. It could be played with an
expressive portamento rather than with discrete pitches only. Subsequent improvements allowed
staccato attacks, on/off vibrato toggling, and many other effects. It could also simulate many
traditional instruments. "This was not a theremin anymore," Moog says. "Raymond quickly
realized there were more elegant ways of controlling an electronic circuit." In subsequent models,
Scott used photocells and a steady light source beamed through photographic film graded from
opaque to transparent. This varied the voltage, which changed the pitch of the tone generator.
The waveform of the sound determined the tone color, and the methods of altering the
waveform were similar to modern analog synths. "A lot of the sound-producing circuitry of the
Clavivox resembled very closely the first analog synthesizer my company made in the mid-'60s,"
Moog says. "Some of the sounds are not the same, but they're close."
RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK
The discipline Scott, a relentless workaholic, imposed on his musicians came naturally to himself.
In 1957, at age 50, he endured his first encounter with serious heart trouble. "I had many dead
spots around my body," Scott wrote in his journal. "Cardiac specialists gave me one year to live."
Instead of slowing, Scott's pace increased. Perhaps Scott realized that, besides outmaneuvering
competitors, he was also
pitted against the
undertaker's pocket
watch. Around 1959,
Scott designed and built
the Circle Machine, a
more compact electronic
sequencer. Dr. Thomas
Rhea, music synthesis
professor at the Berklee
College of Music, visited
Scott many times in the
early '70s and remembers
the Circle Machine as "an
analog waveform
generator that was this
crazy, whirling-dervish thing. It had a ring of incandescent lamps, each with its own rheostat,
and a photo-electric cell on a spindle that twirled in a circle above the lights." Each bulb's
intensity was individually adjustable, as was the rotation speed of the photocell. As the lights
brightened, the pitch ascended. Arm rotation speed governed the rhythm. The lights could be
stag-gered in brightness, and depending on the pattern, the tone sequence generated would
change. The Circle Machine was capable of a wide range of unearthly sounds, as heard in
numerous commercial jingles Scott recorded during the late 1950s and early 1960s (many of
them are included on Manhattan Research Inc.). Building on the foundations of, and
cannibalizing components from, his Karloff generator and Wall of Sound sequencer, Scott
developed the first version of his "instantaneous composition/performance machine" in the late
1950s. He named it the Raymond Scott Electronium (no relation to the German Hohner
electronium), and it became the most ambitious and resource-consuming project of his life.
Laboring for decades, Scott developed it in many different incarnations, all of which shared his
artificial intelligence technology. "The entire system is based on the concept of Artistic
Collaboration Between Man and Machine," Scott wrote in a patent disclosure. "The new
structures being directed into the machine are unpredictable in their details, and hence the
results are a kind of duet between the composer and the machine." Instead of a traditional,
piano-style keyboard, the Electronium was "guided" by a complex series of buttons and switches,
arranged in orderly rows. The system was capable of "instantaneous composition and
performance" of polyphonic rhythmic structures, as well as tasking preset programs. With Scott
controlling the sonorities, tempos, and timbres, he and his machine could compose, perform, and
record all at once. The parts weren't multitracked; rather, voices, rhythms, and melodies
originated simultaneously in real time. "A composer `asks` the Electronium to `suggest` an idea,
theme, or motive," Scott wrote in the user manual. "To repeat it, but in a higher key, he pushes
the appropriate button. Whatever the composer needs: faster, slower, a new rhythm design, a
hold, a pause, a second theme, variation, an extension, elongation, diminution, counterpoint, a
change of phrasing, an ornament, ad infinitum. It is capable of a seemingly inexhaustible palette
of musical sounds and colors, rhythms, and harmonies. Whatever the composer requests, the
Electronium accepts and acts out his directions. The Electronium adds to the composer's
thoughts, and a duet relationship is set up." "It was always this kind of metaphysical, almost
magical thing, about literally thinking things to the point where they would happen," says Herb
Deutsch, a Hofstra University music professor who worked with Moog to develop the first Moog
synthesizer in 1964. Deutsch, who also worked for Scott, remembered one of his colleague's
visionary objectives. "He wanted to take the work out of being a musician," Deutsch says. "That
used to really get me upset. He said, `Look, I just want to sit here, and I'd like to turn this
machine on, and whenever it does something good, I just want to record it at that point.' It was
not that he was a lazy guy - far from it. He worked incredibly hard to take the work out of being
a composer." Circuitry expert Alan Entenman assisted Scott. "What Ray did was to recognize that
music has repetitions and patterns, and he envisioned a machine that would incorporate those
patterns," Entenman says. "He thought of it as `an orchestra with a thousand voices.' It had
plug-in modules, and each module was a synthesizer of his own design that was capable of
making a wide variety of sounds. Each one he would give a different voice, and what he kept
telling me was, that if you listen to music, it's repetition. You could repeat notes in a different
tone. What made his Electronium successful was his knowledge of composition. Being a
composer, he knew how to construct music from these things - and it really worked. "This thing
could make any kind of music you could imagine," Entenman says. "One time he had [what] he
described as this real sexy, `raunchy jazz` coming out of this thing. "I understand the secret, to
some extent," Entenman says. "The harmonics are precise mathematical multiples, and when
something vibrates, there are overtones. The way you blend these overtones, and the amount of
offset they have with one another, gives it warmth. That's what he would do to get it to sound
rich. He'd couple that with the melodious, rhythmic patterns he built into it. He would program
how it was repeated, and in what key it would be repeated, so it was like gears within gears."
MOTOWN MAESTRO
Refining the Electronium was Scott's primary focus throughout the 1960s, when integrated
circuits made smaller and more efficient designs possible. Scott asked Moog to "sophisticate my
equipment. The concept is the same as I've had for many years now. And you're the scientist
who will make these things small, more compact, and with fewer parts." Moog replaced Scott's 8stage "sequential timer" relays with electronic stepping switches. Despite another bout of heart
trouble in 1967, Scott continued to focus full-time on his Electronium. By the end of the 1960s,
he had invested more than a decade - and more than a million dollars - in refining his brainchild.
But Scott's health was failing, and his once-substantial royalties were dwindling. In August 1970,
Motown Records founder Berry Gordy read an article in Variety about Scott's work. The Los
Angeles-based music mogul immediately phoned Scott and asked to see - and hear - this
miraculous invention. Soon, a sizable Motown entourage arrived at Scott's Farmingdale, New
York, facility in a fleet of limos. "It was genius meeting genius," Motown executive Guy Costa said
in 1997. "Berry certainly respected Ray and his knowledge, and Ray admired Berry." Gordy was
impressed by Scott's Beethoven-in-a-box. "Berry felt that the power of the Electronium, the
ability to numeralize the music process, was important," Costa said. "Berry was always a formula
man; he'd find a rhythm or a progression and build on that. The Electronium gave you the ability
to play a chord, and the ability to store rhythms, and resequence those things. To have all these
new effects was a turn-on." One month later, Gordy placed an order for an Electronium. The
initial down payment was $10,000, but it would eventually cost Motown millions. Costa arranged
for shipment of the device from New York to Gordy's home in Los Angeles. Scott planned to
spend six weeks tutoring the Motown chief on the device. When Gordy asked Scott to make
further modifications, the inventor was happy to comply and continued working in Southern
California, with his client involved in the progress. Eventually, Gordy offered Scott a position as
head of Motown's Electronic Research and Development department. Scott accepted, and in 1972
he relocated to the West Coast with his third wife, Mitzi. Equipped with his own research studio
facility, Scott continued to develop the Electronium and other technologies. "Berry was looking at
the Electronium as a source of inspiration and new ideas, and as a methodology - as a
sophisticated programmable sequencer," Costa said. "It was an idea stimulator, a creative
thought processor. Maybe [they would] find combinations that hadn't been tried. It could have
done anything he wanted it to do." Following a serious heart attack in 1977, Scott retired at age
69. "Ray was a wonderful guy," Costa said. "I can't tell you how much fun we had together. He
was the experimenter; the mad professor." What Motown had to show commercially for its
investment remains a mystery, as no tapes have yet surfaced from the company's vaults.
THE CLOCK RUNS OUT
After continued heart problems in the
late 1970s, Scott was no longer on
music technology's cutting edge. He
tried to upgrade his devices with
microprocessors but lost valuable
research time due to illness. "By then,
he had destroyed the Electronium by
vandalizing it for parts for other things
he was working on," Costa said. "And new electronics had come so far, that they could do with
one little chip what he had tons of wiring doing on the Electronium. It didn't pay to keep working
on it." But Scott didn't give up. Despite deteriorating health (including heart bypass surgery), he
continued to work, even while bedridden. In the mid-1980s, he modified a Yamaha DX-7 and
used MIDI to connect the keyboard to his Electronium through a PC purchased in 1981. "I got
involved in an exciting project," the 75-year-old wrote in his journal in June 1983. "For three
months I slept an average of about 50 hours weekly. Then I folded. Symptoms of folding:
extreme fatigue, wobbly walking, accumulation of chest pains, zero energy output capability." A
major stroke in 1987 closed down the shop completely. Even more tragic, Scott could barely
speak, rendering him unable to answer questions when interest in his work revived in 1992. He
died in February 1994 at age 85.
VISIONARY OUTLOOK
"I understand his ideas about the collaboration between man and machine, which to me is the
most important thing he did, in terms of electronics and music," says Berklee professor Dr.
Thomas Rhea. "He anticipated some artificial intelligence concepts and some compositional
concepts that people believe somebody else did. The idea of collaborating with a machine, and
allowing the machine to make certain decisions, was pretty avant-garde. "I appreciate everything
Cage did, and Stockhausen," Rhea says. "But there's a whole tradition here that's being ignored,
and Raymond Scott is one of those people." Moog recently spoke to the BBC about his old
colleague. "Raymond was the first," Moog said. "He foresaw the use of sequencers, and the use
of electronic oscillators, to make sounds. These were the watershed uses of electronic circuitry."
GENESIS OF THE SEQUENCER
(The following unaddressed letter was written by Raymond Scott c. late 1970’s)
“Gentlemen: I have a story that may be of interest to you. It is not widely known who
invented the circuitry concept for the automatic sequential performance of musical
pitches - now well known as a sequencer. I, however, do know who the inventor was
- for it was I who first conceived and built the sequencer. Bob Moog, who visited me
occasionally at my lab on Long Island, was among the first to see and witness the
performance of my UJT-Relay sequencer. To digress for a bit: I was so secretive
about my development activities - perhaps neurotically so - that I was always
reminding Bob that he mustn't copy or reveal my sequencer work to anyone. I
understand, now, my personal need for secrecy at that time. Electronic music for
commercials and films was my living then - and I thought I had this great advantage
- because of my sequencer. Word naturally got around about the nature of what my
device accomplished, but Bob Moog continued to be loyal. I must say Bob Moog is a
most honorable person. He steadfastly refrained from embodying my sequencer in his
equipment line until the sheer pressure of so many manufacturers using the
sequencer forced him to compete. Yet, he used the simplest version, though he knew
about my most advanced sequencer. Quite a gentleman, and a super talent besides.
Now, with the passing of years, I guess I regret my secrecy and would like for people
to know of what I accomplished.”
-Raymond Scott
Where Are They Now?
At least one Clavivox still exists - and still works. It is one of many vintage electronic instruments
owned by the Audities Foundation in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, under the directorship of David
Kean. The Clavivox was used recently by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers on the album Echo.
The Motown version of the Raymond Scott Electronium was bought from Scott's widow, Mitzi, by
composer/musician and Devo cofounder Mark Mothersbaugh, who houses it at his Mutato Muzika
studios in Hollywood. At Mutato, there's a room where Scott's unique device for "Machine
Powered Instantaneous Musical Composition and Performance" has been collecting dust since
1996. Partly eviscerated by the inventor for spare parts, it no longer functions. Mothersbaugh has
promised to restore it to working order.
Robert Moog
In the 1920s a Russian inventor named
Leon Theremin unveiled the first purely
electronic instrument. You played the
theremin by waving your hands in the
vicinity of two metal rods, controlling
pitch and volume, that were attached to a
nondescript wooden cabinet. Between the
strange arm motions and the instrument's
invisible machinations, the theremin's
overall effect in performance was
theatrical and mysterious. But like the
200-ton telharmonium, the world's first
mechanical music synthesizer (invented
by Thaddeus Cahill around 1900), the
theremin was difficult to play. It soon
disappeared behind the curtain, relegated
to cheap performances in B-grade alieninvasion movies. In 1955, four years after
the theremin's eerily weepy sound was
employed in "The Day the Earth Stood
Still," RCA introduced the first modern
synthesizer. The machine made sounds
by manipulating electrical waves to
denote timbre, pitch and volume. Like
early computers, it filled a room and was
tended by men in lab coats. A few years later Robert Moog, a graduate student in physics at
Cornell University, published a magazine article explaining how to build a theremin, offering do-ityourself kits for $49.95. Orders poured in, and Moog sold 1,000 that year. "We had $13,000 in
the bank," he recalled recently, "a humongous cache of wealth for a graduate student back
then!" The windfall enabled a career that helped bring electronic music out of the realm of
novelty acts and university labs. A decade after the first RCA machine, Moog introduced the first
widely adopted electronic instrument -- the synthesizer that bears his name. When Moog (rhymes
with "vogue") unveiled the Moog music synthesizer in 1965, his engineering skills combined with
a bit of business luck to radically change the way music was made. Synthesizers went from being
computers to instruments that could be found in any music store. The flowering of rock music
may have come via Leo Fender, Les Paul and the Gibson Guitar Co., but the innovative music of
the early 21st century owes far more to Moog and and his imitators and successors. Growing up
in the '40s in Flushing, Queens, Moog suffered the usual cruelties boys inflict on the smarter,
more introverted members of their tribe: "I was the class brain," he recalled in one of several email interviews. "I knew I was smarter than they were, so they felt compelled to beat me up
periodically to keep me in my place." He spent a lot of time with his father, who liked to dabble in
electronics, and started his own electronics projects. He built his first theremin with the help of a
hobby-magazine article at age 14. "I was hooked," he recalled. Five years later, Moog published
his own do-it-yourself theremin article. Moog's mother, meanwhile, gave him piano lessons and
made him practice hours every day in the hope that he'd become a concert pianist, "klopping"
him if he "didn't practice right." He found refuge in New York's prestigious Bronx High School of
Science, where he "actually had some friends who were as nerdy as I was." Later, at Queens
College, Moog finally developed what he called "a medical-minimum amount of social grace," and
even started dating. After getting some exposure to the liberal arts at Columbia University's
Engineering School, Moog began graduate education in the engineering physics department of
Cornell University. He took eight years to get his Ph.D., largely because of his part-time hobby:
building theremins and other electronic instruments. The degree came in 1965, a year after Moog
launched his synthesizer business. Moog built his synthesizer in 1964 after a composer told him
about the need for user-friendly electronic instruments utilizing new solid-state technology. The
Moog was modular: You used patch cords to select your waveform (the sound's timbre) and
frequency (pitch), and plugged in the interface -- a keyboard, instead of the binary code on
paper that had defined the first RCAs. Moog's engineering wizardry did the rest. Significantly,
Moog's was the first synthesizer to use attack-decay-sustain-release (ADSR) envelopes, set with
four different knobs, which control the qualities of a sound's onset, intensity and fade. Like many
of his designs, Moog's envelope generators became a basic component of later synthesizers. The
sound was monophonic -- one note at a time -- but that was enough, since studio recording
techniques could create whole orchestras from single notes by the late 1960s. RCA synthesizers,
intended for an elite market of labs financed by universities and record companies, had cost
$100,000 and up. In 1967 the new Moog sold for $11,000. It wasn't the only synthesizer around;
many experts also commend Donald Buchla's modular synthesizer, built around the same time.
But the Moog became prized for its utility and elegance, making Moog the name that brought
synthesized music to the masses. "I remember seeing it as a teenager and thinking, 'I gotta get
my hands on it,'" says Jeffrey Hass, director of the University of Indiana's Center for Electronic
and Computer Music. "I wasn't alone. It had a tremendous impact on many people and brought
electronic music to many composers, both popular and academic." The synthesizer also boasted
the voltage-controlled lowpass filter that came to be known as the Moog filter, capable of making
a variety of full horn, string and vocal timbres. The filter was patented in 1968, much to the envy
of the competition, who "ate their hearts out," Moog says. They "all came up with voltagecontrolled lowpass filters, but most of them sounded like shit, if I do say so myself." The Moog's
biggest break came in 1969, when musician Walter (now Wendy) Carlos had a huge, Grammywinning hit with "Switched-on Bach," popularizing electronic music with Moog-made renditions of
Johann Sebastian Bach. Canadian pianist and Bach interpreter Glenn Gould said that Carlos'
Fourth Brandenburg Concerto was "the finest performance of any of the Brandenburgs -- live,
canned or intuited -- that I've ever heard." The Beatles introduced a new Moog in the majestic
"Because," on "Abbey Road," the last album they recorded. The instrument was somehow
perfectly suited to the layered, atmospheric vocals and John Lennon's ethereal lyrics. In 1971,
Carlos brought the Moog to cinema, scoring Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" with
electronic Beethoven whose gleeful perversity helped lend the movie its malevolent sheen. Still,
these were products of studio recording. It took musicians with a talent for excess -- such as
keyboardist Keith Emerson -- to tote the enormous Moog setup, a towering box of electronics,
onto the stage for live shows. Ever mindful of utility, Moog next introduced the portable,
performance-minded Minimoog. Rock-oriented musicians like Jan Hammer showed that the
synthesizer could be used as an expressive lead instrument. Jazzers like Josef Zawinul used the
instrument to "add new colors to the traditional sound world of jazz," says Doug Keislar, editor of
the Computer Music Journal. "It was really the advent of the Minimoog that saw synthesizers
take off," Keislar says. "The Minimoog showed that there was a significant market for portable,
cheaper synthesizers." Or as Moog put it, in typically dry fashion, "By 1974 or so, having a
Minimoog would make it a lot easier to get a job playing the local Ramada Inn." The Minimoog
became the gold standard. "He hit it so right, everyone realized that was the way to do it. So
everyone did it more or less the same," says Joel Chadabe, author of "Electric Sound: The Past
and Promise of Electronic Music," who has known Moog since 1965. "Underlying all this was a
basic quality. The sound of his instruments was really good." A century after Thomas Edison
reproduced the first recorded sound, the synthesizer began to spread into musical genres from
the avant-garde to jazz. In 1977, the instrument took a central role in emerging forms of
electronic music, with Donna Summer's hit dance single, "I Feel Love," created almost entirely on
Moog synthesizers, and German band Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express," an album of purely
technological music. "The spirit of the times was very exciting," says Chadabe, who also serves
as president of the Electronic Music Foundation. "You could start a basement business and really
have an impact. Later on the real businessmen came in with their accountants and financial
planning and a lot of capital, and the business matured." Moog admits he didn't have much of a
head for the business end; his main goal has always been creating useful technology. "My
transition from scientist to entrepreneur?" he asked in an e-mail. "Some would say that I still
haven't made that transition," he joked. "I suddenly found myself in a growing business and I
didn't know how to run it," Moog wrote of his early days. "I didn't know anything at all about
business back then. I didn't know what a balance sheet was. I didn't know what cash flow was.
So the business survived as long as it grew, but as soon as a contraction occurred, I ran out of
money." In quick fashion, Moog's family business was bought out. The Micromoog was the last
synthesizer created by Moog to bear his name. After musical instrument manufacturer Norlin took
over his company, including synthesizer design, Moog spent the rest of his days at the company
designing guitar effects, guitar
amplifiers "and similar small
electronic stuff." He left Moog
Music in 1977, blaming
corporate politics for his
departure. When the
Polymoog went into
production in 1976, Moog
says, "reliability-wise it was a
disaster." It had been created
by Norlin's new head of
synthesizer design, David
Luce. And why did Luce
design synthesizers for Norlin
while the man they were
named for "was assigned to
the technological provinces"?
Just like his school days in
Queens, Moog says, it came
down to social skills: "Luce
liked to go out and drink and
socialize with the Norlin brass,
and I didn't, or maybe
couldn't." The first digital
synthesizer, the Synclavier,
had come along in 1975.
Digital sound synthesis,
invented in the 1950s, became an affordable and popular technology in the 1980s. Soon digital
sampling, computers and MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) standardization swept
through electronic music, transforming the landscape. While the 1960s and 1970s were the
heyday of analog synthesis, a sound many musicians still prefer, computer-synthesized sound
now had the technological edge. Moog largely eschewed the digital music revolution, though he
had played a part in it. In 1978 he moved to North Carolina to launch Big Briar Productions and
began making effects modules and control devices for electronic instruments. One of the first
projects was an attempt to create a keyboard instrument that could be played as expressively as
a violin. At the International Computer Music Conference in 1982, he introduced the multipletouch-sensitive keyboard, developed with John Eaton of Indiana University. In addition to
responding to the downward motion of a key, the keyboard also sensed the horizontal position of
the finger playing it, opening up new dynamic possibilities. Later, at the behest of artists, he
made a flat touch-plate interface. "Artist feedback drove all my development work," he recalls,
listing examples dating from the beginning of his career: "The first synthesizers I made were in
response to what [composer] Herb Deutsch wanted. The now-famous Moog filter was suggested
by several musicians. The so-called ADSR envelope, which is now a basic element in all
contemporary synthesizers and programmable keyboard isntruments, was originally specified in
1965 by Vladimir Ussachevsky, then head of the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center. The
point is that I don't design stuff for myself. I'm a toolmaker. I design things that other people
want to use." While Moog's Big Briar inventions have not had the sensational impact of the first
Moog synths, they are creative, futuristic visions of alternative methods for playing electronic
instruments. "Unfortunately, the trend is toward user interfaces that are simpler, not more
complex. Most people don't care enough about the increased possibilities for expression to
sacrifice years of their lives mastering an instrument," says Keislar. "They want to press a button
and hear music come out. As a result, such systems are probably destined to remain
experimental, even if elegant." Big Briar also makes effects modules such as the "moogerfooger,"
which mimics analog synthesizer timbres, one of which (Big Briar Moogerfooger Model MF101
Lowpass Filter) is based on the Moog filter. In 1997 Moog came out with a theremin (the
Ethervox) based on the electronic instrument from
the 1920s but featuring both a MIDI interface and
a sound module that can re-create a theremin
performance from MIDI data. Reflecting on the
waves of synthesizers and musical innovation that
followed in the Moog's wake, the inventor says the
instrument "has introduced a vast array of new
timbres and textures to the available palette of
musical sound" and fostered what he calls "sound
design." Much of contemporary music, Moog points
out, "has as much to do with sculpting complex,
slowly evolving sounds as it does with 'playing'
fixed-timbre musical sounds." Moog's quotation
marks underscore the plasticity of the concept.
While some have credited Moog with helping to
foment a "democratization of music," he will hear
none of it. That societal shift came about thanks to
"cheesy Casio and Yamaha keyboards that sold for
$100 to $500" and were "small and portable and
battery-powered, so you could take them to a party
or to the beach," he says. "I see these devices as being on a branch of music technology that is
completely separate from the analog synthesizers of the 1970s." His newest project is an
"interactive piano" that manages to be both newfangled and old-fashioned. Designed with David
Van Koevering, who helped to market the first Moogs, it is housed in the fine finished wood of a
concert piano, but instead of strings under the lid, there is only a speaker. A touch screen the
size of a laptop's takes the place of sheet music. The piano has 128 sounds, including a digitally
sampled Steinway grand, and 256 tracks for recording. It will transcribe any composition onto the
screen as fast as you can play it. Connect to the Web and download MIDI files to play along with
in a kind of instrumental karaoke. Hook up a CD burner and make copies of your symphony, or
print it on sheet music for that authentic touch. Its educational software is far more forgiving
than was Moog's mother. Institutions as varied as the University of Miami and the New York
Islanders use the $8,000 (and up) piano. But unlike Moog's synthesizers, the instrument is aimed
more at musical tradition than musical innovation. "Before the radio and the phonograph, people
made their own music, for themselves and for each other," Moog says. "People regularly got
together to sing, play [music] and dance with each other. Now, most of the music is recorded,
and a lot of that is listened to by solitary people, isolated from their surroundings by
headphones." Moog hopes that in the near future, "people will get tired of being in their own
little boxes, and they'll come to understand that they would be a lot happier if there were more
social music making in their lives." These days, Moog is accorded the respect and admiration of a
great American inventor. In the fall of 1994, when the excellent documentary "Theremin: An
Electronic Odyssey" had its debut at the New York Film Festival, Moog was greeted by warm
applause when he was recognized in the audience by the film's director, Steven Martin, during a
post-screening Q&A. If most musically inclined people have some familiarity with the Moog, that's
because Moog became a de facto leader when it came to introducing electronic music technology
into the public consciousness. Moog also helped forever alter the creative process of music
making. It's easy to forget that music was once an elite art, the province of those who could
liberate the scrawl of notes on a page through specialized and sometimes highly technical
mechanical expertise. Today, Danny Elfman, who composed the scores for the "Batman" movies,
"The Simpsons" and countless other productions, has an advantage Beethoven and Mozart
probably never dreamed possible: creating full orchestration with technology instead of sheet
music. For Moog, it all goes back to his initial, sustaining fascination with the theremin: "Leon
Theremin's original designs are elegant, ingenious and effective. As electronics goes, the
theremin is very simple. But there are so many subtleties hidden in the details of the design. It's
like a great sonnet, or a painting, or a speech, that is perfectly done on more than one level."
The statement equally applies to Moog's own marvel of engineering.
Clive Williamson Interview
(1990) - You designed one of the
most famous synthesisers - the
MINIMOOG. What was the
inspiration behind those early
synthesiser designs of yours?
“Well, MINIMOOG was actually a
second generation. MINIMOOG
itself was inspired by a series of
instruments that we designed more
for experimental musicians where
each separate module could do one
thing and one thing only towards
shaping or generating a sound. These early modular instruments looked more like telephone
switchboards than musical instruments because you had lots of patch-chords that connected the
parts together whereas the MINIMOOG was all pre-wired together. It was simple enough and
quick enough to use so that you could use it on stage. The inspiration come for the first modular
instruments that we made came from the experiments that the tape music and electronic music
composers, had been making since the end of the second world war. These people used tape
recorders to make their sounds, and they also used laboratory and broadcast test equipment to
make test tones and to manipulate them in certain specific ways, with musical ends in mind.”
What sort of people are you talking about when you mention those composers?
“Well in Cologne, Germany, there was Karlheinz Stockhausen, perhaps the best known of that
particular school. Also there was a gentleman by the name of Herbert Eimert, and in France, at
the Paris radio station, there was Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, who instead of using
electronic sound, preferred using natural sound but processed it electronically. In our country the
best known composer was Vladimir Ussachevsky, who founded the Columbia Princetown
Electronic Music Centre in New York City in l959. All these people were experimenting - they
were making a new kind of music. They weren't sure how the music was going to turn out or what
sounds or sound manipulations would be valuable, and as we look back at them today we can
see the rapid evolution of a complete new medium of musical expression.”
So what effect do you think your first instruments had on the composers that were then able to
use them?
“Well these early composers had to make do with what they could find from other scientific and
technical fields. They would use war surplus equipment, laboratory equipment - anything at all
that could generate or modify a sound electronically. What I did was more or less put it all in one
box. I took everything that the musicians had found useful at that time, build it all in a neat form so
that it all worked together without fighting and without having to worry about it. One sound source
fitted into another instrument, so that it was just a more efficient tool.”
Did you find that other sorts of people began to use those synthesisers?
“Oh yes - our first customers were experimental musicians. In fact we sold some equipment to the
BBC in the mid '60s. Many of the musicians that worked with us at that time were at universities,
some were choreographers who made their own dance forms and so on. Once these people
began to understand how to use the instruments for making music, the people who made music
for advertising commercials latched onto it because the synthesiser turned out to be the perfect
way to bridge the gap between sound effects and music. You could make a sound that had some
musical properties, but also suggested very explicitly some desirable emotion that was useful in
commercials, and through that - at least in our country, a lot of synthesiser sounds were heard on
the radio in the years say l966-67. One of these people was Walter Carlos (now Wendy Carlos Ed.) who then made the record "Switched on Bach", a complete electronic rendition of the music
of Bach and that became very popular, and brought synthesiser music to the third stage - the
stage of its being used for popular records. Then the fourth stage I suppose was to be used live
on stage, and that's where the MINIMOOG came in. The MINIMOOG was very popular among
rock musicians in the early 70s.”
Now that instrument isn't available any more, but it did have a relatively long life for an electronic
instrument, didn't it?
“Oh yes, it was in production from 1970 through I think 1980 or 81, which is a very long time for
an electronic musical instrument to be in production. Today's typical product life is as short as 6
months and if you're lucky it's l8 months to 2 years. The technology is changing very fast and the
designs for instruments are changing fast along with it.”
So how did your synthesisers work then, and what changes have come about since?
“Our synthesisers took advantage of the technology that was just coming out in the late 60s. It
was the technology of transistors, of what we call analogue circuits. An analogue circuit is a
circuit that is actually a model of something that vibrates. It actually makes a sound waveform in
an electronic form. Today's instruments are digital, by and large. These instruments construct
wave forms from a set of numbers, and because numbers are more precise than analogue
circuits, you can make just about any kind of sound you want with today's synthesisers. What you
can't do any more than you can do with analogue instruments is control them in the refined,
complex ways that you can control traditional acoustic musical instruments.”
You're giving us indications there of the shortcomings in synthesiser design. What is your feeling
about performance possibilities on synthesisers now?
“Well, there are synthesisers today that can make acoustical sounds - and when I say acoustical
sounds I mean the sounds of traditional musical instruments - very accurately. So accurately in
fact, that it's hard to tell the difference. But what we musical instrument designers look forward to
doing in the next few years, or few decades, is improving the way these instruments are
controlled - the way they're played - and the sorts of keyboards and controls that a musician
interfaces with.”
What exactly do you mean by "a musician interfacing".
“Well, it's what happens in fact. Musical instruments provides the most efficient and refined
interface between men and machine of anything we know. When a pianist sits down and does a
virtuoso performance he is in a technical sense transmitting more information to a machine than
any other human activity involving machinery allows. A musician may not be aware of transmitting
information since he learns his technique by practising and he plays his music by intuition, but in
fact that what's happening! It happens really in the same sense that a typist can transmit
information through a typewriter.”
So what are the limitations of synthesisers now?
“Most synthesisers have keyboards that were designed back in the days of electronic organs
where you couldn't vary sounds and there was no means of imparting expression. On the other
hand when you play a violin or you play a piano you have many means of imparting expression
into the sound - of changing the loudness of the sound and even the tone colour in very precise
and musically meaningful ways. One big area of research these days is in developing new types
of keyboards where the keys themselves are responsive not only to being turned down and off by
being depressed, but also by changing the sounds through the motion and the force of the finger.”
So do you always have to use a keyboard to play these synthesisers then?
“No, a keyboard is just one example. One of the great things about synthesisers specifically and
electronic music in general is that you can separate
the means of control - that is how you play it - from
the part that actually generates the sound. You can
put any sort of control system that you can devise
with any sort of sound that comes out. Some kinds
that are available commercially now are what we call
wind controllers. They're shaped like saxophones or
clarinets and you play them in much the same way
as a wind instrument. As you blow into them, the
electronic sound gets louder and softer. That gives
an important means of expression. There are other
controllers that are built like guitars and still others
that are built like drum sets. In the experimental area
there are controllers that are sensitive to the motion
of the whole body so that they can be actually played
by dancers. Now you can have a combination of
dance performance and music production.”
So with all this research work - and I gather you're now involved in research - where do you
think electronic instruments are going from here.
“You know that's very hard to tell. I think five or ten years ago nobody could foresee where it is
now. For sure one thing that we see is that computers are playing a more and more important
part in every phase of the production of music - not only professional music studios and on stage
but also amateur musicians. A typical music studio for an amateur musician these days would
have a multi-track tape recorder in it, a computer and a couple of synthesisers. That's one very
important direction and I'm encouraging that! I happen to think that computers are the most
important thing to happen to musicians since the invention of cat-gut which was a long time ago.
(Cat-gut of course is what violin strings are made out of.) Another very important area as I
mentioned is the area of control devices where the somewhat more traditional technology of
mechanical manufacturing is being combined with the current technology of computer sensors
and computer processing to enable musicians to vary many properties of sound or many sounds
just through the motions of their bodies.”
What you're saying really is that we're getting away from the fact that synthesisers weren't easy
to control, and moving into a whole new area.
“That's right - when synthesisers were first developed, just being able to manipulate sounds
electronically was a big development for musicians - that is those who wanted to experiment. But
after these experiments were done then musicians turned to the problem of making music, of
using instruments efficiently and for that you needed a tool that matched the capabilities of the
human being. You can't just have a box of parts that you laboriously have to put together every
time you want to use it. You have to have a tool that works well and is reliable.”
So do you think we've achieved that yet, in 1990?
“No I don't think we've achieved it. The whole medium of electronic music is less than fifty years
old and the whole technology of synthesisers about twenty-five years old now. I think we're just
beginning. Musical instruments typically take centuries to evolve into their final form. The piano
after all was invented before l800. String instruments have evolved over several centuries and I
think the same thing is true of electronic musical instruments.”
What is your favourite form of synthesis now?
“Oh, there is no one type of synthesis that will do everything. There are very few electronic
musicians these days who confine themselves to just one type of synthesis. There's one type of
synthesis from sampling that gives you very accurate traditional instrumental tones, there's
another type of additive synthesis which does just the opposite - it enables you to evolve
completely new sounds and it's the ability to use these two together that excites a lot of
musicians.”
So is that the direction that we're going to see future instruments moving in? A bending of
sampled and synthesised sounds?
“I think so, and I think still newer and more powerful synthesis methods will come into wider use
as technology develops. The silicon chips - the computer chips - that are being made available to
musicians today were not even known, say five or ten years ago, and these chips can do more
and more. It's very hard to tell what might be evolved five or ten years from today.”
At IRCAM in Paris they use an enormous computer to investigate synthesis, which must have cost
a fantastic amount of money when it was first introduced. Do you think that the power of
something like that could be found in the home musician's studio in the very near future?
“Absolutely. What's in the home musician's studio now could not have been done at IRCAM or
any other computer music centre anywhere in the world ten years ago. Things are moving that
fast, and just recently I was talking to a scientist at
Bell Telephone Laboratories in this country [the USA].
He was describing some work he was doing with the
latest digital signal processing chips that Bell Labs
and AT & T are just now introducing. He was talking
about the implications for music and they were
staggering, and their projection is that this sort of
equipment will be available to the general public in a
decade.”
And what sort of processing power, or what sort of
computer power are you talking about?
“Well, now we're getting a little bit technical. It's computing power enough to analyse any sort of
music in what we call 'real time'. That is to actually complete the analysis as the music is
happening with no perceptible delay, and then to process that and to reconstruct it in a musical
way, so as to form a composition system where a musician can - just by the use of computer
processing - evolve a piece of music near to something that's already been written. Or from some
rules, or some score that he generates himself. All that sounds very technical, and believe me it is
- at this point. But by the time it reaches the general public and the musician public it will be
reduced to a tool that we hope musicians will be able to use in a natural way, in an intuitive way,
and in a creative way.”
And how do you see the actual interaction with this tool by the musician?
“Well, at the present time the interaction is through a computer screen - a computer workstation.
It's just a large computer screen with a keyboard. As time goes on this interaction interface will
become more specialised to the needs of music, and I don't think anybody knows what that is
today, but we're going to have fun trying, and finding out what sort of interface the musicians find
most useful.”
And is that something you're going to be involved with, do you think?
“I hope so. This is an area of my interest and it has been for the past twenty-five years and I
expect to continue in it.”
Can you imagine how the things are going to sound from this synthesis?
“That depends on the musician. Right now there's the capability of sounding exactly like a
symphony orchestra or like some completely new set of sounds that I couldn't even describe with
words, or anything in between. All these things are possible today, the trick is putting them at the
fingertips of a musician so he can put them together exactly the way he wants - and the big
advance from here on will be what goes between the musician's fingertips and the soundproducing capability - the synthesiser itself.”
And presumably the musician's understanding of all the equipment will be vital in all this?
“Well that's true. Musicians generally have to have some understanding of any instrument that
they use - even the voice. A proficient singer has a greater understanding of how to use his or her
voice than, say, I do. I have some understanding of how a piano works, at least enough for me to
know how to hold my hands and what fingering to use. And I think the same thing is true of
electronic musicians today. They need certain mental tools, certain intellectual equipment to deal
with these new instruments.”
Coming back to the home level of music production - what we're seeing today is this
incredible growth in home studios that you mentioned earlier. The sort of studio
where you have a small four-track tape machine or something like that linked to a
computer and some synthesisers, and people can actually make pop singles in their
own homes. What are your feelings on that direction?
“To the extent that more people now are being able to engage directly in making pop music I think
the advances have a positive direction, shall we say. Everybody has certain reservations about
how easy it is now - not to make really original good music - but to make pale imitations of music.
Something that appears to be music, but is really just something mechanical or filled with
gimmicks. One always has to remember these days where the garbage pail is, because it's so
easy to make sounds, and to put sounds together into something that appears to be music, but
it's just as hard as it always was to make good music. Making good music is an essentially
human activity and it's not easy, it takes talent.”
Silver Apples
Decades after their brief yet influential career first ground to a
sudden and mysterious halt, the Silver Apples remain one of
pop music's true enigmas: a surreal, almost unprecedented duo,
their music explored interstellar drones and hums, pulsing
rhythms and electronically-generated melodies years before
similar ideas were adopted in the work of acolytes ranging from
Suicide to Spacemen 3 to Laika. The Silver Apples formed in
New York in 1967 and comprised percussionist Danny Taylor
and lead vocalist Simeon, a bizarre figure who played an
instrument also dubbed the Simeon, which (according to notes
on the duo's self-titled 1968 debut LP) consisted of "nine audio
oscillators and eighty-six manual controls...The lead and rhythm
oscillators are played with the hands, elbows and knees and the
bass oscillators are played with the feet." Although the utterly
uncommercial record — an ingenious cacophony of beeps, buzzes and beats — sold poorly, the
Silver Apples resurfaced a year later with their sophomore effort, Contact, another far-flung
outing which fared no better than its predecessor. After the record's release, the duo seemingly
vanished into thin air, perhaps returning to the alien world from whence they purportedly came;
however, in 1996 the Silver Apples mysteriously resurfaced, as Simeon and new partner Xian
Hawkins released the single "Fractal Flow." American and European tours followed, and a year
later a new LP, Beacon, was released to wide acclaim. The follow-up Decatur appeared in 1998,
and was soon joined by A Lake of Teardrops (a collaboration with avowed fans Spectrum) as well
as The Garden, the long-unreleased third and final effort from the original Simeon/Taylor
partnership. However, on November 1, 1998, the Silver Apples' van crashed while returning from
a New York gig; the accident left Simeon with a broken neck and spinal injuries, casting his
continued musical career in grave doubt.
Review “Silver Apples” - The music on Silver Apples was unlike anything anyone had
previously heard. Simeon layered his oscillators to create a collage of sounds that seemed to be
recorded in outer space and then transmitted back to earth for
your listening pleasure. The lead oscillator produced a tone akin to
a theremin, contributing not only to the out-of-this-world quality,
but its shaky, hyper-quiver added an air of tension. A hypnotic
one- or two-chord rhythm pattern of bass notes held the tunes
together, while Simeon played counter- and counter-counterrhythms. Danny Taylor proved to be an innovative drummer,
producing an array of interesting beats and fills. He also tuned his
drums so he could change chords with Simeon. A song like
"Lovefingers" would build with a drum and bass pattern, before
bursting with waves of sound from the oscillators. Many of the
tracks on Silver Apples have a subtle catchiness to them, possessing a pop mentality that isn't
immediate. Simeon's "Simeon" is what pulls you in on first listens, but it is the songs that stay
with you when you're away from the turntable. Compositions were kept short — all are four
minutes or less, with the exception of the tribal "Dancing Gods" — further preserving the popsong ethic.
Review “Contact” - Aside from Simeon's use of a banjo on a couple of tracks, the music on
Contact does not differ from that of their debut. One aspect improved upon was the lyrics; many
possess the same "cosmic" element found on Silver Apples, but others are full of bitterness, pain,
paranoia, and confusion. In turn, the lead oscillator is used to
greater effect, reflecting this newfound intensity. Simeon, who
composed the text for five of Contact's ten songs (he framed one
song on Silver Apples, "Dancing Gods"), was largely responsible
for this change. The record opens with "You and I," one of their
best numbers, in which Simeon cuts out the hippie overtones
present in the first album's lyrics and gets straight to the point.
The text of "I Have Known Love," written by Simeon's girlfriend
Eileen Lewellen, details love's all-encompassing power. "You're
Not Foolin' Me" incorporates outside sound to drive home the
written word, using a continuous, ringing telephone to illustrate
the obsessive nature of love. "A Pox on You" and "Gypsy Love"
further exploit the feelings one experiences once love is denied and the raw emotions that
surface. "Confusion" features Simeon's banjo playing prominently. The playful, tossed-off script
adds to its throwaway nature, although there is a line or two alluding to their pop leanings. The
album closer, "Fantasies," involves Simeon guiding drummer Danny Taylor through the song and
hints at the intuitive, trusting nature of their collaboration. This often hilarious track comes as a
bit of a surprise, but works along with "Confusion" as a counterbalance to the darker lyrical
content on Contact.
Review “Beacon” - Beacon is the first Silver Apples album in nearly 30 years. Eight of the
tracks are new songs that former exile and Silver Apples leader Simeon had composed with
recent additions Xian Hawkins and Michael Lerner. The remaining
three tunes are remakes from the Silver Apples' past. A reworking
of "I Have Known Love" opens the record, and its lyrics are the
most striking aspect, as they take on new meaning in relation to
Simeon's reappearance: "I never heard the warning voice/I never
knew I had a choice/Though I never wanted to return." "You and
I" is given an appropriate chaotic reading; a wall of cacophonous
keyboards forms in the instrumental breaks, like the video game
Stargate on tilt. Of the originals, the vocal-less "Cosmic String" is
the standout, developing a Trans Am groove (albeit looser), with
sounds recalling the moment the beloved Pac-Man is caught by his
nemesis, Speedy. Beacon is full of the influence of '80s video
games, no doubt incorporated by the twentysomething Hawkins.
Review “Garden” - The Silver Apples enjoyed a renaissance in the late '90s, as a new
generation grew to appreciate the late '60s groundbreaking experimental duo. Dubs of the band's
third album, which had been mysteriously unaccounted for, were
found in a cardboard box in drummer Danny Taylor's attic. The
remarkable reunion of the original duo of Simeon Coxe (known
simply as Simeon on all recordings) and Taylor hadn't been
planned. After 27 years apart, they were reunited when a disc
jockey at New Jersey's legendary WFMU radio station received a
phone call from Taylor for the station's pledge drive. Taylor had
been out of the music business for years, and his call put the
pieces in place for Simeon, who was known at WFMU, to forge a
renewed excitement for the Silver Apples' earliest recordings.
Nearly 30 years after the 1968 and 1969 sessions, the recordings
were finally released on the band's own Whirlybird Records. The
recordings included seven complete songs from 1969 and seven drum instrumentals by Taylor in
1968. Taylor's 1968 drumming demos were blended with Simeon Coxe's 1998 "Noodle" efforts.
The 30-year musical bridge makes the recordings even more exhilarating and startling. The duo
chose to alternate the full songs that were recorded in 1968 with the "Noodle" tracks, resulting in
a haphazardly disjointed album. The classic songs might have been better served had they been
presented seamlessly, with the 1968/1998 musical experiments closing out the disc. From the
jolly and bright opening track, "I Don't Care What People Say," it's obvious that the band took
the song's title to heart. The Silver Apples' inventiveness was taken to a new level in an era of
ever-changing musical norms. The band's version of "Mustang Sally" on track nine proves the
duo's earlier passion for rousing rock. The energy resonates throughout. The effort it took to
release this disc in 1998 is further proof of the duo's continuing experimental tendencies. The
quirkily childlike "Again" and the penultimate track, "Mad Man Blues," serve as prime examples of
how the band was ahead of its time. The Silver Apples refused to accept the standards of the
music industry, instead favoring their own hypnotic sound experiments.
(1968) Silver Apples – Oscillations, Seagreen Serenades, Lovefingers, Program, Velvet Case,
Whirly-Bird, Dust, Dancing Gods, Misty Mountain
(1969) Contact – A Pox On You, Confusion, Fantasie, Gypsy Love, I Have Known Love, Ruby,
Water, You And I, You’re Not Foolin’ Me
(1998) Beacon – I Have Known Love, Together, Lovelights, You And I, Hocus Pocus, Cosmic
String, Ancient Path, The Dance, The Gift, Daisy, Misty Mountain
(1998) Decatur – Decatur
(1998) Garden – I Don’t Care What The People Say, Tabouli Noodle, Walkin’, Cannonball
Noodle, John Hardy, Cockroach Noodle, The Owl, Swamp Noodle, Mustang Sally, Anasazi Noodle,
Again, Starlight Noodle, Mad Man Blues, Fire Ant Noodle
Robert Young Interview with Simeon Coxe (2001) - Ideas come and go. More than three
decades ago, Simeon Coxe got the idea to plug in an oscillator and play along with a Rolling
Stones record. Soon after, Simeon hooked up with drummer Dan
Taylor, and the two began the innovative collaboration known as
Silver Apples. Simeon assembled what came to be known as the
"Simeon" (others called it "junk") out of a hodgepodge of
electronic devices, including several oscillators. He used this
junkyard concoction to create vast soundscapes that melded
brilliantly with Taylor's drum work. While other groups were
singing about the flowers in their hair, Simeon was mixing bizarre
and alien electronic sounds with chant-like vocals and reflecting
them off Taylor's breakbeats—beats that would make today's
house djs drool on their decks. After troubles with the business
side of the band, Simeon and Dan went their separate ways.
Simeon eventually settled in rural Alabama and took up painting
again. A few years ago, Simeon was surprised to find there was a
renewed interest in Silver Apples. He and Dan reunited and
decided to play live again. Their comeback met with success;
however, one night after a show, their tour van was run off the road, and Simeon suffered
serious injuries to his neck. He has since recovered, but that was the end of the band's
comeback. Though the group never really achieved commercial success, their sound continues to
inspire musicians. And Simeon continues to make music. Junkmedia recently spoke with him.
Here are the results.
You started playing music at a very early age. What compelled you to play, and why did you
choose the trumpet?
“Have you ever seen the play or movie called 76 Trombones? Well, my elementary school had
one of those music/band professors who made house calls and tried to recruit kids into his
programs by getting their parents to buy instruments, then make their kids practice. I had seen
cowboy movies where the guy in the cavalry played the bugle. It made everybody jump up and
run around, and I thought that was really cool. I told the guy I wanted to play one of those things,
so he sold my parents a trumpet.”
How much do you think your New Orleans roots have influenced your musical sensibilities?
“Probably quite a bit—you're surrounded by music in that city, but I have never liked that
Dixieland jazz. There's lots of other music in New Orleans—thank goodness.”
Can you talk a bit about who has influenced you musically in general?
“The biggest influence early on had to be Fats Domino. He would play clubs in the all-black
section of town on Rampart Street, and I would tell my parents that I was going to a dance at the
school, then I'd take the streetcar to Rampart
Street and go see Fats. Many times I would be
the only white face in the crowd, but it didn't
seem to bother anybody.”
Anybody else?
“Well, bluegrass—the use of drones as a
musical element, like the way bluegrass fiddle
is played and the fifth string on a banjo. I would
[also] have to say Jimi Hendrix. We knew him
because Danny played drums for him in his
first band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames.
He wanted Danny to join him in England for his
new band, but Danny elected to stay stateside.
Later, after Silver Apples was a known entity,
Jimi would come to our recording sessions and stuff. He was always getting me to try out some
new piece of gear or another. I always loved his music, and he had to have been an influence,
consciously or not.”
What gave you the idea to use the oscillator?
“I had a friend in New York who was a classical musician and conducted a small orchestra. I'd go
over to his apartment a lot, and he'd be drinking vodka and have Beethoven playing real loud on
his stereo, and he'd try and play this oscillator along with it. One time I got a bright idea, and
when he'd passed out I pulled out an album by the Rolling Stones and tried playing the oscillator
along with that. I was thrilled! I was hooked! I bought the oscillator from him for five dollars.”
How did a late-night experiment with an oscillator lead to what came to be known as the
"Simeon"?
“I was the singer in a regular five-piece rock band at the time, working clubs in New York. One
night, for a lark, I brought in that oscillator and plugged it into one of the guitar amps and began
wailing away during one of the extended guitar breaks. The audience loved it—the band hated it!
The guitar players all quit, leaving just me and the drummer, Danny Taylor. We decided to get
more oscillators and keep going as Silver Apples. The more songs we wrote, the more oscillators
we needed, and that's how the "simeon" evolved. By the way, it was never my idea to call it the
"simeon." That was all part of the record label hype.”
Silver Apples' sound was revolutionary, to say the least. Nowadays, it's quite normal for two guys
to take the stage and captivate an audience by twiddling knobs for two hours. In the late 1960s,
however, it was certainly a novel concept. Were you ever worried people wouldn't understand?
“I was always dumbfounded when they didn't! Electronic sounds
and the process used to produce them never seemed foreign to
me—no more foreign than, say, a TV set. People could embrace
television to the extent that it became an integral part of their
homes—but electronic music? No way. Writers were always
saying my music was the music of the future, and that always
pissed me off. I was making the music here and now—not in the
future!”
Did the critics' reactions ever make you question what you were
doing?
“For every ten people who trashed us, there was one who, even if he or she didn't really
understand it, appreciated our originality—and it was these we decided were important—and we
just kept going.”
Has the recent renewed interested in Silver Apples been a vindication of sorts for you?
“Yeah, you might say that. We were roundly dissed by other musicians at the time as being crude
and out of tune and too repetitive—now it's called being primitively powerful, dissonant and
hypnotic.”
Were you surprised?
“Totally. The first I heard of it was when I found out about the TRC double CD bootleg from
Germany. My first thought was, "Why would anybody go through all the trouble to bootleg
something they couldn't sell?" Of course, they sold thousands... before MCA issued the legit rerelease and shut them down.”
There are still a lot of people who refuse to acknowledge electronic music as a legitimate form of
musical expression. They write it off as something anyone with a Mac and Cubase can do. Why
do you think people have been so resistant?
“People have always been resistant to anything new, because it threatens that part of us that
craves security. Cavemen afraid of an animal they had never seen before—it's part of our
collective need for survival. Those of us who will jump off a cliff just to see if it hurts when you
land are rarities.”
How have the advances in technology affected the way you make music?
“They've made it easier. I love working digitally. All those tedious hours of working with tape are
behind me. I can concentrate more now on the music and not the process and its limitations.”
What made you decide to get back together with Dan Taylor almost 25 years after you split?
“Just to see if we could still do our thing. It was fun, but I had evolved along with it considerably
more than he. I wanted to play new music and he wanted to concentrate on the original tunes, so
after a couple of concerts we went our separate ways again. We'll always be friends though.”
Do you think you and Dan might try to get together again?
“It doesn't seem likely. We're based hundreds of miles apart, and Danny has expressed little
interest in any kind of commitment other than the occasional concert here and there. It would be
really tough for us to ever do any serious rehearsals.”
Have the injuries you suffered in your accident affected your music at all, either physically or
mentally?
“Mentally, none whatsoever. Physically, I have never fully recovered the use of my hands, so
fancy keyboard work is out. I've just adjusted the emphasis in my new music to encompass what I
can do now, not what I used to be able to do. In some ways it's better... it's simpler and more
direct.”
How did the collaboration with Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3 come about?
“Early in the 1990s, Sonic collaborated with the Seattle band, Jessamine, on a cover of "A Pox on
You," [from Contact: Silver Apples, ed] which I liked very much. I met Jessamine on tour and told
them so. I guess they got in touch with Sonic and told him I liked it. That paved the way for him to
request that Silver Apples join him when his new band, Spectrum, toured the US, as sort of coheadliners. We were already touring and couldn't do the whole thing, but we managed to be in
Boston and New York at the same times, so he came on stage and sang and played his
Theramine during our set, and I joined him and Spectrum for "Pox" during their set, and a good
time was had by all. As a gift, Sonic brought me a musical toy apple he had found in a junk shop
in England and had painted it silver—I still put it on top of the "simeon" whenever I perform.
Anyway, we agreed before parting that, the next time Silver Apples were in England, he would
book time in a recording studio and we would do some music together. That happened during our
1998 tour there, and the result is called A Lake of Teardrops and is available on Space Age
Recordings and at most alert record stores. I've seen it on the web as well.”
Are you currently working on any other projects?
“I have just completed a set of six short pieces for a Simballrec Records compilation due for
release later this summer. It was an interesting project, [a] challenge. The label invited a bunch of
electronic musicians (me, DJ Spooky, Morton Subotnick, Blectum From Blechdom, Kid 606,
Safety Scissors, many more... a real diverse bunch) to submit pieces that were exactly 45
seconds long, no fade-outs allowed.
Isao Tomita
Pioneering Japanese composer and synthesizer expert Isao Tomita bridged the gap between
note-by-note classical/electronic LPs like Switched-On Bach and the more futuristic, user-friendly
interfaces developed in the 1970s. After creating one of the first personal recording studios with
an array of top synthesizer gear in the early '70s, Tomita applied his visions for space-age
synthesizer music to his favorite modern composers — Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Maurice
Ravel — though his recordings steered a course far beyond the sterile academics of Wendy
Carlos and other synthesists. Born in Tokyo in 1932, Tomita grew up in China as well as Japan,
studying composition and music theory as well as art history at Keio University. After graduation
in 1955, Tomita began composing film, television and theater music. He was awarded frequently
during the 1950s and '60s, and became perhaps the most well-known contemporary Japanese
composer. By the early '70s, Isao Tomita was introduced to the seminal work of synthesizer
gurus Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog, sparking his own interest in synthesized music. In 1973,
he formed the electronic collective Plasma Music with musicians Kinji Kitashoji and Mitsuo
Miyamoto, and spent more than a year stocking his home studio with electronics gear (including
the Moog III used for Carlos' Switched-On Bach). Tomita's first album, 1974's Snowflakes Are
Dancing, electrified the Japanese public and even translated to an American classical audience,
where it was nominated for four Grammy awards. Successive albums Pictures at an Exhibition,
The Firebird Suite and his masterpiece Holst: The Planets infused the classical-synthesizer fusion
craze of the 1970s with genuinely exciting, futuristic music instead of the bland, note-by-note
translations favored by less visionary musicians. The Planets re-invoked the connection between
synthesizer music and science fiction first broached in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet.
Tomita began incorporating digital synth and early MIDI setups with
1982's Grand Canyon, and completely gutted his studio during the next
two years during the transition from analogue to digital with his Casio Cosmo system. Though he
recorded more sparingly than in the 1970s, Tomita made frequent appearances at enormous
concerts, including his 1984 Austrian show Mind of the Universe before 80,000 people and at the
Statue of Liberty centennial celebration two years later. Tomita was also awarded the honorary
presidency of the Japan Synthesizer Programmers Association.
Review “Snowflakes Are Dancing” - One of the more satisfying classical/synthesizer debuts,
Snowflakes Are Dancing works on its own terms as a piece of music. As well, the album succeeds
as an interpretation of several Debussy compositions (including "Clair de Lune" and "Arabesque
No. 1"). Debussy's atmospheric compositions are naturals to receive the Tomita treatment and
despite a few moments of interstellar cheesiness worthy of Star Hustler, Tomita's debut is an
intriguing proto-synthesizer-pop record.
Review “Pictures At An Exhibition” - An impressive production that
adapts Mussorgsky's classic work (both the original piano version and
the later orchestrated version) and develops it into a synthesized
landscape that both overwhelms and amuses. This was Tomita's followup to the popular Snowflakes Are Dancing.
Review “Firebird Suite” - Equipped with a warehouse of component Moog equipment, four
phase shifters, a Roland space echo unit, a sitar (!), and other period electronic gear, Tomita reenters the Russian classical repertoire with his take on Stravinsky's
Firebird Suite (1919 version). As unique as Tomita's idiom was (and still
is), this transcription is rather conservative for him, not as startling nor
as playful as those of Debussy and Mussorgsky on his first two RCA
albums. The by-now-familiar drifting, spacy, phasey Tomita treatment
works best on the slower numbers in the suite, like "The Round of the
Princesses," the "Berceuse," and the disembodied majesty of the
opening of the "Finale." But the "Dance of the Firebird" and "Infernal
Dance" aren't nearly as dynamic or colorful as any of Stravinsky's
orchestral versions. For companion pieces, Tomita returned to the
composers who brought him here, a gorgeous, pitch-bending version of Debussy's "Prelude to
the Afternoon of a Faun" and a ponderous, electronic choir-laden version of Mussorgsky's "Night
on Bald Mountain." In 2000, the Debussy "Prelude" was appropriately grafted onto the High
Performance CD reissue of Snowflakes Are Dancing, now with enveloping surround sound as a
way of approximating the four-channel version of the LP.
Review “The Planets” - This was the most controversial Tomita album, where he uses Holst's
spectacular, mystical suite The Planets as a launching pad for what amounts to a simulated
spaceship trip through the solar system. Hence the title The Tomita Planets, which did not deter
the Holst estate from trying (unsuccessfully) to pull this recording off the market at the time.
When Tomita sticks to what Holst wrote, he follows every turn and bend of the score, save for a
big cut in the last part of Jupiter and an eviscerated Uranus that nearly disappears altogether.
Moreover, the music — especially Venus — often does lend itself to an electronic space flight
fantasy, with Tomita's arsenal of phase-shifting, flanging, pitch-bending, envelope following and
reversing choral effects and more on full display. It's the stuff between movements that provoked
the purists — the campy simulated mission control communications and electronic blastoff prior
to Mars and the "noises" of space flight scattered throughout (including a nasty asteroid belt
between Jupiter and Saturn). The most questionable idea was that of
playing Jupiter's grand central theme on a tinkly electronic music box as
a way to open and close the record — which some will find satirical,
others touching, still others tasteless. Indeed, Tomita seems to have it
in for British pomp; when this theme is played within the context of Jupiter, he interrupts it with
electronic chatter between mission control and the spaceship. Ultimately, The Tomita Planets is
still good electronic fun, and it launched a series of space-themed concept albums by this
electronic astronaut.
Review “Daphnis Et Chloe” - With a number of voyages into overt space music themes under
his belt (The Planets, Kosmos), Isao Tomita returned to French impressionism with an all-Ravel
album — which was easy to call after the enormous early success he
had with Debussy. Rather than picking any old Ravel piece to work
on, Tomita's choices of material are mostly quite shrewd, geared
toward his strengths. The second suite from Daphnis et Chloé seems
absolutely made-to-order for the Tomita treatment, for it unfolds in
long, sustained crescendos and diminuendos where there is no need
to erase any bar lines. All Tomita has to do is fill in the electronic
colors — which he does with his customary bag of gorgeous, flowing,
pitch-bending tricks, producing one of his most faithful transcriptions
without giving up his personal stamp. "Pavanne for a Dead Princess"
works as well as his Debussy canvases, save for a jarring interpolation of sitar. Within the
"Mother Goose" suite, the "Laideronette" is fascinating for the imitation-Balinese gamelan timbres
that Tomita comes up with (after all, it was Ravel's imitation of Asian music anyway), while
"Beauty and the Beast" is a very freely drawn, at one point menacing, interpretation. The
notorious "Bolero" — coming out on the heels of a hit movie, 10, that gave the mass public the
idea that Ravel's musical stunt is a vehicle for lovemaking — is trimmed by almost 50 percent.
This is just as well because Tomita doesn't have much to say with it, apart from one startling,
pitch-bending passage.
(1974) Snowflakes Are Dancing – Snowflakes Are Dancing, Reverie, Gardens In The Rain,
Clair De Lune, Arabesque No. 1, The Engulfed Cathedral, Passepied, The Girl With The Flaxen
Hair, Golliwog’s Cakewalk, Footprints In The Snow, Prelude To “The Afternoon Of A Faun”
(1975) Pictures At An Exhibition – Promenade/The Gnome, Promenade/The Old Castle,
Promenade/Tuileries, Bydlo, Promenade/Ballet Of The Chicks In Their Shells, The Two Jews,
Limoges/Catacombs, Cum Mortuis In Lingua mortua, Baba Yaga, Great Gate Of Kiev
(1975) Firebird Suite – Introduction And Dance Of The Firebird, Round Of The Princess,
Infernal Dance Of King Kastchei, Berceuse And Finale, Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun, A
Night On Bare Mountain
(1976) The Planets – Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus
(1978) Bermuda Triangle – Space Ship Lands Emitting Silvery Light, electromagnetic Waves
Descent, World Of Different Dimensions, Giant Pyramid And Its Ancient People, Venus In A Space
Uniform Shining, Space Children In The Underground, Earth-Hollow Vessel, Song Of Venus, Dawn
Over The Triangle And Mysterious, Dazzling Cylinder That Crashed In Tunguska, Harp Of The
Ancient People With Songs, Visionary Flight To The 1448 Nebular Group
(1978) Kosmos – Star Wars (Main Title), Space Fantasy, Pacific 231, The Unanswered
Question, Aranguez, Peer Gynt: Solveig’s Song, Hora Staccato, The Sea Named “Solaris”
(1979) Daphnis Et Chloe
Keyboard Magazine Interview (1977) - From the vantage point of 1977, scarcely more than
a decade into the era of the synthesizer, the magnitude of its impact on the world of music
remains to be determined. Like any other
device, it can have only as much effect as the
people who use it have talent. The face of
rock and jazz is being transformed by dozens
of prominent synthesists whose understanding
and application of electronics becomes daily
more sophisticated. In contemporary classical
music, there is likewise an army of dedicated
artists making use of the instrument, though
of course their work is heard by fewer people.
The bastions of 19th Century symphonic
music have, however, proven more
formidable. Although the synthesizer would
seem to offer comparatively effortless access
to the range of sounds that composers have
traditionally required a hundred or more musicians to produce, the synthesists who have so far
attempted large-scale electronic realizations of symphonic works can be numbered on the fingers
of one hand. Of these few, the one whose work has recently generated the greatest critical
acclaim and popular interest, thereby showing how bright the future of electronic orchestration
may be, is lsao Tomita. Bom in Tokyo in 1932,Tomita had already firmly established himself on
Japan's music scene through his work on film scores and TV commercial soundtracks, as well as
through having received several important commissions from the Japanese govemment, when his
first album of synthesized symphonic music, a Debussy collection called Snowflakes Are Dancing
[RCA, AR11-0488], was released in 1974. Hard upon Snowflakes followed his versions of
Moussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition [RCA, ARL1-0838] and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite (the
album Firebird [RCA, ARL1-1312] also contains Debussy's Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Fawn
and Moussorgsky's A Night On Bare Mountain). With the release this Spring of The Tomita
Planets [RCA, AR11-1919], based on Holst's The Planets, Tomita's career has reached an all-time
high: the album rocketed to #67 on Billboard's pop chart and to the #1 slot on the classical
chart, assuring him of the continuing attention of an international audience. Since Tomita speaks
little English, we must express our sincere appreciation to Player Magazine (Young Mates Music),
Koa Bldg., 7-22-38 Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan, for permission to reprint the
following interview, which first appeared in their publication.
When did you start studying music?
“I began seriously concentrating on music study after I entered senior high school. I went to a
class in the arts section at the YMCA and learned music theory and composition. Today, there
are many classes like this available, but this was not so much the case in those days.”
Did you start with the piano?
“Yes, the piano was almost the only musical instrument available. I took lessons from an
instructor of classical music and progressed to where I was playing some of the simpler sonatas. I
began with Beyer and went through Czerny and various other methods. But I started only after
my father bought me a piano when I was a sophomore in high school, so I'm not that good at it.”
Weren't you also interested in electronics?
“Yes, I was, At the same time I was taking a class at Keio University in aesthetics and the history
of art, I was enjoying tinkering with electronics. I often went to the shops in Tokyo's Akihabara
district that dealt with electrical equipment. You could buy a sack full of parts of demolished
airplanes for 20 or 30 yen [about 10(t], and often the sacks contained tubes, relays, and many
other precious parts that couldn't be bought anywhere else at such prices. Using these parts, I
once made a device that would ring a bell when somebody passed through a doorway-sort of a
burglar alarm. At first. my interests in music and electronics were quite separate. It was the
marketing of synthesizers that unexpectedly merged my two hobbies.”
What motivated you to go into music more seriously?
“The Asahi newspaper was sponsoring an all-Japan chorus festival. When I was a sophomore in
college, I sent in one of my compositions to them and won a prize. This was my first motivation
for entering the world of music. At about the same time, I got involved with taking care of radio
programs and arranging music for school children. So by the time I graduated from college, I
didn't have any trouble getting work in the field.”
How did you come into contact with the synthesizer?
“It started when I listened to Walter Carlos' Switched-On Bach [Columbia, MS-71941 for the first
time. I had known that NHK [the Japan Broadcasting Corporation] was spending hundreds of
millions of yen setting up an electronic music studio, but I wasn't really interested in working in
them, because they had a large staff of composers, engineers, and sound-effects people. In the
case of normal music, melodies, chords, and rhythms are expressed with notes, and
consequently there is a solid object, the score, which can be discussed in the same way that one
would discuss a blueprint of a building. But the concept of a sound that hasn't yet been
electronically created exists in the mind of one person, and can't be discussed in the same way.
For instance, suppose that there was no such thing as a violin in the world, and that the sound of
the violin existed in the mind of one person. The person couldn't convey the sound until it was
actually produced by a violin. Because of this limitation, the development of electronic music has
tended to be rather haphazard. But the synthesizer can be operated by one person alone. This
means that a music producer can directly create the sounds he or she wants by connecting
circuits. It was this possibility that made me think electronic music was worth producing. I was
impressed by Switched-On Bach, and subsequently I bought a relatively expensive synthesizer.”
How did you acquire it?
“Nobody in Japan knew about the synthesizer at that time. I even made an inquiry to Hong Kong
in vain. However, I discovered that the Aichi Prefectural University of the Arts in Nagoya had just
acquired such a device, and I went to the University and asked
them to introduce me to the dealer. I finally acquired an
instrument around the end of 1971.”
What equipment did you buy at that time?
“I bought a Moog III and a sequencer. The operation of this
equipment is pretty complicated, but of course it's easier to
handle than the electronic music devices of decades ago, and
much less bulky than if vacuum tubes were still being used
instead of transistors. And once you understand how it works, the
equipment of today lets you handle sounds to perfection.”
Did you encounter any difficulties when you first set the device
up?
“Yes, I did. I had the importer install the equipment in my home, but I didn't know how to operate
it. I felt as if I had bought a load of scrap iron. However, a fifteen-page operations manual came
with the instrument, and a Mr. Shiotani, who had worked in the NHK electronic music studio and
who I believe is now an assistant professor at a university in Osaka, was kind enough to come to
my home on two occasions to explain the machine. Because of my electronics background, I
could understand to some extent the various functions of the modules. But I imagine that the
techniques I acquired for using the equipment are sort of unique, because I developed r-ny
understanding of the various functions almost without being instructed by an expert. I didn't
exactly intend to go about learning in this way, but that's how it worked out.”
How did you pay for such an expensive instrument?
“It was a headache. I had to pay back about ten million yen. But it was a relief to know that there
were almost no other synthesizers in Japan except for a small number of Minimoogs. So I teamed
up with a group of sound effects producers, and we received a substantial number of orders for
TV commercial soundtracks. In a normal case, the cost of producing music for one TV spot is
about 500,000 yen [about $1,800], which is allocated to the composer, the studio rental, and
payments to the musicians and conductor. We offered better music for the same cost. And if we
made three commercials a month, we had an income of 1,500,000 yen. This enabled me to pay
back my loan little by little. But i wasni t satisfied just to be doing that kind of work. I knew that the
synthesizer was capable of more, so I started working on Debussy's "Claire de lune" [later
released in the U.S. on Snowflakes Are Dancing] on my own. Walter Carlos had already put
Bach's music into electronic form, but I wanted to try doing the same thing to pieces by the
Impressionist composers. As I experimented, the number of finished tunes I had grew until I had
five for each side of an album. So I went to a record company with the material.”
What was their reaction?
“Japanese record companies refused to put out records of such music, because they said it
wouldn't sell. They felt that my music was merely experimental. One of the biggest problems was
that they didn't know how to classify electronic music within the conventional categories of
classical, popular, and jazz. As a result, they didn't know where they would put the records of
electronic music in a record store. I checked to see where Switched-On Bach was being put in
the stores and found one shop selling it as a sound-effects record. The Japanese record
companies said that records with no appropriate place in the racks in the stores don't sell well.
They also said that the considerable success attained by Switched-On Bach lay in the fact that it
was done by an American. They implied that no such record made by a Japanese would be as
successful.”
What was the next step?
“I gave up trying to sell the tapes to Japanese record companies and took them to Mr. Yamamoto
at RCA, who told me about a certain Mr. Peter Munves at RCA in New York. Munves had
handled Switched-On Bach when he was at Columbia. He listened to my tapes and immediately
agreed to put my music on records. Another American who helped me is Thomas Shepherd, who
is presently a vice-president at RCA. He also worked formerly for Columbia, where he produced a
record entitled Switched-On Bolero [now apparently out of print]. He has had the experience of
actually operating a synthesizer.”
How long did it take you to complete the first album?
“Working more than six hours a day, it took me about fourteen months. Two or three hours each
day were required just for setting up the equipment and stabilizing the sounds.”
Did you encounter any difficulties in overdubbing?
“Of course, the amount of noise increased, but also, the quality of the sounds sometimes
changed in unexpected ways because of repeated dubbings.”
How many tracks did you have to lay down?
“It varied according to how complex the passage of music was. In some passages I dubbed the
sounds more than a hundred times. All this had to be done on a four-track machine. Sometimes it
seems to me that the actual work involved in creating electronic music is more like making a
documentary film on how to make Persian carpets than it is like playing music. I've heard that on
Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells [Virgin, PZ-341161 there are literally thousands of overdubs.”
Did you intend Claire de lune more as a demonstration of a synthesizer sound collage, or as pure
music?
“It is intended to offer one particular sort of pure music. To most people, it doesn't matter how
many people have worked to create the sound, or that the synthesizer was used to create it. New
things tend to encounter many barriers before being accepted. My music meets with a lot of
curiosity, but merely being a curiosity doesn't guarantee success.”
Which is your favorite among your first three albums?
“The Firebird. The tunes on the back side of that album are somewhat inferior in quality, because
I did them even before I did Pictures At An Exhibition. But Firebird is one of my biggest technical
successes. Ideally, it should be listened to through a four-channel system. You see, my music is
fourchannel music from the beginning. I try to create a certain acoustic space. There is, however,
no fixed direction that the four channels ought to have. The listener can sit anywhere among the
four speakers; it isn't even necessary to sit in the exact center. If you're close to a speaker you
might experience the sound travelling away from you, while a listener in the center would feel the
sound shift from the right to the left.”
You did a live tour of Europe, didn't you?
“I toured Europe from February to April of 1976. I
borrowed Pink Floyd's audio equipment and
toured West Germany, the Netherlands, and
Britain. I had always wanted to reproduce my
music in a vast sound space that could
accommodate as many as two thousands
listeners. I thought it would be a dream come
true if my music could be played in such halls
with good audio equipment. You know, most
music critics use a two-channel system to listen
to my music, but when the front and rear
channels are combined, the music sounds too flat. This results in unjustified reviews. It seems to
me that this is like scratching an itch through an overcoat. It's a hopeless case. But really, a live
performance of this genre of music is absolutely impossible. So I was playing simple sounds on
the synthesizer on the spot, while the rest of the music was coming through a four-channel tape
system. The promoter of the tour, however, didn't understand things like this. Many people
appeared to have the notion that all the sounds could be produced at once. I was quite perplexed
with the whole situation. In addition, although the posters said that Pink Floyd's equipment would
be used, in London the posters showed Hammersmith Odeon. This naturally led people to think
that the concert would feature live performances. It embarrassed me a lot.”
So you were the only performer?
“I did concerts of part of Pictures At An Exhibition with a pianist. The sound of the synthesizer
came from the tape and I operated the mixing console, and the pianist performed while listening
to the tape. On Firebird, I had the pianist play the orchestral piano part that Stravinsky had
written. The rock group Renaissance also performed on these concerts. We performed in this
manner in nine places, I believe. Another problem was that European fire laws prohibited the
placement of speakers in the balconies of the larger halls, and as a result, the two rear channels
of the four-channel sound were in front of the balcony seats. This was almost always the case in
Germany and the Netherlands, though the situation was a little better in London. And of course,
the critics always sat in the balcony.”
Are you planning to tour the United States?
“I hope to. I'm going to try, however, to make the promoters understand the difficulties that I
encountered in Europe, because I don't want to be taken as doing something phony.”
Do you listen much to records?
“I haven't been, but now that The Planets is finished, I'm going to. I have the impression that there
are many groups who are making very elaborate use of the synthesizer. Sometimes I hear such
groups on the radio, but I don't know who they are. I have the impression that synthesists are
starting to get very good at selecting the sounds to produce and that their taste is becoming quite
well-developed.”
Aren't many of the sounds created by the synthesizer just imitations of the sounds of
conventional instruments?
“Some people think that the fixed mission of the synthesizer is the quest for sounds that could be
produced using conventional instruments. But I feel that the emergence of the synthesizer makes
it possible for players and composers to do better than past achievements, because the limitation
of having to deal with given sounds is no longer there. The musician, unlike the painter or the
sculptor, has never been able to search for colors other than those that were given. But with the
synthesizer, we have a palette comparable to that of the painter. There is no rule that dictates
how this palette ought to be used; it can produce both imitative and nonimitative sounds. Also,
you could reproduce your image of a soprano so high that the human voice couldn't produce it.
You see, if you want the sound of a violin, you can always use an actual violin. But if your sound
images are somewhat different from the sounds of any actual musical instrument, the synthesizer
will allow you to create sounds similar to your image. If a listener relates to the synthesized
sounds as imitations, it doesn't matter to me, because in any case the origin of the sound is in our
minds. It will take many years of use, though, before the best method of using the synthesizer is
determined. Good methods will remain, while others will vanish. It seems to me that history will
have to evaluate the various possible uses of the synthesizer. Right now, we're all seeking to find
good methods, so each user should find his or her own way. In the past, we could already
imagine beforehand, just by knowing the style of the composer and the instruments that were
available during that period, the kind of sound that he or she would produce. The sounds of the
synthesizer, however. cannot be imagined in advance. But there are a lot of possibilities. Who
knows? Imitative synthesis might someday take the place of conventional instruments. I imagine,
though, that in synthesizer orchestration, imitative and non-imitative sounds will continue to exist
side by side. Take the paintings of Salvador Dali, for instance. In certain paintings, you will have
an image as realistic as a photograph placed next to another that isn't so together. The same
thing can also be said with music. It's the personal feelings of the musician that will determine the
quality of the music.”
What direction do you see the synthesizer moving in, in the future?
“The synthesizer has just made its debut. When automobiles first appeared, they had to be
started with a hand-crank, and they needed fresh water every kilometer or so. like the automobile,
the synthesizer will be quite different within a few years from the way it is now, and these early
models will be recalled with nostalgia. What I expect from the synthesizer is a better capability of
producing the kind of sounds that users want. Now, it sometimes takes an hour or more to get the
sound I want out of the machine. According to the people who make the hardware, the type of
hardware created depends on what kind of software is wanted. And the software demand then
changes in response to the new hardware. This reciprocal progress is sure to be seen in the case
of the synthesizer. For instance, look at my sixteen channel board. When sixteen-channel devices
first became available, they had so many amplifiers and volume knobs built in that they looked
like a chest of drawers. The hardware almost overwhelmed the user. But now I have one with no
volume controls. It reproduces the signal at the same volume at which it was fed into the board. If
the signal is too loud, it carries out distorted, but the carefully fed-in sound comes out in good
condition. Thus there is no need for volume controls. All the machine needs are selectors for
record and playback. And although it's considerably simplified, the device offers no
inconvenience compared with older models that had lots of switches. So in my opinion, the
synthesizer can be gradually simplified while retaining the capability of meeting musicians' needs.
The image of a sound can disappear from the mind if the synthesizer can't produce it quickly
enough; for example, when it takes more than two hours. Eventually, you start wondering what it
was you were trying to do in the first place. It's the same with live performance: The quest for a
certain feeling becomes futile when the musician keeps doing the same thing for too long. So
eventually the synthesizer should be able to produce immediately whatever sound is wanted.
Then it could be used effectively onstage. Right now I'm not able to get the maximum from my
synthesizer. I still have to search for possibilities for softwares. I'm satisfied with the present
functions of the instrument, but the access to them should be made more convenient.”
What plans do you have for future
albums?
“I have lots of plans. I particularly want
to take up the mentality of the Japanese
people and put it to music. Up to now
I've just been rearranging Westem
classical music. I want to use music to
convey such typical Japanese stories
as Yukionna (Snow Fairy) and
Miminashi Hoichi. In the latter, a blind
hero (Hoichi) plays a biwa, a Japanese lute, before the ghosts of the Heike warriors. Without
knowing it, Hoichi shuttles between reality and the land of the dead. I want to describe such a
story with four-channel music somehow. Rock artists like Rick Wakeman are using their own folk
tales as a basis for music, and I want to do the same thing with tales that are full of Japanese
atmosphere. Right now I'm in the process of solidifying in my mind the methods that I'll use.”
Are you planning anything that would incorporate more conventional piano playing?
“I'm not that good at normal keyboard technique. My music works best when I overdub sounds to
create a certain color. I put a lot of emphasis on tone color. I do plan to do an album in which only
the color of the sounds varies. I want a sound without rhythmic pulses to shift its colors like the
changing colors of a light show.”
Are you interested in instruments other than the synthesizer?
“The instruments in the Middle East are intriguing to me. I've heard tapes of sounds recorded in
taverns in Arab countries that are very mysterious. Not knowing what the musicians are using, I
get the feeling that they're playing synthesizers! Of course they're using some kind of old folk
instruments, but the sounds are very similar. I'm also interested in some of the unusual sounds
and instruments being used in rock music today. I wonder what they are.”
What advice would you give to someone who wanted to own a synthesizer like yours?
“The first thing is to obtain the main body made up of oscillators, filters, a simple mixer, an
envelope generator, arid a VCA. The Roland company, for instance, is making a System 700 and
a System 100 similar to the setup that I have. Then you can add other modules later in
accordance with your financial ability and your needs. For people who are mainly interested in
imitative synthesis, simple preset devices, or a Minimoog, should be enough. But even if you
want to use the instrument to reproduce sound images from your mind, you don't need to buy a
huge system right at the beginning, because parts of it may prove useless to you. What you need
to convey your images is something that matches the level of your personal development. So first
you should buy the core of the machine. My Moog III is a combination of various modules, and it's
possible to buy only the easing of it first and then insert the necessary modules one by one. This
prevents unnecessary buying and enables you to get a better understanding of the instrument by
leaming about one module at a time. One more thing: If you're planning to use the synthesizer in
concert performances, you should acquire a live preset panel, which will give you easy access to
the sounds you've created. In order to do this effectively, of course, you need to have a good
enough instrument that you don't run into any unexpected mechanical trouble onstage.”
What composers have most deeply influenced you?
“Since my student days, I've been seriously influenced by Rimsky-Korsakov, and also
by those who followed him, such as Ravel, Debussy, and Stravinsky. Bach's music to
me sounds like drawings with lines but no color. The notes can be played equally well
by an organ or by strings, or can be sung by a choir. But Rimsky-Korsakov started
using different instruments like the different colors in a painting. In Scheherazade he
used not only melody, harmony, and rhythm, but included the important factor of
color as well. And Stravinsky and Ravel both leamed this from Rimsky-Korsakov. It
appears to me that they composed symphonic works by mixing together the colors of
the various instruments. Painters and sculptors can use their favorite colors, while
musicians can't work with such visible qualities. Nor can musicians create new
instruments to produce the sounds they want. But Stravinsky and the others did
create wonderful colorful music within such a limitation. If they had had a palette like
the synthesizer to work with, I feel that they would have produced a completely
different kind of music.”
Wendy Carlos
From the beginning, composer and synthesist Wendy
Carlos has not followed a conventional music course.
Born in Pawtucket, R.I., she started piano lessons at
age 6 and exhibited talents for graphic arts and the
sciences, winning a Westinghouse Science Fair
scholarship for a home built computer. After pursuing
a hybrid major in music and physics at Brown
University, she earned an M.A. in music composition
at Columbia University, studying with pioneers Otto
Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky at the first
electronic music center in the U.S.A. Upon graduation,
Carlos worked as a recording engineer and befriended
Robert Moog (who currently manufactures many
instruments at Big Briar,) becoming one of his first
clients. In collaboration with Rachel Elkind, who
served as her producer for a dozen years, Carlos hit
platinum sales status with her 1968 recording
Switched-On Bach, which propelled the Moog
synthesizer into the public consciousness and won
three Grammy Awards. She refined her techniques in The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, and
introduced the use of vocoders for synthesized singing in her score for Stanley Kubrick's film, A
Clockwork Orange, long before space war movies made synthetic voices common. Her haunting
Sonic Seasonings in 1972 predated the now popular environmental-ambient forms of New Age
music by over a decade. After recording several more albums in a classical vein, Carlos wrote
horror music for Kubrick's The Shining, and composed the score for the 1982 Disney film Tron.
The latter score established a continuous blend between symphonic orchestra and digital and
analog synthesizers, an often imitated combination. Digital Moonscapes followed in 1984,
introducing the "LSI Philharmonic Orchestra," a digital replica of orchestral timbres virtually
indistinguishable from their acoustic instrumental counterparts. In 1986, Carlos turned to a
lifelong interest in alternate scales and musical tunings, combining music from old world cultures
with new ideas in Beauty In The Beast,. She next collaborated with (Weird) Al Yankovic on a
humorous musical album, coupling a parody of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with a whimsical
extension of a Saint-Saens classic, called Carnival of the Animals - Part Two. This tongue-incheek blend of verbal and musical parody continued her LSI Philharmonic timbres and orchestral
recreation, was performed directly into a Macintosh computer, using all the latest MIDI and
SMPTE technology, allowing both precision and human feel in the instrumental ensembles.
With 1992's Switched-On Bach 2000. Carlos came full circle by applying modern techniques and
equipment to look back at her early classic, this time using the non-equal temperaments Bach
himself preferred. It provides listeners with an opportunity to experience how far the new
medium progressed in 25 years, and contains a performance of the much-requested Toccata &
Fugue in d minor. Over 1992-1995, in collaboration with synthesist and friend Larry Fast, Carlos
developed a state-of-the-art digital process of soundtrack restoration and surround stereo
conversion called: Digi-Surround Stereo Sound. The novel techniques have proven invaluable on
recent film and music projects, and in the remasterings of older works. The latest works by
Wendy Carlos are Tales of Heaven & Hell, an unusual musical dramatic work which combines
themes from A Clockwork Orange with a dark and forbidding gothic Mass, and the score to the
British film, Woundings. She is also remastering most of her back catalog for reissue on East Side
Digital, with many albums available on CD for the first time. The first two of these were
Clockwork Orange, the Complete Carlos Score, and the constantly requested Sonic Seasonings.
The most extensive album project is the definitive boxed
set collection of her pioneering Bach & Baroque albums.
More recent remasterings include Beauty in the Beast,
and Digital Moonscapes. All of these Hi-D 20-bit ESD
albums are also Enhanced-CDs, and contain expanded
historical notes as well as previously unreleased bonus
material. Further re-releases and new albums will
continue. Wendy Carlos has delivered papers at New
York University, the Audio Engineering Society's Digital
Audio Conference, Dolby's NYC Surround Sound
demonstration and panel, and other music/audio
conferences. She is a member of the Audio Engineering
Society, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and the National Academy of
Recording Arts and Sciences. Carlos consults for several Macintosh developers including Mark of
the Unicorn, Opcode, and Coda, has designed PostScript music fonts for Casady & Greene, and
has developed libraries and tunings for Kurzweil/Young Chang. Other interests include solar
eclipse chasing, surround sound, astronomy, color vision, photography and other visual arts, map
making, reading, gourmet food, film, and a love of animals.
Review “Switched-On Bach” (All reviews written by Wendy Carlos) - As this is written
it's been 33 years since Switched-On Bach was first released. At the time electronic music and
sound synthesizers were genuinely new territory, topics that were not
generally known about by most people. If electronic music was thought
about, it was in terms of "bloops and beeps", the usual style of most
contemporary music at the time. The world of "serious music" was
deeply in the hold of a narrow range of acceptable musical styles that
prescribed a difficult, nearly always ugly result. So I was not surprised
that when these same composers used electronics to create new music,
the results had little to offer in the way things I loved: melody,
harmony, rhythm, and so much more. I was entranced by the new tools,
and could see that this was a ripe new method of making musical sounds, no more nor less. This
medium did not always force the electronic music of the 50's and 60's to be dry and narrow,
although earlier it wasn't easy to impart much expression. By 1968 we stood at one of those brief
junctures in history in which breakthrough means, curiosity and motive come together, perhaps
in a collision. I'll always be grateful that I was allowed to be there and play a small role in this
particular shift of paradigm. When we started S-OB my goal was to demonstrate that I could
make "real" music with Bob Moog's marvelous new synthesizer. Then I could "get on" creating
my own music with it. This modest idea was the reason for selecting a respected, well-known
repertoire for the project, "Bach's Greatest Hits," in fact. His music was ideal in several ways, as
we've said before: it was contrapuntal (not chords but musical lines, like the Moog produced), it
used clean, Baroque lines, not demanding great "expressivo" (a weakness in the Moog at the
time), and it was neutral as to orchestration (Bach freely used many variations on what
instruments played what).
Review “The Well-Tempered Synthesizer” - But then I didn't write "The Well-Tempered
Synthesizer." My collaborator, Rachel Elkind, and I had planned that our second release would be
an album of original works, along with new arrangements of some existing music, and expansion
beyond the horizons of Bach on the Moog Synthesizer. But the fans of Switched-On Bach and the
record company heads were unanimous about one thing: "Give us more switched-on, please!"
Finally we agreed to go with one more album that was more sequel than new step. We
postponed those horizons for albums three and four (Sonic and Clockwork). The decision wasn't
made lightly, as it required many months of tedious labor to produce a master of the quality we
wanted, using the tools of the day. (In 2001 the "advances" assure that it takes even longer
today, but I can't think about that right now, or I'll cry.) We had to
pick up exactly where we'd left off six months earlier. At least we did
expand to several other Baroque composers besides Papa Bach. Thus
began a careful audition of selections we might perform. A few
Scarlatti Sonatas attracted us immediately, and Handel's venerable
Water Music contained movements that would fit the Moog's
limitations well. For a J.S. Bach element we fell in love again with his
Fourth Brandenburg. We vacillated on a final composer, eventually
choosing the two Monteverdi works, as abbreviated suites, which
would serve our more dramatic tastes quite nicely. I had already
decided on the mild joke title for W-TS. Eventually everyone agreed, and surprisingly it remained
intact on the final album. No longer was it necessary to "prove" that the synthesizer was a
musical instrument. S-OB had done that far better than we ever dreamt. But we did want to
show other sides of the electronic media, at least as far as the repertoire permitted. I got my
personal creative fun from new arrangements, inventive ways to use click tracks and other clever
tricks and tools, and the pointillistic "hocketing" invented for the Scarlatti Sonatas. That worked
out splendidly in stereo, and these quite intricate sound weavings are considered among the
album's favorite tracks. Glenn Gould again loved the results, and wrote a most generous
comment about our new Brandenburg realization. CBS's Tom Frost added an excited liner note to
our longer ones, expressing the optimism with which they greeted our newest offspring. Then
out the door to the public it went. We were lucky again, it garnered some fine reviews and sales
were brisk. It still seems odd that when Sony acquired CBS they put out CD's of S-OB, but not of
W-TS, which was one of their most successful Masterworks recordings ever!
Review “Clockwork Orange” - Although Warner Brothers released their filmscore album
shortly after the release of Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, Rachel Elkind and I were never
completely satisfied with it. The tapes used for the transfers were those
made for the film track, and were a couple of generations removed from
the original master mixes. So these versions contained compromises, like
a necessary added compression and EQ, to sound good on a mono
Academy optical print (at least we pioneered the use of Dolby, used for
the first time ever in a film!) Clockwork included only a portion of my
Timesteps, so the album contained the excerpt, too. The Scherzo from
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony had been shortened and processed for the
film's suicide attempt scene, which eliminated a good portion of our not
quite complete realization of that movement. A few of our cues for the film were left out at the
last minute. As these were among the best things we'd done for the project, that was frustrating.
These materials might have been included on the Warner Brothers album, but because of several
other music cues that had been used in the film, there wasn't the space on the LP for them.
Fortunately, we were able to release our own full score album three months after the "official"
version was put out. We worked on assembling our music the best we could to give a fair
account of all we'd done for Kubrick. We included all of Timesteps, and I worked to do a spirited
synth version of Rossini's La Gazza Ladra. Timesteps is probably one of my better known original
works from this period. It was used for years in various "Laserium" presentations, which I got a
kick out of. Originally all I wanted was a piece that would introduce the sounds of the vocoder,
which we had pioneered for singing purposes, in a more gradual way. Back then, some people
got really upset hearing an electronic singing vocal. The idea was to introduce such sounds
incrementally, over a sort of mini-history of music, from Medieval Times to the present. I grew
rather fond of the longish suite that came from this pragmatic goal, and Timesteps remains one
of my personal favorites. It was an awkward piece to assemble, especially using the very limited
resources of the first West End Avenue studio. But it sounded somehow convincing, and
important to show what a good synth composition and performance was about than just doing
more Baroque music realizations. A lot of fans have since written telling me they "get it," and like
the spirit and imagery that I tried so hard to invest within it. Thank you, all. Country Lane is also
a fairly well-wrought piece of music, and worked very well with the scene in which Alex meets his
old friends and receives a nasty beating by them. Kubrick wanted something much more literally
brutal, so we provided him with a track of impact effects that he edited to fit the scene. That was
certainly his perfect right. We disagreed with this flat approach, and wanted our version to be
available on record, even if sans picture. A few other cues were left "on the cutting room floor."
One was Biblical Daydreams, to underscore the images Alex fantasizes while reading the Bible in
the prison library. That scene had an amusing incongruity that we picked up on using subtle
musical "wink-nudges" (for the crucifixion procession the music nastily jokes "I love a parade,"
while in the harem it slyly observes "I want a girl, just like...") Instead Kubrick used Rimsky's
Scheherazade, the same temp track we'd tried to replace. That often occurs in film making;
Stanley Kubrick is hardly alone. One often gets locked into whatever is seen or heard the first
several dozen times (while editing), which makes anything else at all, no matter how good, seem
not to work as well. Kubrick and his lovely wife, Christianne, had become quite excited by an old
fashioned style Orange Minuet cue I'd written for the stage sequence. They definitely wanted it in
their film and even suggested a single(!) of it. But by now the scene's Overture to the Sun temp
track had begun to sound like the "only possible cue," so our piece was left out, as no other
suitable location could be found (they did try, and regretted the loss). Since we had run out of
space for our own long LP, we could not include the latter two cues. But otherwise the CBS
release contained most of the music we'd done on the project, and had a reasonable sound
quality by the standards of those days. We were never too fond of the cover that CBS came up
with, although it was certainly clever and well executed. Overall, though, we were grateful and
fortunate to have the chance to release our own accounting of our film music to Clockwork
Orange. The day has finally come to return to the masters, and assemble this first CD release of
all our music, and even to design a new cover. This one contains some gentle hints of the cover
for Tales of Heaven & Hell, since that new album's roots can be partially found in this film's
music. The cover art I drew for Tales is a visual pun on CO's poster art. This filmscore CD's cover
combines a nod to that original poster art, plus another to the TH&H take-off. Something nicely
recursive about all of that... I'm particularly thrilled to get the complete Timesteps out via this
maximum quality digital transfer. And the rest of the score is, I think, among some of the best
work I did with Rachel in the early 70's. It deserves at least the chance to be heard again, and
heard as optimally as possible. I'm grateful to ESD for observing this, and now doing something
about it. We are also including, as bonus tracks those two cues, Biblical Daydreams and Orange
Minuet, which have never been available before! I'm often amazed how much music we were
able to squeeze out of such meager, recalcitrant tools back then. I'd never wish to go back to
those frustrating limitations. Often decent art can arise despite gross constraints. I'd like to think
this is such an example. Since any music's value ultimately rises and falls on the composition and
the performance, I don't think the hurdles the equipment imposed on us ought be considered
very much, if at all, when you listen to this CD.
Review “Sonic Seasonings” - When Sonic Seasonings was composed, there was no existing
category for music of its kind: "a third, viable alternative to acoustic and musical environmental
presentations." What became a catch-all of laid back, ephemeral styles,
"New Age Music," was yet to come-over a decade in the future. We
thought of it simply as another promising new way to make electronic
music. We wanted to combine instrumental and other performed layers,
with those taken directly from nature, and thus unperformed. The latter
element wasn't even Musique Concrétè, as there was nearly no attempt to
alter and manipulate the timbres, except for enhancing their dramatic
effect. Indeed, we took several steps to do just the opposite: to make
replicas of natural sound, and manipulate them to sound both natural and
unprocessed, a kind of Musique Anti-Concrete...! These several elements were carefully blended
with the live recordings that we made, in today's terminology, "out in the field." This was purely
a pragmatic decision: we'd been unable to find or capture some textures and effects that we'd
thought were essential. So we had to "fake it," but with finesse and panache! Think of those
frogs, the flies and mosquitoes, and what does one do for "falling snow?" Since the term "Sound
Design" was another thing that didn't yet exist(!), we found we could be quite creative, thank
you very much, working over and designing aural qualities and effects, building raw timbres from
the ground up. Today no one would blink. Back then it was unproven and pioneering. It was
Rachel's and my goal to find a way to assemble music that had a much longer span and overall
arch than most contemporary music of the time. We also wanted it to avoid the label of Classical
music; these were not intended to be mini-symphonies, except in the subtlest and most analytic
way. They were not intended as Popular music, either, as the extreme length of each movement
will prove. They were also not Jazz, although some improvisational elements form an integral and
essential part-while other elements are strictly composed and notated before recording them.
Yes, if this be a criticism, the music was deliberately minimal-this before the category of
Minimalistic Music had been developed and in vogue. It was intended to work on a timbral and
experiential level, so the sound could "flow over you," not a cerebral exercise like so much of
what is now seen to be a wasteland of serious music from mid 20th Century until recently.
Review “Switched-On Bach II” - A few years went by after the original Switched-On Bach,
and the more varied and polished sequel, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer. By this time Rachel
Elkind and I had found the opportunity to release an album of
completely original new music, Sonic Seasonings, and score Kubrick's
evocative film, A Clockwork Orange. These new albums did very well,
and in the process, we've been told, we somehow managed to come
up with the roots for "new age" music, with the double album, Sonic.
Still CBS was besieged with requests for more S-OB. After W-TS we
thought we'd finished "proving" ourselves, and that the synthesizer
was a serious musical instrument, something that would probably be
around for a few years, not a mere fad. But, okay, with some original
music behind us, we'd take another look into producing a sequel in
name to the first album. That required a great deal of listening and score searching, to discover
what of J.S. Bach's Baroque masterpieces might be both adaptable to our instruments, and would
also be amenable to the wishes of our new audience. I remember the time as being enjoyable;
that we listed several possible selections that might fit these goals. Some of them would need
sustained chordal parts, which the monophonic Moog did awkwardly. We also loved the
Brandenburg Concerto #5, which would require a significantly better way to handle polyphonic
keyboard gestures for the prominent harpsichord solos. Since there were yet no decent
polyphonic synthesizers in late 1973, we looked into electronic organs. Um. Quite a usable new
instrument was the Electone E-5. There was no velocity sensing, but one manual had a touch
vibrato. With several synth like features and controls, it sounded good. Once it had arrived in the
downstairs studio, we found it to be an excellent addition for what we needed, especially on the
difficult 5th Concerto. I smiled when some years later I noticed that Elmer Bernstein had also
used an E-5 for his score to the preliminary and final versions of Ray and Charles Eames' mindwarping film, Powers of Ten. It's difficult to appreciate how limited the tools and palettes were in
those days, when today you can find a perfectly usable synth that can provide hundreds of highquality sounds for only a few hundred dollars. But then we just went about finessing the best we
could do with what we had. Listening now I smile to discover how very polished it all sounds,
everything is in tune, no fluffs, the playing sounds wiry and flexible, and the sounds playfully dart
about the room (well, they do on the original Surround Sound master -- another wonderful idea
whose time is finally about to come: music coonceptually designed to wrap around you). I've
described before how we worked, starting with click and guide tracks, the tedium of one note or
phrase at a time, audible animation, and the tricks we had to develop to gain expression and
control. But the listener shouldn't hear any of that -- and no strain is evident. We also had a good
time making S-OB II, and I think a lot of the fun still can be heard here, three decades later.
Review “Switched-On Brandenburgs” - With the release of Switched-On Bach II in 1974, we
thought that was it for our series of J.S. Bach synthesizer realizations. Two years later we proved
ourselves wrong when we added one movement of the 2nd
Brandenburg on our By Request album. With complete versions of
numbers 3, 4 and 5 already polished off, and half of #2, we began to
consider going ahead and completing the six of them for a definitive two
disk set. The set occupied us for nearly two years through early 1979.
By now the methodology was getting to be "old hat", and it was going
to be much, much harder to face the months of work in performing yet
more unoriginal music. The tedium hadn't changed, although by now we
had a broad range of tricks and techniques to get there more directly,
with more polished results. It's the difference between a beginner and a
professional, recalling Hitchcock's comparisons between his two versions of The Man Who Knew
Too Much. Creating By Request I'd had the chance to compose quite a bit of new music, and
wasn't so frustrated that many more people thought of me as a synthesizer performer than a
composer. I had felt frozen out of the classical music scene since college, and was grateful that
this newest medium allowed me to write the rich, timbrally orchestrated music I craved and was
rather good at. If not many orchestras would work with me, at least my talents would not lie
fallow. And it would be, as usual, a fine learning process to attack the final Concerti, among
Bach's most notable masterpieces. It's generally helpful to have some new instruments on hand
to stimulate this painstaking way to make music. The synthesizer explosion of the 80's, however,
was still a few years into the future. Rachel and I had found a few new audio processors, basic
but helpful devices. That would have to do. With a deliberate stubbornness I began to lay down
the new movements onto 2" wide 16-track magnetic tape. That first movement of the 2nd
concerto was reworked. We had to invent ways to keep long solo lines sans accompaniment
moving along in the final movement. Gradually the concertos came together. I saved the
delightful but worrisome 6th concerto to the last. None of the original instruments was even in
the treble clef, so it could tend to sound a bit sodden if we were not careful. I came up with the
most flamboyant harpsichord continuo parts of any of the set, especially for #6, played on the
Electone E-5. I still get a big kick out of hearing it even now, with the kaleidoscopic arpeggios
and improvised counterpoints that lighten the work in a special way. At the same time I'm very
aware that this is a strange twist of fate, that so many people have had their first exposure to
classical music from my fingertips and composer's perspective. With so many far better qualified
performers and specialists on Baroque music around, this is less than ideal, and I apologize to
any who find lapses of style or approach here. At least enjoy the honesty and spirit we were able
to bring to our realizations, a document on one more small step in the history of an evolving
music.
(1968) Switched-On Bach - Air On A G String, Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major,
Chorale Prelude “Wachet Auf”, Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring, Prelude And Fugue #2 in C Major,
Prelude And Fugue #7 in E-Flat Major, Sinfonia To Cantata #29, Two-Part Invention in B-Flat
Major, Two-Part Invention in D Minor, Two-Part Invention in F Major
(1969) The Well-Tempered Synthesizer - Handel – Water Music, J.S. Bach – Brandenburg
Concerto #4 in G Major, Monteverdi – Orfeo Suite, Monteverdi – Domine Ad Adjuvandum,
Scarlatti – Sonata in G Major, L. 209/K. 455, Scarlatti – Sonata in D Major, L. 164/K. 491,
Scarlatti – Sonata in E Major, L. 430/K. 531, Scarlatti – Sonata in D Major, L. 465/K. 96
(1972) Clockwork Orange - Biblical Daydreams, Country Lane, La Gazza Ladra, March From A
Clockwork Orange, Ninth Symphony: Second Movement (Scherzo), Orange Minuet, Theme From
A Clockwork Orange (Beethoviana), Timesteps, Title Music From A Clockwork Orange, William
Tell Overture, Abridged
(1972) Sonic Seasonings – Fall, Spring, Summer, Winter, Winter (out-take)
(1974) Switched-On Bach II - Brandenburg Concerto #5 in D Major, Selections From Suite
#2 in B Major, Sheep May Safely Graze, Suite From Anna Magdalena Notebook, Two-Part
Invention in A Minor, Two-Part Invention in A Major
(1979) Switched-On Brandenburgs - Brandenburg Concerto #1 in F Major, Brandenburg
Concerto #2 in F Major, Brandenburg Concerto #3 in G Major, Brandenburg Concerto #4 in G
Major, Brandenburg Concerto #5 in D Major, Brandenburg Concerto #6 in B-Flat Major
(1982) Tron - 1990’s Theme, A New Tron And The MCP, Anthem, Anthem For Keyboard Solo,
Break In, Creation Of Tron, Ending Titles, Love Theme, Magic Landings, Miracle And Magician,
Only Solutions, Ring Game And Escape, Sea Of Simulation, The Light Sailer, Theme From Tron,
Tower Music – Let Us Pray, Tron Scherzo, Tronaction (original music), Water Music And
Tronaction, We’ve Got Company, Wormhole
(1984) Digital Moonscapes – Callisto, Eden, Europa, Ganymede, Genesis, I.C., Iapetus, Io,
Luna, Phobos & Deimos, Rhea, Titan
(1986) Beauty In The Beast - A Woman’s Song, Beauty In The Beast, C’est Afrique,
Incantation, Just Imaginings, Poem For Bali, That’s Just It, Yusae-Aisae
(1986) Land Of The Midnight Sun - Aurora Borealis - *Companion release with Sonic
Seasonings, Midnight Sun - *Companion release with Sonic Seasonings
(1988) Peter And The Wolf/Carnival Of The Animals - Part II – Introduction, Peter And
The Wolf, Introduction, Aardvark, Hummingbirds, Snails, Alligator, Amoeba, Pigeons, Shark,
Cockroaches, Iguana, Vulture, Unicorn, Poodle, Finale
(1992) Switched-On Bach 2000 - 2 Part Invention in F Major, 2 Part Invention in B Major, 2
Part Invention in D Minor, Air On A G String, Brandenburg #3, Movement I, Brandenburg #3,
Movement II, Brandenburg #3, Movement III, Fugue #2 in C Minor, Fugue #7 in E Major, Happy
25th, S-OB, Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring, Prelude #2 in C Minor, Prelude #7 in E Major, Sinfonia
in D Major, Toccata & Fugue in D Minor, Wachet Auf
(1998) Tales Of Heaven And Hell – Afterlife, City Of Temptation, Clockwork Black, Heaven
Scent, Memories, Seraphim, Transitional
Carol Wright Interview (1999) - Congratulations on putting the set to bed.
“It's done! This was such a big project for one that is not wholly new material. I'm pleased it came
out so well.”
I'm old enough to remember Pre-Switched. Electronic music was like some obnoxious mating of a
catfight and a garbage compactor. Or electronic music meant the eerie Theremin, the wooooooo-woo sound they used on cheesy invader-from-Mars movies. Do you have a sense that you
took electronic music to where it could be accepted?
“That's what people tell me. I was lucky enough to be at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music
Center, where Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening were teaching. I thought what ought to be
done was obvious, to use the new technology for
appealing music you could really listen to. Why
wasn't it being used for anything but the academy
approved "ugly" music? You know, the more avantgarde than thou-ers, atonal, or formally tedious
serial, twelve-tone straitjacket. My beloved field was
decimated, turned into something quite hateful. It's
like we had to start all over again. C-major, C-major,
C-major! Let's move on to D-major, already.
Anyway, it's nice to have demonstrated -- which was
all it was -- that the medium was far more flexible
and capable than one might have been aware.
That's all Switched-On Bach was meant to be.”
I was there with the rest in saying, "this electronic
music gives me a headache." But the mainstream
was also numb to the classics, so you brought them
an appreciation of Bach as well.
“I was certainly not about any revival of Bach. It was just lovely music, eminently suited for this
stage of the development of Bob Moog's new synthesizer.”
A perfect match then?
“Now, we'd say so. But then, people laughed at us, saying that interest would soon peter out.
Then they came back and said, "Ah, we got it! We always knew you could do it!" Oh, oh! The gray
cat's dry heaving a hairball. Just a minute. Subi's okay, but he's eighteen years old, so I have to
watch him.”
By the way, great job on your website. I've spent hours there and have just scratched the
surface. It took an hour just to read about your fuzzy critters.
“I love animals -- I have three Siamese cats and a terrier -- and would love to have a horsey, but it
wouldn't be happy in Manhattan.”
Many modern composers starting creating post-MIDI. They were given their sounds on a silver
platter. I'm not sure they all really appreciate where...
“None of us really know what giants' shoulders we stand on. Should we have a responsibility to
know what and who came before us? It's not necessary to play or compose music, but then, I
look back to Bob Moog and the others who came before me, and I'm grateful. I was lucky enough
to be there when electronic music was still an infant, and I was there to help it take some of the
steps needed to mature into a real medium. There were so many stages necessary for the
creation of electronic music: the Ondes Martinot and the Theremin -- many devices, actually, from
over a hundred years ago. The original synthesizer was built by RCA, and the second of only two
models was located at the Columbia lab. That's where Bob Moog got the name for his device. He
combined many different modules in one cabinet, and this collection of tools is what Bob called
the synthesizer.”
Could you give an idea of what it took back then to create just one measure of Bach's music? No,
to create a chord. No, a note. I guess you'd have to start with whether it was a violin sound or a
harpsichord. Where did you start?
“With Bach. It's easy if you're doing someone else's
music, so I went and bought a score. What a concept!
And Bach composed his great works during a period that had just begun to be aware
of the orchestral instruments, so the music wasn't tied closely to the orchestration. I
wouldn't have wanted to go tampering with Mozart or Haydn. But Bach was a twoedged sword. I didn't have to work out any notes. BUT, for me as a composer, it was
almost a disaster. I got identified with Bach like Nimoy was with Star-Trek's Spock!
Hardware-wise, we had to use multi-tracking recorded on one eight-track machine,
fairly racy hardware for its day. And since I didn't have much money, I built my own
unit. Then I got the Moog and worked with Bob to make a prototype of a touchsensitive keyboard. Can you believe, the standard keyboard was not touch-sensitive
until the late 1970s!? So, now I had a keyboard that could make the notes come
alive. So I worked with some friends trying jazz. We tried rock n' roll. And I tried my
own compositions, which were not the ugly forms you referred to earlier. However,
the music that seemed most likely to turn into a record was Bach. So Rachel Elkind,
my producer, and I started with the two-part "Invention in F."
How did you make the individual sounds?
“There wasn't much to making the sounds itself. I studied physics and music and knew a lot about
the basics of timbre and acoustics. The Moog wasn't all that elaborate. There were a couple of
oscillators, and you adjusted them to track the octaves. You would pick a wave shape from the
four available: sine, triangle, pulse wave, and sawtooth. There was a white noise source, and a
filter to reduce the high end of the wave, to make it sound more mellow, to add resonance, or
take out the bottom. Then there were envelopers that came from Ussachevsky's ideas: attack
time, decay, sustain, and release. Set the thing to ramp up at some rate: slow for an organ or fast
for a plucked string. Make it decay immediately for a harpsichord, or sustain for a piano. Have the
final release time based on the need, short and dry, or longer for the vibrating body of a cello or
drum. Easy.”
Right. Piece-a-cake.
“It's not all schematic diagrams and such. You could hear the adjustments. You'd dial up
something, listen to it, and keep hitting the note over and over, letting your inner ear guide you
while adjusting with the dials. So we would work up a sound and then record it. You try this, try
that.”
So, you fiddled with dials until you got a violin. (Hey, I made a pun!) How different from today's
MIDI samples. You want a Strad? or a Guarnari?
“Well, canned sound to a musician is like clip art is to the artist. The only way you can do anything
of any value in art is by knowing how to do it yourself. Of course that's not the mentality right now.
My opinion is very unpopular, and many people consider me an elitist. Is it so bad to keep
standards up? We expect an Olympic athlete to be
disciplined, to eat right, to work out daily, and to have a great coach so they can be as good as
they can be. So why not have standards for artists? With the modern keyboards, there's a
democratization of music, just as in the past, every kid had to take piano lessons. This is
wonderful in a way, but how many went on to play as a soloist? In the case of composers, have
the technological advances increased the output of masterpieces? I don't think so. I don't claim to
write masterpieces, but I don't stop until it's the best I can do. The musicians working in the
medium now have these advanced tools, but they should not be stuck using only MIDI and
prerecorded sounds. If they want to learn how the medium ticks, they should open the hood, get
inside, and get dirty. And they'll be grateful for every learning, for every discovery. It's wonderful,
but damn, you have to have the motivation. And the curiosity!”
So, you did create your own trumpet, organ, and violin . . . and then . . .
“Tempo. Rachel helped me nail the tempo by putting down a click track. If, when I put the notes
down against it, it sounded too fast -- too bad! -- I did it over again. Then we'd want a ritardando.
Who thinks of a ritard when you're making a click track? So we would adjust for that. And that
keyboard? Amazingly clunky with all those touch-sensing mechanical gadgets in it. I had to clatter
away slower than actual speed; you could never play faster than moderato. Sixteenth notes at a
good clip? Forget it! In the end, it was a lot of bookkeeping, and not as intuitive as a modern
keyboard. I wish I had Digital Performer back then. But, nope. Wonder if I could work with it
again? Maybe it's like a bicycle and you don't forget.”
But, using today's technology, the Bach wouldn't have been as special.
“I suppose you're right. If you're a pioneer, you get to have the arrows in the ass, I guess.”
How much could you record in one take?
“If the tonal quality didn't change much over the phrase, you could get down a measure or two.
The Moog was very unstable and would go out of tune constantly. You would play a phrase, back
up, and check. Retune and continue. To create a chord, you'd play the second line, then the third.
With counter point, you'd play the melodies that wove together. Eventually, we got all the parts to
make the piece.”
Hearing Switched-On-Bach probably moved me as much as watching those very first television
images of the moon landing. Hearing the didgeridoo for the first time also had a mindbending
impact on me. Where are the new frontiers of sound?
“So, Carol, how many other moon landings, didgeridoos, or peak experiences does it take for you
to be equally impressed? What about all the best life experiences in between? We always
remember our first exposures, I guess that's only human. And it's easier to be impressed when
we're young. The field of electronic music is still able to move, but with less noticeable
refinements. But there is plenty of room for improvements: We still don't have a general-purpose
instrument. The closest I have is the Synergy and the GDS, on which I made Beauty in the Beast,
and the Kurzweill K2000/2500, which is flexible and very clean sounding. But I'm so impatient. As
an insider, I feel like the developers have been smoking far too many joints. "Oh, wow, man. Look
at that. There's a universe of sounds in there!" No, there is not! Wake up! Let's get going, already.
At some point in your life, you fatigue out and realize it just may not happen. They aren't moving,
and I can't make it happen all by myself. However, making music is not dependent on that, so I
keep composing.”
Do you think the re-release of this set will box you back to Bach? or will it give you fresh platform
as a composer?
“I'm aware that the knife will be there with both edges. I am a composer, so I hope that the focus
of this interview is not "Wendy Carlos, the performer of Bach on the synthesizer." This was my
payment of dues (which unfortunately never stopped) to show that I had an ability with the new
media to make real music. I thought I then would be allowed to perform and record my own
music, but I got locked in with Bach. People hate to see any of us, once stereotyped into one eggcompartment, overflow into several other compartments. I guess you get only one cell per
customer. You were asking about new sounds; you probably haven't heard Tales of Heaven and
Hell. (Note: Carol has since listened and written a thoughtful, enthusiastic review., and offered an
example of a new art-form, with her jocular Poem-Review.) It's the scariest recording that's been
created in a long time, and I'll bet it's quite different than anything you've ever heard. Are they
"breakthrough sounds"? No. But they are different and they have refinements and they are very
musically handled. Why do we always search for something we've never heard before? If your
pursuit is not to be as good as you can be, but an obsession to be new, then you've thrown away
your art. Art has to be stable to some extent. The medium has matured and is capable of great
depth and expression, more than the SOB technology could ever hope to be. Now that the
technology has matured, people should try to make the great music, the meaty music, and not
cave in to every commercial cliché. But that's just me talking. For those who just consider music
as just a career, this is probably bad advice. Forget I said it. But if you're doing it as an artist, then
by all means, aim for the good.”
Think you'll ever run out of ideas?
“Hardly. The whole palette of life is wonderful. I used to worry about running out of ideas, and
now I worry I can touch only a tiny fraction of what I want to do. In music, alternative tunings are
an option. It's like throwing away the straight jacket of the twelve-tone, equal tempered scale. But
people can get stuck simply discovering the new scales, and then write no good music for it. Now
as I get older, I can look back. I realize that I was a young whippersnapper to think that I could be
a performer when I hadn't paid the dues. It's embarrassing that my Bach records are placed
alongside Glenn Gould and Horowitz. I don't think that I'm a particularly great performer even of
my own music, but with the Digital Performer, I am able to refine things in a sensitive way, keep
the spirit that I first had and still make it polished. I am quite satisfied with "Tales of Heaven and
Hell;" it's probably the best performing I've done on an album. Every note and sound is "just so."
When listening to all the Bach pieces again, I was aware of the fluffs, wrong tempos, and the
passages the Moog just couldn't quite negotiate. But I was surprised that most of them have such
spirit. I marvel that I had such tenacity back then; the way we worked was so tedious, it should
have removed all traces of spontaneity. So, I'm perfectly happy to set my Bach beside my most
recent works. Altogether, it's part of the fulcrum of how an artist's whole life should be seen. It's a
little surreal seeing your own life as having periods -- early, middle, and late -- but there was an
innocence back then. It really was, as you mentioned, the stuff of the first moon landing, of
leaving those first footprints in the dust.”
Wendy Carlos on collaborator Rachel Elkind (1998) - A web site like this is an excellent place
to "set the record straight". Many of the pages herein have
been assembled to do just that: on the historical, musical, and
technical background, and how these albums I was fortunate
enough to be a part of, came to be. But there's a notable
contribution that's often bypassed, one critical to the inception
of all "my" music from about 1967 until 1980 or so. There was a
"silent partner" for all of these projects, who was seldom
credited properly or adequately. Many of you will guess that I'm
referring to Rachel Elkind-Tourre, the "Rachel" whose name is
mentioned frequently within these pages, while it appears on all
of our albums: "Produced by Rachel Elkind". But her
contributions extended much further than production, to a true
collaborator. (An issue of Keyboard magazine contained the
single decent interview with her, back in December of 1979.)
Above is a photo that was taken for the CBS's promotion of the Switched-On
Brandenburgs, which came out in 1979. (I believe the photographer was Don Hunstein,
who also took many of the best-known photos of Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist and
prodigy.) That's the "mature" Moog synthesizer behind Rachel in this shot, taken in the
studio that comprised the lowest floor of the West Side brownstone that Rachel and her
wise mother had purchased before I met them (and when the market was not yet ruined by
speculators!,) then repaired and renovated into the house I also lived and worked in for
nearly a decade. (I was saddened when Rachel and her husband, Yves, sold it recently.)
When I met Rachel, she was working at a recording studio in New York City. She had
worked closely as the secretary to Goddard Lieberson of Columbia Records (look at most
any CBS album from the 50's and 60's...) She'd also been an active performing artist, a
singer of jazz and show music, and some classical background, too. I love her wide-range,
mellow, flexible voice. But being rather shy, she was never fully comfortable in the
spotlight herself, and chose to do what in Hollywood would be termed: "going behind the
camera". It wasn't until the Winter movement of Sonic Seasonings that she finally relented
and recorded that haunting vocalise many of you have commented on so favorably. Just
prior to that, in the Beethoven Ninth last movement we realized with our early vocoder you
can hear her spirited articulations on the "singing synths". But Winter was Rachel's
natural voice, whirled around the stereospace. There were several other unique
performances she recorded during the 70's, including one that gives the "sizzle" to the
opening title music to Kubrick's The Shining.
Rachel, who came to NYC from San Francisco with hopes to be a jazz singer, brought a
important quality of spontaneity to my music, and helped me to shed some of the stuffier
conceits one can acquire from formal music studies in Ye Olde Ivy League. In the
Keyboard article I mentioned, she admitted to Dominic Milano: "I'm a real tyrant, and go
for the moment more than anything. And I think that Wendy is a better performer because
of it. If there's any criticism of our music, it's that it's over-polished, and I try very hard to
work against that instinct to over-polish, which is inherent to the kind of music we do. The
synthesizer is very unforgiving."
I've been asked by many of you about Rachel before, so you can read my reply in an
earlier Open Letter 1 and Open Letter 3, some notes about the brownstone studio on the
Photos Page, and the details of the birth of Switched-On Bach, in the album notes for SOB
2000, including when we met, why she'd been critical to my success, and the early interest
in the Synthesizer. She also chased the 1972 total
eclipse with me, and was the organizer and brains
behind the extremely rigorous Big African
Expedition in 1973. If she knew I was writing this
page about her, I think she'd be rather
embarrassed by it, and might fear it could be an
invasion of her privacy. I don't intend to betray her
confidences, there's nothing really confidential
herein. But it would be absolutely wrong not to
have a place on this web site that acknowledges
some of her contributions. I think Rachel might be
proudest to have been the very first person to
realize how "natural" an album entirely of Bach's
music on synthesizer would be for many listeners. She came up with the concept and
many key issues for SOB, while I was mainly interested in doing my own music (still am,
being a composer -- sorry about that, folks.) The first albums may have "stereotyped" us
as classical music performers, producers, and "realizers" for a while, but it was a very
effective way to burst upon the music scene as complete unknowns. Although Rachel
produced albums by other good musicians (Albert Dailey, the jazz-pianist's jazz pianist,
Joao Gilberto, that reclusive Brazilian Bassa-Nova composer and performer, and an
excellent Easy Listening group of the early 70's, "MichaelAngelo", among others,) I guess
the albums we collaborated on remain her best-known recordings. Rachel came up with
the concept for Sonic Seasonings, although I jumped into it once I saw this was a
"natural" for our abilities/facilities at that time, and hopefully for the public. On that one we
were rather way early for the big wave of "New Age" that took about another ten years to
commence and remains strong to this day (ah, the sweet rewards of innovation, not to
mention the arrows in the butt, which is the best way to detect a pioneer...),. She again was
the conceptualizer behind our wicked-witted Pompous Circumstances, the featured piece
on By Request, while my skills were better suited to the detailed composing. (It will be
remastered to CD on ESD, at the end of 1999, by the way.) We came up with most of our
music together, spinning new ideas and things to try for weeks and months until
something took root. We brainstormed together all of one Winter to "invent" and assemble
Timesteps, fighting to make it work with our primitive tools. I found her musical training
and performance skills impressive, not as formally "schooled" as mine, but more practical
and realistic, and certainly more open to experimentation. I was not fully prepared to find
myself working with another creative composing force, a peer. It was novel, composers do
not often collaborate, you know, and it took a while to work out efficient ways of
communicating those fragile beings that initial creative ideas are, without letting egos get
in the way. I enjoyed those years, and was sad to see them come to and end, when Rachel
decided to move onto other interests and passions in 1980. But she was married, and had
made plans to live with Yves in Paris and other places around the world. It was time to
move on. It took me a while and some effort to regain an ability to work by myself again,
and for a long while it felt really frustrating not to have Rachel's honest, gifted ears to
bounce ideas and fragments off of (still miss that.) I've often tried to explain these things
to strangers, and even some friends. Not everyone can grasp our fairly complicated
working arrangement. I felt over and over again that her side of the collaboration was
being minimized, and might continue to be ignored, as it has over the years. I also admit to
having been frustrated at how she self-effacingly refused to take a bow for the work she
did. We had arguments over that one... (I lost.) I'll eventually get some more coherent
details up here on the way I remember it felt to assemble music with our early, quite
limited instruments, and try to recapture the experience for those of you who have
expressed an interest in the way we worked together all those years. After all, "Retro" this
and that seems to be a popular topic at the end of the century. But for now I hope this
small page will at least familiarize many of you with Rachel's contributions as an essential
ingredient of those first eight albums in a candid way that might be inappropriate to an
album's liner notes. It's a fair way of making available some of a seldom-told story, as best
as I can remember it, out over the electromagnetic spectrum of the Web.
"Before I die, I want to find out what lies beyond all these horizons, and I'm doing it for the best
reason in the world: I'm curious." – Wendy Carlos