For fans and makers of classical synthesizer music
Jeff Knapp
I discovered Jeff when he posted some of his works on to the Classitronic soundcloud group, so I contacted him to join Classitronic here as a current artist, which I’m pleased to say he agreed to, he also gave me an interesting and detailed biog which is below.
These are Jeff’s words followed by some examples of his works.
I live in the Los Angeles, California, USA – actually live in the city of Los Angeles, in a district called Silver Lake. It is an area populated with many entertainment and creative types like me – not movie or TV stars but behind the scenes guys, artists, writer, editors, cinematographers, animators, graphic designers, musicians, audio guys, producers, etc., etc. – the people who you almost never hear of but who are the true back bone of the entertainment industry. Â I am married and have two kids, one at university, one in high school.
My sound tends to be more literal and imitative rather than more whimsical and “spacey.” My influences are pretty much Carlos and Tomita but also Patrick Gleason, Jeffrey Reid Bakker, and an incredibly rare record by a team called Kraft and Alexander (from the 1970′s) who did a classitronic version of The 1812 Overture and The Nutcracker Suite using only a pair of Arp 2600′s. (It took them over 200 tracks of tape to do it.)  I am also influenced less directly by everything from Kraftwerk to Vangelis, to The Human League to Synergy to Michael Stearns to Front Line Assembly.  I think also important are what I consider dis-influences such as heavy metal, country, jazz, hip-hop, and RnB.
I am purely software based. I run Logic Studio 9 on an eight-core Mac Pro with 10 gig of RAM plus a pare of decent (but by no means great) pare of monitors and one Axiom 25 MIDI controller keyboard. Â I use a variety of soft-synths but focus on “analog” subtractive synthesis using the “classic” analog waveforms for the large majority of timbres. I stay away from samples or wavetables except for the occasional tympani drum or crash cymbal. Â My favorite soft synths include Arturia Moog Modular V, NI Absynth, and Logic Studio’s Synthesizer 2.
Music is strictly a hobby for me. I cannot actually play any instruments nor do I have any formal musical training. What I do have a is a sensitive ear and a love for electronic music going all the way back to the original Switched on Bach.
By day, I am a computer graphics artist and 3D animator which is what I actually have the big, beefy Mac for. Â It just so happens that all of that processing power also lends itself rather nicely to running Logic with many soft-synths and fx plugins simultaneously.
Future plans: I am currently doing a classitronic of Peer Gynt: Hall of the Mountain King, I also have the 1812 Overture in the works. I plan to do the other three movements of Beethoven’s 9th.
