Please welcome on board to Classitronic.net, Paul Glover.
Paul has built his Moog 3C replica over the past 15 years and is now turning his talents to recreating pieces from the baroque period as demonstrated by his Sinfonia to Cantata 35 ‘Geist und Seelle wird verwirret’ by J S Bach.
Another excellent piece by Paul, well done.
Paul says that will be putting out more works on to Youtube until he has a CD’s worth of material, just don’t stop there that’s what I say !.
We would like to welcome Alastair Symon to the current artist list here at Classitronic.net.
Alastair has been doing something really rather unusual and also very difficult, instead of taking the easy route (like me)and using a computer sequencer to play music though his modular system, he uses hardware step sequencers which interact with each other to build up and play classical pieces, so in essence the synthesizer is playing it’s self !, I seen this with basic sequences but not the same level that Alastair has taken it to.
This is no mean feat to achieve and takes a lot of time and patience to setup and get right, below is a rendition Erik Satie – Gymnopedie No 1.
He says that he will be able to make more complex works with the addition of a new Oberkorn 3 sequencer from Analogue Solutions.
This is both a novel and interesting method and to my knowledge that no one else uses and we look forward to hearing from you Alastair, Well done !
I found this on Youtube the other day which includes some snippets of music that I have not heard from Tomita before including an excerpt from the Rite of Spring by Stravinsky and few and couple others.
Something that is also shown in the video is a picture of the Sound Creature album from 1977.
Now this is something you don’t see others artists doing and that is giving a detailed breakdown of how they made their music. Not only did it give the listener an audio deconstruction of the sounds he made but it also came with a booklet albeit in Japanese (though I have found a couple of pages that have been translated in to English) telling the listener how he created his trade mark sounds with diagrams of the synthesizer modules required to do it, effects processing, even the stereo placement within the track, the example below goes through part of the track “Day Break” from the “Daphnis and Chloe” album. Initially this was released in Japan but I have seen it on CD.
And some sketches illustrating how he got some of the effects on his albums.
This was when synth’s like the Moog where the reserve of the few who could afford them and were much more of a mystery than they are now, much like the way he gave a listing of all the equipment he used to make an album though he stopped this after the release of Dawn chorus in 1982.
Mike has produced some excellent electronic classical renditions in the past and says he will be releasing more works under the creative commons license.
He says of this one “Winter, the second movement (Largo) of Vivaldi’s 4 season, performed on various synthesizers.
I was curious on how it would sound like, so i started to work on a synthesized version of that piece, inspired by the classical Synthesizer works of Wendy Carlos”
Nice work Mike, we look forward to hearing more from you.
Here’s something I came cross the other day, an album from 1972 by Mike Hankinson, an English guy who lived in South Africa though album was produced in the USA.
It’s called “The Unusual Classical Synthesizer” and was made entirely on a Electronic Music Studios “Synthi” VCS-3 as opposed the Moog Modular which was the weapon of choice for many of the “Switched on” also rans that came after Wendy Carlos.
The track listing is as follows
Side one:
1 Toccata and Fugue in D minor (Bach) [7:05]
2 Variations – Mein junges Leben hat ein End (Sweelinck) [3:29]
3 Sonata in D major (Scarlatti) [2:46]
4 Sonata Rondo (Clementi) [3:20]
Side two:
1 Concerto in A minor (Bach) [2:59]
2 Eine kleine Nachtmusik (Mozart) [3:37]
3 Italian Concerto (Bach) [3:37]
4 Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven) [5:08]
From VintageSynth.com about the VCS-3
“The VCS3 (nicknamed the Putney) is an analog monosynth housed in a distinctive angled wooden case, a truly classic synth. EMS (Electronic Music Studios) was created in England back in 1969. The VCS3 was one of their first synths and it is still a great, unique, funky little unit! Pictured above is the Mark I model. Pictured is another unit with the small wood-cased DK2 voltage-control keyboard required to play the VCS3.
It has three oscillators, and a unique matrix-based patch system. Instead of patch wires, the VCS3 uses a patchbay grid in which the synth components are laid out, and signal routing is accomplished by placing small pins into the appropriate slots. The VCS3 was, in actuality, a modular type synthesizer reduced down to an extremely portable size.”
Just goes to show that few things today are really that new, on the sleeve notes it says “It is recommended that you play this disc on a very good system and if you own a Quadraphonic synthesizer, listen to it through that – the sound will amaze you. Be careful not to damage your speakers playing the Bach Toccata !”
Mmm, sounds like 5.1 surround sound and sub-bass, mark my words, flares and platforms will be back in fashion at some point.
A warm welcome to Pablo Penas of Spain who joins the classitronic current artist list.
Pablo has produced several classical electronic pieces by J.S. Bach including the one above which is taken from his switched on synthesizer Youtube channel and blog http://switchedonsynthesizer.blogspot.com/
We look forward to hearing more from Pablo in the future.
I would like to offer a warm welcome to Richard deCosta who joins our list of current artists producing an outstanding portfolio of work which can be seen at his “So Many Colors” classical synthesizer website http://classical-synthesizer.richarddecosta.com which includes the following rendition of Mars from the Planets suite by Holst.
Richard says about the work “I’ve always felt there should be a synthesizer arrangement of Holst’s “Mars” that does is justice: massive, brutal, biting, jarring, full of rage and terror. With this arrangement I think I have achieved that.”
Equipment used:
Apple Mac G5
Logic Pro 8
NI Massive
NI FM8
EXS24 Sampler
This took about 2 weeks to do the music and about 2 hours to stitch the video around around in the attempt to get a few more viewers on that there Youtube. Juries is out yet as to wether this approach works better than just a plain still image but it has the eye candy of Angelina Jolie and some great CGI scenes from Beowulf to help it along and it seems to go rather well with the music ( well i would say that wouldn’t I )
Synths used on this were Omnisphere, CS-80V, Jupiter 8v and Virtual string machine.
If you wondered how Tomita hit the ground running so well in 1974 with his first major album “Snowflakes are dancing” then this might help explain why.
Two years earlier in 1972 he made a cover album of pop music around that time under the name of “Electric Samurai” called “Switched on rock”.
Track listing with some listenable ones
01 – Yesterday
02 – Let It Be
03 – Imagine
04 – Hey Jude
05 – Jail House Rock
06 – Love Me Tender
07 – Pork Salad Annie
08 – You Dont Have To Say You Love Me
09 – Sound Of Silence
10 – Mrs Robinson
11 – El Condor Pasa
12 – Bridge Over Troubled Water
We know that he had heard Wendy Carlos’s “Switched on Bach” and was so impressed that he got his own Moog modular in 1971 and this must have been his reply to that but doing his own versions of current music of the day with the styles we would hear in “Snowflakes are dancing” and “Pictures at an Exhibition”.
Listen to the beginning of “Bridge over troubled water” and tell me that you cant hear the latter “Great Gate of Kiev” from Pictures.
Some of the tracks work better than others but that early Tomita musical style is all there and you can see that when he used it on the later classical music it worked much better, probably because the ones on this album were so well known it would have been difficult for many to take his new sound seriously.
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