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3 Electronic Maestros Interviewed
thesixthreplicant writes "New Scientist interviews 3 pioneers of electronic music: Bob Moog, the inventor of the first commercial synthesiser, the Moog; Australian Peter Vogel, creator of the first electronic sampler, the Fairlight (16 bit sampling in 1979!); and Dave Smith, the father of MIDI."
The Fairlight wasn't 16-bit until 1985, when the Fairlight Series III came out. The Synclaviar was 16-bit before then (I think 1984 or so) and AMS had a 16-bit digital delay that could work as a primitive 16-bit sampler (Used in "Joanna" among other songs) around 1983 or 1984.
Get your Unix fortune now!
What? no rolf harris for the stylophone?
"The three of us were in jeans and t-shirts, and the guy from Roland was in a suite." I guess they wouldn't be welcome today... Could be why we have empty pop now.
Its one of the few occasions when computing and math truly do come together
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Other common synths seen in 1980s music videos:
Giorgio Moroder reigns Lord and inventor of electronic music. His pop-flavor made some think the man is Satan himself, but it was groundbreaking nonetheless.
I suggest you read Slashdot
I'd rather pay Dave when I installed ringtones on my cell phone than pay the cell company.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
http://www.delia-derbyshire.org/
Delia Derbyshire.
Hugely overlooked, very interesting music.
She created the Dr. Who theme and was a huge influence on the BBC radiophonic workshop. BBC Radio 4 did a very interesting afternoon play about her recently.
George: "Moops!!"
I guess the answer is 'Moogs' after all :)
test
Karftwerk are great, and indeed defined the style of the electronic music genre. Indeed, Kraftwerk's sound is still heard in modern electronic music, over 30 years later. Wendy (Walter) Carlos was also a key contributor to composing electronic music - but she relied on Robert Moog's technology to make her music. All decent electronic artists acknowledge the work of the engineers and scientists who built the equipment that bands like Kraftwerk used. After all, without these tools, research and instruments, how would the artists be able to make the music? Also, for a more modern example think of Robin Whittle - who modified synthesizers for tons of modern electronic artists - yet is not a musician or composer hmself.
I have owned several Moog synthesizers, and IMO, Moog is one of the people most responsible for bringing us the way we use electronic instruments in practice. The Moog is still an awesome synthesizer to use.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Back in the day when bandwidth was an issue, there was a format that was half midi half sound samples. The sound was convincing (ie it didn't sound like a cheap keyboard) considering the size and it was a good compromise between a file containing essentially sheet music and a straight-up 50 meg wave file. Whoever came up with that, high five.
Actually, there's nothing wrong with it. My guess is that the version omitting the z is the English version and the one with the z is the American, as in Britain we tend to use the s rather than the z in words similar to this, ie desensitise, moralise, formalise.
while Moog was a pioneer and respecty is due, he was not even close to the "first"
but dont take my word for it, go look it up
synthesisers have been around for 120 years !
i hate it when people say "XXXXXX was the first" without even looking it up, 0.75 seconds on a quick google search says
--------------------
120 Years Of Electronic Music
Origins:
The origins of electronic music can be traced back to the audio analytical work of Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821-1894) the German physicist, mathematician and author of the seminal work "SENSATIONS OF TONE: Psychological Basis for Theory of Music" (c1860). Helmholtz built an electronically controlled instrument to analyse combinations of tones the "Helmholtz Resonator", using electromagnetically vibrating metal tines and glass or metal resonating spheres the machine could be used for analysing the constituent tones that create complex natural sounds. Helmholtz was concerned solely with the scientific analysis of sound and had no interest in direct musical applications, the theoretical musical ideas were provided by Ferruccio Busoni, the Italian composer and pianists who's influential essay "Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music" was inspired by accounts of Thaddeus Cahill's 'Telharmonium'.
1870-1915: Early Experiments
The first electronic instruments built from 1870 to 1915 used a variety of techniques to generate sound: the tone wheel (used in the Telharmonium and the Chorelcello)- a rotating metal disk in a magnetic field causing variations in an electrical signal, an electronic spark causing direct fluctuations in the air (used uniquely in William Duddell's "Singing Arc' in 1899) and Elisha Grey's self vibrating electromagnetic circuit in the 'Electronic Telegraph', a spin-off from telephone technology. The tone wheel was to survive until the 1950's in the Hammond Organ but the experiments with self oscillating circuits and electric arcs were discontinued with the development of vacuum tube technology.
1915-1960: The Vacuum Tube Era.
The engineer and prolific US inventor Lee De Forest patented the first Vacuum tube or triode in 1906, a refinement of John A. Fleming's electronic valve. The Vacuum tube's main use was in radio technology but De Forest discovered that it was possible to produce audible sounds from the tubes by a process known as heterodyning. twentieth century by radio engineers experimenting with radio vacuum tubes. Heterodyning effect is created by two high radio frequency sound waves of similar but varying frequency combining and creating a lower audible frequency, equal to the difference between the two radio frequencies (approximately 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz). De Forest was one amongst several engineers to realise the musical potential of the heterodyning effect and in 1915 created a musical instrument, the "Audion Piano" . Other instruments to first exploit the vacuum tube were the 'Theremin' (1917) 'Ondes Martenot' (1928), the 'Sphäraphon' (1921) the 'Pianorad' (1926). The Vacuum tube was to remain the primary type of audio synthesis until the invention of the integrated circuit in the 1960's.
1960-1980: Integrated Circuits.
Integrated Circuits came into widespread use in the early 1960's. Inspired by the writings of the German instrument designer Harald Bode, Robert Moog, Donald Buchla and others created a new generation of easy to use, reliable and popular electronic instruments.
1980-present: Digital.
The next and current generation of electronic instruments were the digital synthesisers of the 1980s. These synthesisers were software controlled offering complex control over various forms of synthesis previously only available on extremely expensive studio synthesisers. Early models of this generation included the Yamaha DX range and the Casio CZ synthesisers.
http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/intro.html
This is not about Electronic Music, the genre. This is about music in electronic form. This has nothing to do with the genre.
Both watershed instruments of their day.
;-) For anybody who wants a sample (heh) of what the Fairlight CMI can do, Jan Hammer really brought it to the fore with his contributions to the 'Miami Vice' sountrack. I believe the CMI is also on Herbie Hancock's 'Future Shock' album and his others of the mid-80s.
I got to meet Dr. Moog (rhymes with 'vogue') about ten years ago. Affable, intelligent guy. He's the Les Paul/Leo Fender of the synthesizer. His current company is Big Briar, which make very cool (albeit expensive) effects pedals.
Fairlight: The "original" OS9!
The 'gue' in 'Vogue' and 'Rogue' is quite different from a 'g' in the dutch 'Loog', 'Toog', etc.
:)
That 'g' is more like a horrible choking sound - I'd sound it out and put it on my site (I'm Dutch), but no thanks
Ray Kurzweil is notably absent from the Maestro list....
The classic Fairlight sound came from the Fairlight Series II (1982) and Series IIx (1983, with faster processor and factory-MIDI) defined the classsic "Fairlight" sound, not the Series III - so 16-bit is meaningless here. The Series II used variable speed playback, rather than skipping samples in a wavetable to speed up/slow down the sound. When combined with some fantastic analog filters, the sound was something special, with a great low-end. The other part of the magic was "Page R" -- the realtime 8-track (single note) sequencer that allowed you to work with the Series II's lightpen in a pseudo-graphical environment (ASCII characters in a music sequencing grid).
By the time the Series III came out, E-mu had released several samplers including the Emulator I and II (both 8 bit, although the II used companding A/D-D/A converters to give a higer signal to noise). The Series III lost the coloured magic of the Series II sound by using increasingly perfect 16-bit recording, and it wasn't long before companies like Akai started making $5000 16-bit samplers that put Fairlight out of business.
And I don't care who you are and where you're from, but if roland had never made the 303, electronic music would never have been the same.
same for a lot of the x0x series. The 606, 808, and 909.
Now I'm going to have "Tie me kangaroo down" going through my head all evening along with a digeridoo and a wobble board.
The guy's gotta be 100 by now.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
and this in a forum where every story no matter how diverse ends up being a discussion on the evils of microsoft.
damn right. :)
the thing about the Moog was that it was the first "modular" synth.. the first time people could easily really honestly create their own sounds from scratch with a minimum amount of fuss. this fact alone spawned endless creativity in the artists that used them. thank you Mr. Moog, for giving us such wonderful ideas.
...inventor of FM Synthesis?
I was just yesterday viewing a video from Teacher's TV of Jim and Caroline Corr and a sound engineer showing how they produced one of their songs.
I was struck by the fact that it starts from a few basic chords and by the time they get done with it, it takes 50 or 60 laid-down tracks to produce what you hear on the record - which is then "duplicated" on stage by six people and some instruments for the live performance...
What struck me is how a live performance sounds much (if not exactly) like the record with far fewer electronic efforts. Makes you wonder if the electronic effects are really worth it. Obviously it many cases, depending on the song, it is. Enya, for example, can hardly play her stuff live at all because of the production values in her records. But others, like the Corrs, have no problem.
Would it be more cost effective for many bands to drop the effects and play it "straight"? In some cases, maybe, in others, it might be a disaster.
I've noticed that Andrea Corr's voice is sometimes barely recognizable on the record - due to the fact that I have seen her sing live (on video) more often than I've heard the recorded songs. So I'm more used to her "real" voice than the processed and synthesized one. This effect only fades if I watch a video where the Corrs lip-sync to the record (which many TV shows appearances require).
I tend to prefer the "real" voice to the processed one. I wonder how many others prefer their favorite singer's "real" voice over the recorded versions? Or a "real" performance over a "produced" one?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Kraftwerk are great, but they were not the first in any category I can think of offhand. When you stop to consider the fact that there were many "pop" artists working all at the same time - mainly the middle 70s - middle 80s, it becomes harder still to find anything that you can pin Kraftwerk as having been solely responsible for. And there are many precursors to what we think of as electronic musics earliest days. Basically, you were right to call it a genre - personally, I'd call electronic music a movement. Many artists working within the genre were doing similar things.
Amongst the artists in the category doing interesting things I would include: Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA, Cabaret Voltaire, Human League/Heaven 17, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Die Form, Duran Duran, etc. Synth-pop is surely part of the genre, for good or ill. And we most likely have to include stuff like Michael Oldfield, etc. It just goes all over the place - I think Eno was working with synthsizers, tape loops, and delays even in early Roxy Music. Tape loops are like early sampling.
Don't believe the hype: Kraftwerk, while great, probably invented very little.
Mod parent UP!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Watch bernie worrells biography, he mastered the moog, his a modern day boch. http://www.strangermovie.com/
There were others using electronic instruments well before kraftwerk, but I'd be hard pressed to name one who so deeply absorbed the technology. Kraftwerk was interesting because of how purely electronic they were. Even their vocals were heavily vocoded robot sounding, as if the entire album was being played by computers.
The other artists you list were certainly also breaking new ground (with the exception of Duran Duran), but I really wouldn't credit any of them with pushing electronic sounds so far. Eno probably came closest, but even he still had "regular" instruments heavily featured.
Simple put, Kraftwerk showed you could make music using just computers. To this day when I hear most modern techno I hear hints of Kraftwerk.
Even to this day, drum machines have these odd and silly interfaces. How come nobody dedicates any time to thinking about how to throw together a quick drum track? Pages, and clunky tweakings with little feedback are so lacking, it makes these devices hard to use. Even my RM1X is a silly nightmare.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
the man that fucking INVENTED sampling
'Sampling' was first done in the analog domain, by an instrument named the Mellotron. It had an organ keyboard with a magnetic tape, tape head, and capstan mechanism under each key, and activated whem the key was pressed. The samples were factory-recorded (for new sounds you had to record a new tape for each key) and the machine was playback-only, but it fits the name sampler. It was used by the Beatles ("Strawberry Fields Forever"), King Crimson, and most of the Moody Blues albums of the '60's and '70's, among others. And yes, the Mellotron was a commercial product.
Tag lost or not installed.
Then what do you use the z for?
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Sleeping
I might not be a wit, but at least I am more than half way there.
Your link doesn't work for me, but I've got several of his solo LP's (and a Hammer/Schon LP I never liked) from around the Miami Vice time and earlier. He used a fancy strap-on keyboard (sometimes generically called a 'keytar', a keyboard you wear on a strap like a guitar). I don't remember the brand name (ISTR the model was discussed in an issue of Polyphony, a magazine which later became Electronic Musician), but several manufacturers made them, such as the Korg RK-1.
These were all basically MIDI (Thanks, Dave Smith) controllers (which output commands to synthesizers telling them which note to play, but not generating sound themselves), and the only uniqueness the keyboard brought to the sound was from Jan's deft use of the pitch-bend wheel, simulating the string bending of a lead guitarist.
Hammer is shown playing this device in the photograph midway down this page:
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/miamivice.html
Tag lost or not installed.
Lets see... Les Paul invented:
1) Multitrack recording
2) Echo, and flange effects
3) Electric Guitar
4) Electronic Synth
I mean, come on people...
At musicthing. Godfried is more than a little odd.
I though the Mellotron was the one with tow sounds - one of which doesn't sound like a string section and the other doesn't sound like a female choir.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's funny, I was reading the sleeve notes to Wendy Carlos's "Switched-On Bach" last night. The record, from 1968, seems like a joke, but it's nothing but and amazingly well-sounding for having been made in the 60's. Bob Moog was personally involved in this project, and many improvements to his synth were made to accommodate the artistic needs of classical music.
No it didn't. The ST's had a 3-channel Yamaha YM2149 FM sound chip that didn't do native sample playback, which in itself was a hack. Sounded really bad too.
The STE's had 8-bit DAC's, but IIRC there were only two of them, so software mixing for MOD playback was still needed. That DSP you're thinking of was in the Falcon, the floppy ST sequel that finally passed the Amiga in sound capabilities -- 8-channel 16-bit, although I'm not sure if the Moto DSP mixed these in software, or if there was a dedicated chip...
"[Q]: Was anyone else working on the digital synthesis of sound?
[A]: I heard that Stanford University was doing some interesting work. I went over to visit them and they had rather large computers that churned away for 10 minutes and played one note."
Eh?
What a troll.
Did you even bother looking up a dictionary before shooting off your stupid (and ignorant) mouth?
I though the Mellotron was the one with tow sounds - one of which doesn't sound like a string section and the other doesn't sound like a female choir.
That's a bit of an exaggeration; but it's definitely true that it sounds like a mellotron whenever you hear it.
And that's a good thing; the Melloton actually sounds *more* atmospheric than the thing it is playing back, and it doesn't sound at all like a digital sampler.
Radiohead used it to great effect on "OK Computer"; listen to "Exit Music from a Film" when the "choir" comes in. That's a mellotron; it sounds *way* better than a real choir would have.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I think my point, having lived through the period in question, is that Kraftwerk is merely one of the end products of a whole German Electronic Music movement. They hit big during the disco era and many of the technics employed by Kraftwerk were immediately picked up on as tactics for the flavor of the week records being churned out. They were influenced, in turn they influenced others - but the entrance of the synthesizer into pop music owes just as much to other goups using electronic music techniques for more ordinary sounding songs.
Kraftwerk did not make it as Tone Float, Ralf & Florian, nor as incarnations 1 & 2. Autobahn was "pop-like." It had a catchy quality. So even Kraftewerk had to tone it down and make it accessible.
Once the world grew accustomed to certain electronic sounds, thanks to all kinds of people really, it was possible to go for more experimental, more purely electronic work altogether.
The other thing about Kraftwerk is that it's not hard to imagine a hardlined profit motive, over a creative agenda, behind much of what they did. Hutter and Shneider somewhat famously hold on very tightly to the legal rights to work that is probably more of a group effort than they care to admit - but they have tended to treat their fellows as mere hired hands. To me Kraftwerk isn't really Kraftwerk without Flur and Bartos. With the monies flowing neatly into the pockets of only two persons, the two spend most of their time bicycle riding (apparently) instead of making new music. That's a fact immediately obvious to anyone that has heard the last album - two-thirds of which is old music essentially.
Many, many, many other artists have gone on to all kinds of interesting things in the meanwhile. Kraftwerk were not first and they didn't stay influential for very long. They were almost immediately subsumed and surpassed.
Ebonic Pluralisation.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Not true, see here.
This comes up as a slashdot story the day after I get info about a Moog film being shown at my local cinema.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
This personaly annoys me and I hear that argument a lot. it plain wrong.
it's very simple:
the mellotron did not record sound - therefor it was not a sampler.
a sampler records sounds, or at least allows the user to use his own samples.
the mellotron is not a sampler in the same sense as the korg M1, Roland D50 and all other rom based wave-table synths are not samplers.
arrgh!
I know jack about making music, but I have had a copy of Science and Music by Sir James Jeans for some time and recently got interested in the mathematics of harmony. Which brings up an interesting question:
Is there any equipment/software that plays chords using true small-number-ratio intervals (3:5, 5:6, etc.) rather than the nearly-correct ratios given by the 2^(n/12) intervals in the common tuning?
Better, is there something that can be programmed to do both in the same sequence? Or simultaneously as though on two differently-tuned instruments?
I'd just like to play around with harmonics a little, for my own edification.
Totally wrong on practically every conceivable front. Sampling refers specifically to the digital world. Anything else is tape editing.
The Mellotron wasn't even the first tape playback instrument. That distinction goes to the Chamberlin. Please, next time you try to look smart, make sure that you actually are.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.