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."

Comments

The Fairlight wasn't 16-bit until 1985

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Just in case...

[ImaLamer]

From Wikipedia:

One of the most mispronounced names in popular culture, the surname "Moog" is of Dutch origin, and is properly pronounced "moague", to rhyme with "vogue" and "rogue".

stylophone

[Anonymous Coward]

What? no rolf harris for the stylophone?

Delia Derbyshire - Dr. Who.

[Col. Bloodnok]

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.

Re:Delia Derbyshire - Dr. Who.

[radarsat1]

it's not a competition.. he's just mentioning another very influencial name here.

Derbyshire did a lot of really interesting (and yes, pioneering) studio work, involving manipulating taped sine waves and all sorts of weird stuff. Chill out. Almost everyone who was working on electronic music in those days was part of inventing the tools to do so. It's not like she sat down for 5 minutes with Reason.

Re:Pioneers?

[dangitman]

Was I the only one expecting the article to be about the genre which Kraftwerk is hailed as a pioneer of?

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.

Re:The Synthesizer

[Aneurysm]

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.

Fairlight & Moog

[0m3gaMan]

Both watershed instruments of their day.

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! ;-) 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.

Appropriate

[Master of Transhuman]

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?

Re:Appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the 'problems' with this, the reason it doesn't happen all that much, is because most musicians and/or producers are artists. They think like artists and behave like artists. If they could, they'd make their live performances sound more like the CDs, not the other way around.

A lot of songs are actually written in the studio during the recording period .. Somebody has some ideas for lyrics, somebody thinks they've got something that will go well with it, and so on .. the addition of 'effects' is a live part of the recording process.

Bands on low budgets or who've never recorded before usually come in with whole songs, ready to go .. this can be a minor nightmare for the recording technician depending on the quality of the players, the instruments being used, and the studio .. but in general it's what creates the "I like their old stuff better than their new stuff" phenomenon..

When they've got a budget, a contract to make an album, or they're a band signed to a label which has affiliations with the studio, they usually don't come in with much at all .. They've often been touring until the week before, promoting their previous album. They come in with scraps of lyrics, they try to remember a few riffs they thought of one night .. They have no choice but to use the recording process as an integral part of the music creation .. The mixing and effects are another instrument in the band.

Yes, there were other, even commercial, pioneers

[antispam_ben]

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.

And what about Les Paul

[gnu-sucks]

Lets see... Les Paul invented:

1) Multitrack recording

2) Echo, and flange effects

3) Electric Guitar

4) Electronic Synth

I mean, come on people...