This post is about making your own sounds and being creative. If you like the typical 303 sound there is no way you can’t have it. You just have to MAKE it for yourself.

I just made a 303 patch in Ableton, using 2 instances of Virtual Analog, in an instrument rack. You can do this with any synth-vst. The key is to make sure you have one instance for the notes with velocity 127 and another one for lower velocities. This way you can create the accent of the 303. The accented notes (velocity 127) should have slighter more volume, shorter decay and more filter envelope then the not-accented notes.

I once (2 years ago) made this video clip of another self made 303 patch with another synth (ilosynth) and a amp modeller behind it (voxengo boogex)…

I also one made a 303 patch with the Yamah AN200 synthmodule… here it is:

This past fall Echoes listeners voted on 20 Icons for 20 Years of Echoes.   Tonight we’ll be featuring their #3 selection on that list, Patrick O’Hearn.

Two See a list of 5 Essential Patrick O’Hearn Albums, go here.

Two see the complete list of 20 Icons of Echoes, go here.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Portishead are releasing a brand new track – “Chase the Tear” for Amnesty International.

Chase the Tear is a slice of deep retro synth pop full of analog drive and of course the serene anguish of singer Beth Gibbon. This isn’t a throw-away track but deeply felt performance with a very moody performance video to go with it.
I could’ve done without the edge of the cliff ending though.

Portishead – Chase The Tear from Mintonfilm on Vimeo.

The track will be aired first in the UK on Zane Lowe’s BBC Radio 1 show (7-9pm) on 9 December on the eve of international human rights day (10 December) and similarly on radio stations around the world.

It will be available as an exclusive download single from 7 digital (http://www.7digital.com/portisheadamnesty) from 10 December, with all earnings going towards Amnesty’s human rights work and all rights given to the organisation.

A video of Portishead performing ‘‘Chase the Tear’’ will also be available from 10 December at: www.amnesty.org.uk/portishead and at www.portishead.co.uk

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Always wanted one of these.  Maybe this year is the year I wake up to find its lights blinking under the Christmas tree?

Buchla • 200e Series

The Buchla 200e is a 21st century rebirth of the 70’s classic 200 series analog modular systems from Buchla. It is still an analog synthesizer, but with some 21st century improvements, most notably the addition of MIDI control, patch memory storage and digital hybridization. Other improvements include internal MIDI buses, more voltage controlled parameters, a router for signals and control voltages, velocity sensitivity, and a redesigned output section of the complex oscillator module. A few new modules have also been added including a duophonic pitch class generator and a triple morphing filter.

The 200e may be new but it is still a classic modular system. That means potential customers must start with an empty cabinet, and select the synthesis modules from the 200e series to design the system to their personal needs. It is even possible to add some of the original classic 200 series modules to it, and to add the new 200e series modules to an original 200 system. With five cabinet sizes to choose from (from 2 panels to 18 panels), no two systems may look alike, and they can range from just a module or two to the complex analog beast pictured above.

The 200e series is not exactly analog either (nor digital). The 200e series is truly an analog-digital hybrid modular system with an analog user-interface but a state-of-the art underlying electronic system designed to provide stable, dynamic musical sounds with exceptional sonic quality. Buchla’s engineers sought the best possible designs for their modules which meant that in some cases the signal path may be truly analog, while in other cases they may in fact be digital. Almost all analog signals are also controlled by digital componentry for maintaining stability or to enable patch storage, for example. Speaking of patch storage, the 200e will only store knob settings and switch position but not patch cable routings.

As awesome as having modern day Buchla 200 analog systems available for purchase is, they are still very hard to come by. New systems must be ordered directly from Buchla and they are expensive! A complete system could cost anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000! Individual modules cost on average about $1,000. The price tag, learning curve and really old-school nature will certainly put this system out of the realm of the casual musician. Yet, with the demise of so many classic synth makes (ARP, EML, EMS), and the abandonment of their analog-modular heritage by so many existing makes (Roland, Moog, E-mu) it is truly exciting to see one of the original pioneers, Don Buchla, using today’s technology to continue making yesterday’s synthesizers.

Now back to the more affordable digital synths that can pack quite a punch for their ones and zeros.

Rob Pipen Sub Boom Bass~

SubBoomBass is filled with excessive amounts of low end ammunition to detonate your tracks! With presets designed by the legendary Rob Papen and other guest artists, this dedicated bass synth will supply you with huge cone-rattling sounds that will devastate any music track. This software instrument is great for Hip Hop and RnB but can also be used for Dubstep, video game music, film scores and more…

If you have too many analog synths to handle in one sequencer and have been thinking about syncing to a computer, GET VOLTA!

Volta

Volta is a virtual instrument plug-in that turns your audio interface into a voltage control interface.

Any hardware device with a control voltage (CV) input can be placed under precise digital control from your favorite audio workstation software. You can play and automate modulars, analog synths – even effects processors.

Imagine being able to play and automate your CV-equipped analog gear from Digital Performer, Logic Pro, or Live with the same level of control, precision and convenience as a virtual instrument.

Here are just a few examples of what you can do with Volta:

• Perform MIDI sequencing with external modular synths with sample-accurate precision (if your host sequencer supports sample-accurate MIDI).
• Automatically calibrate and tune oscillators with the click of a button.
• Use ramp automation in your host audio software to control filters, envelope generators, effects processors and other voltage-controlled external gear.
• Apply LFOs, step sequencers and pattern sequencers to CV inputs and tempo-sync them to your host software timeline.

Here are a bunch of images from Natalie and My image-blog: Laconic Oration.

All of these are from the month of November, which was a busy month over there. We found a bunch of great items that needed to be shared. This selection is just a very small fraction, so if you like looking at things, go to the blog.

ps- click here and here to see small collections from September and October.

more at http://laconicoration.tumblr.com

scott

A country picker finds his ambient soul with Michael Spriggs’ Neurasenia:
Echoes December CD of the Month

You can hear an Audio version of this Blog with Michael Spriggs’ music.

Hot guitar pickers hang around Nashville like grapes dangling from the vineyards of Napa Valley.  Michael Spriggs is one of those grapes.  He’s played on sessions with Dolly Parton and  Faith Hill, written tunes for Kenny Rogers and Tammy Wynette, and played for much of the 1970s with Eddie Rabbit. He’s been a Nashville session guitarist and songwriter since 1971, but in the 90’s he began exploring his own sound and ten years ago he released the album, Without Words.

Michael Sprigg’s music is a long way from country.  He says that exploring his own sound isn’t the same as writing a Nashville tune like “Twenty Years Ago.”

Michael Spriggs:  Completely different.  That’s sitting in a room with two other people, or three other people and going, “OK, here’s our title.  Here’s our melody.  Let’s make sure we don’t get too far away from 16th Avenue or Music City here,” you know.

Instead, Spriggs sits alone with his acoustic guitar and starts spinning dreamy landscapes awash in melody.  Even though he’s inspired by the electronic landscapes of Steve Roach, Spriggs still has a pop composers sense of form. And there’s always a bit of country twang in his playing.

Michael Spriggs:  I guess this education that I’ve had in the studio in Nashville for the first 35 years of my serious career has kind of rubbed off into that music, hasn’t it?

Michael Spriggs’ latest album is called Neurasenia.  Don’t bother looking up the name, a Google search only yields references to Michael’s album and a Spanish book called Visions of Neurasenia.   Spriggs says he got the word from his doctor.

Michael Spriggs:  He said,“This is part of your neurasenia.”  And I go, “What is that word?” And he goes, “It’s the sum total of everything that you are.  Your neurasenia…think of it this way:  It’s your brain’s hard drive.”  And I go, “Well, that’s pretty darn interesting.  Why don’t I just use that?”  And it did come from a doctor, so I’m assuming that it is a real word.  I certainly didn’t make it up.

He did make up some beautiful music though.  Neurasenia by Michael Spriggs is the Echoes CD of the Month for December and I’ll feature it on Monday’s show 12/7/09. This has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music.

You can read a complete review of Neurasenia.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

I have it on the best authority that not only does the technology exist, but it’s being produced and sold. This is no demo.

Don’t let the silly European techno culture distract you from this incredibly glitzy and brilliant piece of computer engineering. It is an intuitive leap forward for the way we view music and music creation (or it will be, anyway, if the price drops). They even have a newer model that’s supposedly more durable and easier to use, for installation in public institutions such as children’s science centers and music/arts learning centers.

Native Instruments today launched “Synthsgiving”, a time-limited special offer that gives musicians and producers access to some of the most powerful software instruments on the market at a drastically reduced price.

Until November 30th, ABSYNTH 5, FM8, MASSIVE and REAKTOR 5 will be available for download purchase in the NI Online Shop for $99 / €99, a discount of up to 75% on the regular pricing.

Check it out here >>

Steve Roach has created 20 years of Echoes Soundscapes.

You can hear an audio version of this blog wit Steve Roach’s music.

Steve Roach calls his studio the Time Room and it’s an appropriate name for a place where music plays with concepts of time and perception.

STEVE ROACH : It’s about time, the distortion of time, the playing with time. Ever since I was very very young I was always like to move in and out of time.  I remember when I was very young I liked to spin in circles like children do and just feel that disorientation and I really enjoyed that feeling.

Steve Roach didn’t spring fully formed from his synthesizer circuitry. In the 1970s he was listening to space music from Europe, and in particular Klaus Schulze.  In fact, until he moved to Tucson 20 years ago, the cover of Schulze’s 1975 album, Timewind, sat in Roach’s studio like a religious icon.

Steve Roach: I think when I heard Timewind it was really the album that hit the switch for me. There’s just a sound and a quality of the sound and a feeling that the sound gave me went so deep and cut through so many layers and was so direct, the experience of that music was so direct, it was so familiar.

Roach is now an icon in his own right.  He’s released over 50 solo albums, and a like number of collaborations.  His signature album is Dreamtime Return. Inspired by a trip to Australia, it sent him into a more acoustic, organic sound that he pursued for the next decade.

Steve Roach: The dreamtime and states I wanted to evoke on that album are the essential aspects of combining almost earth type sounds from the environment with internal deep physical feelings and sounds.

It was a short step for Steve Roach from Australia to Arizona.   His soundscapes for the last 20 years have been inspired by the high desert there.

Steve Roach: It’s the kind of landscape that I am personally attracted to for whatever reason. This stark, absolutely alien like desertscape which is barren with possibilities but really evocative and other-worldly in its presence.

I’m always hesitant to say what Steve Roach’s most recent album is, because a new one is likely to drop at any moment.  But in 2009 he released the album, Destination Beyond, an album that looks back to his early work as much as it looks forward.

I’ll be featuring Steve Roach next Tuesday as an one of 20 Icon of Echoes. This has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Synth Britannia:
Documentary following a generation of post-punk musicians who took the synthesiser from the experimental fringes to the centre of the pop stage.

In the late 1970s, small pockets of electronic artists including the Human League, Daniel Miller and Cabaret Volatire were inspired by Kraftwerk and JG Ballard and dreamt of the sound of the future against the backdrop of bleak, high-rise Britain.

[direktlink]

[via kfmw.blog]

Echoes Picks the Four Best Wendy Carlos CDs

I know I said I’d pick 5 essential Wendy Carlos CDs but when I came down to it, four of her recordings stand out as pinnacles of her art.

Beauty in the Beast
From the roar of Tibetan horns and the clangor of metal percussion that opens Beauty in the Beast, Wendy Carlos signaled a new direction in 1986.  Carlos is both profound and poignant, dissonant and disarming on Beauty as she fuses a global orchestra from her synthesizers.  “Poem for Bali” is the centerpiece of the album, an episodic, seventeen minute excursion as Carlos orchestrates the sounds and rhythms of a digital gamelan orchestra.  In addition to replicating the metallophones, gongs and flutes of the traditional gamelan, she creates her own hybrid sound designs, giving this work a surreal and sometimes harrowing tone, like a dream bent through funhouse mirrors.  But then there are pieces like “A Woman’s Song,” based on a Balkan melody.  The title track merges nightmare landscapes and a crazed carnival calliope with a haunting theme that sounds like a lament for the end of the world.  Beauty in the Beast, is an essential recording both of modern composition and synthesis and Wendy Carlos should plug into this circuit again.

Sonic Seasonings
Before there was Ambient music, in a time before the New Age, there was Wendy Carlos’s Sonic Seasonings, a double LP released in 1972.  Taking the form of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” Carlos orchestrated four side-long soundscapes designed according to producer Rachel Elkind, to be “part of the decor.” Using only her Moog synthesizer and environmental sounds, Carlos’s music is prototypical ambient music, pre-dating Brian Eno’s similar work by a few years.  She weaves gentle, often reedy synthesizer melodies through chirping birds on “Spring,” phase-shifted church organ drones across crystalline bells and wind on “Winter,” and she seems to simulate an alien space landing on “Summer,” mimicking nature with her synthesizer.  An added treat to this special double CD addition is a 40 minute, unreleased, two part suite from 1986 called “Land of the Midnight Sun.” Using her Synergy synthesizers, Carlos orchestrates slow motion melodies and over-lapping minimalist layers that recall Steve Roach’s Structures from Silence.

Switched-On Brandenburgs
Switched-On Bach would be an obvious choice, and the Switched-On Bach Box set would be the easy choice, but if we’re talking best and quintessential, I go with The Switched-On Brandenburgs.  It includes her Brandenburgs 3, 4 and 5 from  earlier albums and fills out the complete set of Bach’s six masterpieces.  Carlos’s renditions remain the platinum standard of classical synthesis,  not because she replicated the sound of a baroque orchestra, but because her own orchestra was so unique.  Her “instruments” huffed, wheezed, and clanked like an intergalactic music box. Yet, with Carlos’s performances, they illuminate the contrapuntal magic of Bach as if his intricate mazes were formed in mid-air.

A Clockwork Orange
The first synthesized score for a major film and still one of the best.  That descending glissando of doom into the electronic timpani on “Title Music from A Clockwork Orange” alone is one of the signature moments of modern music.  And then she takes her own theme and turns it into a baroque work on “Theme from A Clockwork Orange.” But there’s more, including Carlo’s underated composition, “Timesteps” and her reimaginings of Beethoven for a future dystopia.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

mp3 demo

Πωλούνται:

1. stage piano KURZWEIL  SP2X ενός έτους , 64 ήχοι, 64 ρυθμοί με δυνατότητα επέμβασης στους ήχους ζωντανά
2. Yamaha S80

σε πολύ καλές τιμές.

Πληροφορείες στο email iospyrak<at>otenet.gr

Gong-The Original Psychedelic Space Gypsies at 40.

You can hear an audio version of this blog, with Gong’s music.

The voyage of the original Star Trek ended in 1969, but another band of space travelers called Gong launched that year and they’re still wandering the galaxies. Gong is a free-wheeling psychedelic band that wraps itself in its on myth, namely, that we’re in contact with mystical, acid drenched beings from the Planet Gong. It’s never quite clear whether the band treat this as fact or metaphor.  Like Sun Ra, they seem to live the life and speak the jargon, whether on-stage or off.   Gong’s founder is the 71 year old Australian guitarist, Daevid Allen.  Speaking backstage at Nearfest 2009 in Bethlehem, Allen articulates the ethos  of Gong.

Daevid Allen:  Well Gong has an ongoing story to it.  So that is kind of a backbone and guide.  It really is a teaching story–in the old Sufi sense– it’s meant to be a story.  But we never wanted it to sound serious because then everyone embraces it as a religion– a terrifying prospect.  So we made it as silly as we possibly could, so that most people wouldn’t take it seriously.

Daevid Allen @ Nearfest Photo: Gino Wong

Needless to say, psychedelics played an important part in Gong’s creative process.

Daevid Allen: It’s almost like channeling because we were consciously saying there are more intelligent beings than us that wish to work through us.  And the acid was really a way of getting rid of our egos so that that could come through as purely as possible.

Gong’s best known work is the Radio Gnome Invisible Trilogy. It tells the tale of Zero the Hero while careening from space to jazz to rock, minimalism and beyond.  It also marks two signature sounds of the band, heavenly glissando guitar and deep space echo.  Gong guitarist Steve Hillage.

Steve Hillage: If you’re doing music that has a philosophic connection to the universe and space.   there is nothing better than creating this unearthly spatial environment with all the unearthly reflections.

Allen & Hillage @ Nearfest Photo: Diliberto

Both Daevid Allen and Steve Hillage claim to be teetotalers now, but they’ve just released a new album called 2032 that’s in the spirit of 1972. What that means is, Gong is still making a joyful, hallucinogenic music full of cosmic whimsy and sonic exploration.  Forty years later, Gong is still traveling the spaceways and currently touring Europe. I’ll have an interview with them next week on Echoes. This has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music.

You can hear an audio version of this blog, with Gong’s music.

Read review of Gong’s 2009 Nearfest performance.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

You can hear an audio version of this blog, with Gong’s music.

Electronic Music Icons Play Live in Philadelphia.

Ian Boddy & Mark Shreeve of ARC

In case you haven’t been following all things electronic, the English synthesizer duo, ARC is making their first US appearance ever on November 14th at St. Mary’s Parish Hall on the Penn campus in Philadelphia as part of The Gatherings series.

Mark Shreeve and Ian Boddy are from the second generation of space music artists, musicians who got turned onto electronic music listening to Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and Jean-Michel Jarre.  I remember in 1980 and 81 playing Mark Shreeve’s cassette-only releases,  Phantom,  Embryo and Ursa Major on WXPN’s Diaspar and Star’s End shows in Philadelphia.   In 1982, when Kimberly Haas and I  interviewed him in London for Totally Wired,   he was making his music in one end of his living room while his girlfriend watched TV at the other end.  He told me about Ian Boddy, who I hadn’t heard yet but who would become a favorite during the Echoes era. Shreeve has gone on to release several albums since then, as a solo artist, with his band Redshift and with ARC.

A few years ago when we traveled to London to record a living room concert with ARC, we discovered that Mark Shreeve’s living room isn’t like most of his neighbors in the pleasant middle class borough of Southgate, London. They have couches, easy chairs, maybe a telly.  But Shreeve’s living room looks like a synthesizer museum.  Along one wall is an Oberheim Expander, Arp 2600, VCS3  and the centerpiece of his recent music, a vintage Moog Modular Series 3 synthesizer.

There’s been a movement over the last 15 years among electronic musicians to use old analog synthesizer sounds.  Usually they get these timbres through computer programs called soft synths or virtual synthesizers, but Mark Shreeve prefers the original.

“I mean, it’s a real pain to use,” he groans. “It’s a pain to maintain, it’s difficult to operate, it’s always going out of tune, but in the end, nothing sounds like that big Moog.  Nothing in the synthesizer world can put out bass like that machine can, not even a Mini-Moog can.”

Mark Shreeve Wrestling Moog

Mark Shreeve is a burly man with longish, light brown hair and wearing a black, untucked shirt.  As his arms stretch across the width of his Moog synthesizer it seems like he’s trying to wrestle it down to the ground.  It doesn’t have a keyboard.  Instead, Shreeve twists knobs and moves patch cords to manipulate sound and patterns.

Ian Boddy @ Echoes

The sound he gets is awe-inspiring.  Giant thudding bass lines that start somewhere around Jupiter and end at in your groin trawl under his compositions as cyclical melodies and free-form solos emerge.  You can hear that sound on all of Mark Shreeve’s albums over the last decade, including his recordings with Ian Boddy as ARC.

Along with Shreeve, Boddy is one of the grand old men of English space music.  Like Shreeve, he’s been recording electronic music since the late 1970s. Tall, lanky, with graying hair pulled back in a pony tail and a thick north country accent, he share’s Shreeve’s love for all things analog.

“It’s got a kind of out of control feel,” he enthuses. “A lot of the modern digital instruments you know exactly what it’s going to do each time, and certainly live when you’re playing loud, I always liken the Moog in full flight, it’s like a steam train coming straight towards you, you cannot get out of the way,  it’s got a certain element of danger to the sound.

Ian Boddy has played in the U.S. several times and he runs the DiN label, one of the best and most artfully curated electronic music labels. When Mark Shreeve and Ian Boddy started their duo called ARC, they were looking for a more modern electronic sound, apart from the retro-space sequencer style.

“When we started Arc it was to be a more rhythm based,” admits Shreeve. They’ve moved away from that a bit, although the title track from their album, Blaze, has a drummer and sounds like the “Dragnet” theme in space.

When Mark Shreeve and Ian Boddy ascend the altar at St. Mary’s Church as ARC, they are sure to engage in the kind of music communion that resulted in albums like Arcturus, Blaze, Fracture, Octane, and Radio Sputnik.  Be sure to bring your seat harness and maybe a parachute.  It’s taken nearly 30 years to get Mark Shreeve here.  Who knows when he’ll be back. For more information and advance tickets, go to The Gatherings

ARC will be recording a live session for Echoes on Friday.  Look for that to air in December or January.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

It’s time for another Top 5 Friday

Good Friday Hip Hop! If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I try to get at least one top 5 list in every month. Today I will countdown the top 5 trends in hip hop production for 2009.

5. The Airhorn

This has been a mixtape staple for years but only recently are we hearing it in actual songs on purpose. It originated in Reggae dance halls as a like a call to the dance floor. I remember hearing in a mixtape I got in like ‘01 from Canal Street in NY. Then I would hear it from Dj’s at parties (probably because half of their stuff came from mixtapes). Obviously Drake’s Forever was the linchpin song that demonstrated this trick but I heard some others this year as well. Even Young General wanted me to throw it in Headbanger Boogie.

4. The Drumma Boy Sound Effect

Even though Put On by Young Jeezy was the summer anthem for 2008, in 2009 everybody started biting Drumma Boy’s (the prodcuer of the song) style by inserting that electro synth build up sound effect into every damned song. My understanding is that it was supposed to be his signature tag but I guess it doesn’t work if everyone else does it.

3. Synthesizers

I suppose this was more of a carryover from 2008 but I think the death of Michael Jackson and the trend of 80’s throwback kept it going. In the last month I can’t turn on the radio without feeling like the line between hip hop, pop, techno and electro has been blurred beyond recognition.

2. Hi Pass Filtered Ad Libs

This is also known as the “telephone” effect. Obviously we were first introduced to this on B.I.G.’s Warning. But now it’s like people can’t make a song without having at least one track of vocals passed through the filter. Even singing vocals. That Sean Kingston song is a perfect example. Melodies or some sh*t like that.

1. The Triplet Kick

The staple song for the year on this one would be Every Girls by Drake, produced by Tha Bizness. It’s essentially an extra kick between a double. It’s really simple but I’ve heard it so much that I don’t understand why this never happened before. Timbaland used to do it all the time but when he did it with a bunch of other off beat type rhythms. These are like your basic 1,4,7,11 patterns (on a 16 step based sequencer) but done on a 1/32 as to be able to add that quick triplet. It’s funny because I know Jason is reading this right now and has no idea whatI am talking about.

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GM, GS & XG: A Little History

Many sound cards and synthesizers, as well as most audio software, are compatible with one of the three midi norms (GM, GS, XG). Though MIDI has long since proven its utility, the existence of different standards can be confusing, so this article has been put together in order to clarify a few points.

For someone who just wants to listen to music, or for a multimedia developer looking to add background music or sounds to their program, the Midifile format has proven to be a real asset. It allows a user to play a sequence that was written by another person, whatever gear or software they were using. But in the past, only the notes and rhythm of the musician were encoded, which didn’t necessarily guarantee a similar sound. In fact, the sounds coming from each sound card, each synthesizer, were different (different in their sound and in their organization). Patch number 15 could be a piano on synthesizer X, and a trumpet on synthesizer Y. It was sometimes necessary to be an expert in MIDI and/or have a lot of patience to get the right settings in order to listen to a piece written by another musician working on a different synth or platform.

The MMA (Midi Manufacturers Association) fixed this problem in 1991 by creating the GM (General Midi) standard. The goal of this standard has been to unify the behavior of sound generators when playing back a Midifile sequence. In order to be labeled GM, an instrument must be multi-timbral and polyphonic up to at least 24 voices, and include at least 16 families of sounds (pianos, guitars, strings…), each containing 8 variations (for example, for strings: violin cello, double bass, etc…

The main advantage of this standardization is that each patch number now corresponds to a certain instrument no matter what the machine. So, instrument number 71 will always be a bassoon and number 12 a vibraphone. The sound generator must also contain a drum kit, whose mapping (placement of the separate elements on a keyboard) is also standardized. Finally, MIDI controllers must be recognized also.

To read the full detailed article including the GM reference guide see:  MIDI The GM Standard and its Extensions.

Growing up was an all you can eat buffet of Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. As such, the few non-classical recordings in the house fascinated me the most. We only had a handful, which made the bizarre kinetic 5/4 swing of Brubeck’s “Take 5″ and the exotic Beatles quite otherwordly and enchanting. At that age I had no idea that I’d write music one day: I assumed that most music was a serious orchestral business. Nice, safe, phrases repeated over and over, nearly always landing on the tonic. Rarely any non-Italian lyrics, definitely no drumkit.

One year I asked my Santa for a walkman and he was generous that year. It blew up my musical world. Suddenly three minute confections of synths, orch hits, grinding guitars, dance moves and shakin’ beats were getting piped into my headphones. I would hide in my bed past my bedtime and surf the FM channels. I would wait the agonizing 5 minutes before the next song, my eyes bleary with sleeplessness, just in case the next song was one I would love. I soaked in the lyrics, the style, scandalized by the sex, excited by the bass, fascinated by the hooks.

I bought tapes and played the singles over and over again, rewinding the tapes until the ribbon was loose and warbled and the pitches started to slacken. But still, then, I had no idea I would one day tackle making my own creations.

Later, as a teen, I accompanied an amazingly talented electronica group into the studio. They had a real cult following online, before anybody know what ‘online’ was. As the night progressed into an all nighter, someone realized I was getting very bored and offering me a Juno-106 synth and a pair of headphones to play with. Something shifted in me that night… while playing with the knobs, listening to the buzzing squelching and changing timbre… I feel in love.

That was the first spark I had in what would later become a long and torrid love-affair with synthesizers. In a way, that would also lead to opening up the world of music creation that would eventually lead to sequencers, drum machines, samplers and ultimately songwriting / composition.

I think I probably got a late start in music, compared to what I would have liked. Even though I’d written love poems to my piano and sung myself to sleep as a child, I didn’t realize I was musical. It took a fascination with synths and other tools to get me to cross to the other side. My love for them allowed me to experiment and explore music more deeply. It allowed me to finally discover who I am.

Sometimes when I tell people I make electronic music, they often react with a face I recognize. It’s usually a mixture of curiosity, awe, confusion, and if you look carefully – a smidge of disdain sometimes. Like somehow those tools take away the hard work, the creativity. To be honest, I can’t really get on board with that point of view. Those machines really helped to unlock my creativity. The artistic choices you can make are virtually infinite, which in some ways makes things a bit harder. They also require an awful lot of skill, patience and hard work to operate properly. Lastly, and this is the most important to me, they free the mere mortal, the complete newbie, to try writing music. For this, I owe synths a debt of gratitude.

For this I will always be glad.

Phil Keaggy & Jeff Johnson’s Frio Suite Tops Echoes Top 25 for October.

October was a strange month for Echoes.  We spent two weeks running down the listeners 200 CDs for 20 Years of Echoes. Great shows.  Not a lot of current music, but we made up for it by playing almost exclusively new music in our regular shows.

Topping the list is our October CD of the Month, Phil Keaggy  & Jeff Johnson’s Frio Suite, an album that’s sounding deeper and more immersive everytime I listen to it.  Jeff Johnson is a master of keyboard orchestration, in fact, raising the bar for electronics in an ambient chamber music setting.  And Phil Keaggy is simply a wonder on guitar, mixing acoustic and electric guitar, merging styles into his own mult-stringed arrangements.  You can read a review of this CD, here.

Right behind them is Airborne by the Danish electronica artist, Aerosol.  I wrote about this earlier, but this album of spacious shoegaze moods and electro atmospheres is still entrancing us at Echoes.

There’s lots of new entries on the list including Baaba Maal’s collaboration with The Brazilian Girls, Television.  It’s a grooving but atmospheric work full of glitchy electronics and the ultra-lounge cool of singer Sabina Sciubba.  DJ Spooky pops in there with the sampledelica of The Secret Song and pianist Christopher O’Riley rises to #11 on the strength of his new cover-tunes album, Out of My Hands.

You can see the complete Echoes Top 25 for October.   It also has links to reviews, Echo Location profiles, and more.

Look next month for Robin Guthrie’s Carousel to top our November list.   Members of the already have this album.  You can join them Echoes CD of the Month Clubhere



John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

September’s edition was such a success, I guess I’ll continue the monthly image post!!

Here are 15 images from Laconic Oration, during the month of October:

via Laconic Oration

scott