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The Amazing Electronic Music Thread


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12 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

To think that a few years ago Vangelis has drenched all his albums in seas of reverb, which nobody likes except Vangelis and Thor ... Bah!

 

 

Are you saying he remixed his older albums and dunked their heads into reverb? The only Vangelis album's I own are the original CD pressings of Blade Runner and Masks.

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3 minutes ago, Nick Parker said:

 

Are you saying he remixed his older albums and dunked their heads into reverb? The only Vangelis album's I own are the original CD pressings of Blade Runner and Masks.

 

Yes, the 'Remastered' series, that is. 

 

 

Listen to the recordings above! Real synths (not sampled synths and cheap samples), real percussion, real Hohner clavinet, real mic/speaker/Live Room recording setup in a studio (not straight to D.I. box), real sound engineer (at Nemo Studio). Don't you hear the difference? OMG!

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Well yes, the progressive period was over, so he had to adapt to the times.

 

His new piano album? Buried in wishy washy reverb!

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55 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

Oh, no, that's when it became bad. Really bad and lazy, right after Blade Runner and Soil Festivities, that is.

 

Absolute nonsense! The gorgeous OCEANIC is one of his very best albums. Unlike you, I dont' think everything needs to be gritty and cutting-edge all the time to be enjoyable, and I've never subscribed to the notion that artists "have it" for a small period of time, and then they "lose it" for good. Sometimes, good music is just good music -- regardless of when it comes in the artist's career.

 

He's done some fine work in the last 20 years too, though. I think his impressionistic piano album last year was absolutely brilliant -- painting in broad strokes in classical fashion.

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It's a pity Vangelis didn't accept Villeneuve and Zimmer's invitation for joining the BR 2049 team. A room filled with the most delicious vintage synthesizers was waiting for him. I guess he prefers that hideous digital workstation of his:

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

It's a pity Vangelis didn't accept Villeneuve and Zimmer's invitation for joining the BR 2049 team.

 

Well, on that, we do agree. I like Zimmer and Wallfisch's score, but I'd throw it out in a New York sec if it meant getting Vangelis back on.

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16 hours ago, Nick Parker said:

I almost never hear mega reverb done well.

 

 

Oh, Vangelis has used it well on several albums (for instance, the film Blade Runner opens with a sampled orchestral bass drum played an octave lower and send through a very long Lexicon hall reverb, something that has been copied ever since), but to send all the original masters through a 7 seconds hall reverb is a faux pas, in my book. It's like adding CGI monsters to the original Star Wars of 1977. Imagine The Beatles remasters were treated this way! The pre-remaster CDs are the way to go.

 

 

Nemo-Sound-2c.jpg

 

PS: As far as I know, BR is probably the first album where Vangelis stopped using real percussion instruments in favor for sampled ones. It's something I've always regretted. Now he could play percussion while playing the keyboard, usually in a layered fashion together with his synths. 

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4 hours ago, Alexcremers said:

 

Oh, Vangelis has used it well on several albums (for instance, the film Blade Runner opens with a sampled orchestral bass drum played an octave lower and send through a very long Lexicon hall reverb, something that has been copied ever since), but to send all the original masters through a 7 seconds hall reverb is a faux pas, in my book. It's like adding CGI monsters to the original Star Wars of 1977. Imagine The Beatles remasters were treated this way! The pre-remaster CDs are the way to go.

 

 

Nemo-Sound-2c.jpg

 

PS: As far as I know, BR is probably the first album where Vangelis stopped using real percussion instruments in favor for sampled ones. 

There's plenty of synthesized percussion on SEE YOU LATER.

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2 hours ago, Richard said:

There's plenty of synthesized percussion on SEE YOU LATER.

 

 

And plenty of real percussion too.

 

Yes, other tracks on that album feature drum machines but Vangelis always used those so that's not what I'm talking about. I'm referring to what you see on the photo. All those instruments are replaced with samples and, more importantly, he no longer uses percussion sounds as a percussionist but rather as accents while playing sampled horns for instance. Most has to do with the fact that Vangelis no longer wants to multitrack.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Hahaha. So what's your personal verdict?

 

I've been exploring a forgotten piece of gear called the Roland SH-32.

25 minutes ago, Dixon Hill said:

Been some time now since I kicked the sample library and computer habit

 

Also how do you feel about that? 

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2 hours ago, Dixon Hill said:

I'm glad to be rid of that world.  The Moog is a powerful weapon in the right hands, but how many of us have the right hands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's two people right there! 

 

 

Happy it's been workin' out for you, I've been in a similar place the past couple months. It's so liberating. 

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Fascinating how an instrument that was once described as 'cold and lifeless' could suddenly sound 'majestic and lyrical' (Vangelis) and 'alive and funky' (Funkadelic, Stevie Wonder, etc).

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1 hour ago, Alexcremers said:

Fascinating how an instrument that was once described as 'cold and lifeless' could suddenly sound 'majestic and lyrical' (Vangelis) and 'alive and funky' (Funkadelic, Stevie Wonder, etc).

 

Absolutely. How often is it that we're relatively around to see a totally new avenue of sonic creation opened up, and see this novel instrument--and I use that word in the broadest sense-- come alive in the hands of these incredible pioneers, Vangelis, Bernie Worrell, Wendy Carlos, Tomita, Ryuichi Sakamoto, etc., creating new standards of approaching music? So different in their many ways, but all from the same, singular origin.

 

It's really something.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

For the first time ever I'm gonna be purchasing a new synth! The latest I've ever gone is 2011, so far.

 

 

 

 

 

I was initially offput by the four note polyphony, but I've realized in a live setting that I generally don't use that much with a subtractive synth like this (I relegate the chordier stuff to FM etc.).  The design looks super ergonomic, and it seems like it's a great analog synth with modern conveniences such as a auto-tuning process and USB connectivity. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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14 hours ago, Alexcremers said:

Isn't it funny that after a few decades of +/- buttons and an LCD display, people want knobs and dials again?

 

 

 

I think people went through a kind of revolution, or rotation maybe, where synths tried to cram as many features as possible to be more marketable and competitive with burgeoning software (talking about 2000's on that last front), at the expense of being intuitive . For example, what was considered the apex of Yamaha's FM synths (don't know how it stacks up after the Montage), the FS1R, you couldn't even access a bunch of parameters on the unit itself! 

 

Certainly for myself, and I would imagine others, there becomes a point where you say "Wow, this thing can do do much, but I never want to touch it 'cause it's so tedious to use."

 

And now of course with synths arguably becoming more affordable than ever, that means more people would be compelled to use a hardware machine in a setup, especially as a means of reducing or axing a software based setup, and for that, you _need_ to have those easy to use real-time knobs.

 

I didn't understand subtractive synthesis until I got a synth with knobs 

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

In a recent interview legend Roger Linn lamented how seldom he hears full-on synth performances in the current day, as he always believed in the potential of electronics as an expressive, real-time instrument in the same vein as say a violin or an oboe. 

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Note the word "performance". He doesn't like seeing musicians with some kind of computer rig that press play. He wants to see the musician truly perform the synthesizer, and see/listen to them treat the electronics as a true live instrument. His ideal vision for synths is a greatly intuitive instrument that rivals a string instrument in its ability to create many nuances in realtime.

 

I don't have time to link anything right now, but check out his Linnstrument as his attempt to push electronic musicians further in that direction. 

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Truly operating synths on stage was mainly a thing of the '70s, was it not? Later they were mainly treated as preset keyboards. And now that knobs and sliders back available, I suppose somebody is using them like they did in the '70s, only I don't know who. 

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1 hour ago, Nick Parker said:

Note the word "performance". He doesn't like seeing musicians with some kind of computer rig that press play. He wants to see the musician truly perform the synthesizer, and see/listen to them treat the electronics as a true live instrument. His ideal vision for synths is a greatly intuitive instrument that rivals a string instrument in its ability to create many nuances in realtime.

 

I don't have time to link anything right now, but check out his Linnstrument as his attempt to push electronic musicians further in that direction. 

 

Yes, I know. But using analogue synths that way is more popular than ever. Swedish synth/retrowave star Waveshaper (a personal favourite and aquaintance of mine) recently published a video on his social media where he had just acquired a LinnDrum, and his demonstration of it became extremely popular.

 

 

We're pretty good at this in Scandinavia, and even across Europe. In addition to Waveshaper, also check out artists like Daniel Deluxe, Robert Parker, HitNrun, ZombieZombie, Douglas Holmquist etc. Old-school synths are more popular than ever, including its organic, tangible, physical use -- not just computer samples. Roger is way off in his estimation.

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5 hours ago, Thor said:

We're pretty good at this in Scandinavia, and even across Europe. In addition to Waveshaper, also check out artists like Daniel Deluxe, Robert Parker, HitNrun, ZombieZombie, Douglas Holmquist etc. Old-school synths are more popular than ever, including its organic, tangible, physical use -- not just computer samples. Roger is way off in his estimation.

 

Europe is definitely much more hip to that than America. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

:love2::love2::love2::love2::love2::love2::love2::love2::love2::love2::love2::love2::love2:

 

 

Anne Dudley's 2017 electro-acoustic arrangement of "Paranoimia," one of the best Art of Noise songs, is just everything.  I'm in love!  So spare, so cold, so oddly funky.  Listening on repeat.

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21 hours ago, Nick Parker said:

 

 It barely sounds like a sampler in that video.

 

An excerpt from Vintage Synth Explorer: "The Emulator II is an affordable classic early eighties sampler/workstation synthesizer. It's a sampler that sounds like an analog synth because it has analog filters! It samples at a low 8-bits (up to 17.6 seconds) so it's got that lo-fi sound which is great for some types of electronic music. Especially nice is its ability to create warm analog-ish pads and sounds."

 

http://www.vintagesynth.com/emu/emulator2.php

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