Comments on: Discovering Electronic Music

Discovering Electronic Music

MetaMonkey — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 15:38:53 -0800

Discovering Electronic Music (1983) pt 2, pt 3 [youtube, via linkfilter]

By: loquacious

loquacious — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:16:59 -0800

Awesome. [this is good]

By: dydecker

dydecker — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:26:19 -0800

excellent, thank you

By: empath

empath — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:33:14 -0800

In all honesty, it's actually not a bad piece of work. Analog synthesis hasn't changed that much.

By: empath

empath — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:36:36 -0800

If you have a copy of Ableton or Reason, you can play right along with this demo. The combination of waveform generation, frequency modulation and filtering hasn't changed one bit. You just now have access to as many of those huge room-filling synthesizers as your CPU can run (dozens and dozens simultaneously, most likely)

By: CynicalKnight

CynicalKnight — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:39:01 -0800

The unfortunate side effect of the electronic music revolution was it's soundtrack butchery of some otherwise great films - Scarface and Terminator, for example.

By: Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese

Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:46:49 -0800

The unfortunate side effect of the electronic music revolution was it's soundtrack butchery of some otherwise great films - Scarface and Terminator, for example. Apocalypse Now, too.

By: martinrebas

martinrebas — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:06:07 -0800

Are you kidding? Both Scarface and Terminator have great soundtracks!

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:26:51 -0800

The unfortunate side effect of the electronic music revolution... Great movies have been butchered by bad soundtracks since the dawn of cinema history. Some of these have been electronic, but mostly not. Blame lazy or uninventive composers and directors, not the instruments in use.

By: tumult

tumult — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:52:59 -0800

1983? This thing was already obsolete when it was made (except for the Fairlight.) On second thought, though, I guess the hardware shown is good for educational purposes.

By: tumult

tumult — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:54:04 -0800

Actually, I guess the guy who posted those videos already had my comments covered.

By: dydecker

dydecker — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:57:40 -0800

check out Sorceror for a great electronic soundtrack.

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:31:30 -0800

So does anyone know of any foundational electronic music, say, pre-Tangerine Dream, similar to the stuf heard on this film? I don't mean electronic rock, but more electronic abstract music

By: MetaMonkey

MetaMonkey — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 18:49:38 -0800

Pastabagel, some of the seminal artists are Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Schaeffer (wiki).

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:07:42 -0800

Thanks!

By: anthill

anthill — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 20:13:51 -0800

Ishkar's Guide to Electronic (dance) Music is a bit heavy on the flash, but has some decent coverage of electronic music pioneers. Look in the "downtempo" category.

By: Pastabagel

Pastabagel — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 20:43:35 -0800

The Ishkar's guide is awesome.

By: Jon Mitchell

Jon Mitchell — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 22:24:24 -0800

Well, without these things, we would have neither the Bladerunner soundtrack - which, despite its moments of cheesiness, still remains my reference standard for a score integrating with the movie, and the movie's sound design so closely, and so perfectly as to be untouchable, nor Boards Of Canada, who's Music Has The Right To Children is one of my long standing favourite albums. We have a Jupiter 8 in our office at the moment - the same model responsible for the Scarface soundtrack. It is a thing of beauty. I formerly clung to the "Well, software synths are just as good as the old analogs" line. Boy was I so, so, wrong about that. The thing has got soul and heart in buckets, in a way a soft synth could never have. I think I finally understand what people blethering on about vinyl were talking about...

By: Wolof

Wolof — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 00:58:57 -0800

Apocalypse Now, too. Sound design by Walter Murch. You absolutely cannot be serious.

By: ijoshua

ijoshua — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 06:21:46 -0800

I know I've heard that harpsichord piece, played near the end of the first link, but I've never learned its name. Can someone tell me?

By: ob

ob — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 08:03:01 -0800

It's the 2-part Invention in F Major by J S Bach (BWV 779) from the Inventions and Sinfonias BWV 772-801.

By: ob

ob — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 08:04:42 -0800

Although confusingly he seems to be playing it in B-flat in the video...

By: ob

ob — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 08:10:30 -0800

Having said that it's in b-flat this must have something to do with the synth as I'm pretty sure that he's playing it in F but the synth is transposing up a fourth. OK, I've now geeked myself out now. I'm going to go.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 08:58:58 -0800

Softsynths are all fine and good, but they're digital and they'll always be digital - which means they're finite approximations of the real thing. Fully analog synths are squirrelly beasts. You can set a full analog synth to a sound you like, walk away and come back in an hour, a week, or a day and the sound will have changed from just a little to wildly just from environmental changes. The more complex the tone generation path, the more oscillators and modulators inline, the more likely it'll have changed. And this doesn't even get into the complexities of the fact it's truly analog and infinite in range and mutability. Nor does it account for dirty or worn pots, leaking capacitors of various values. Even new out of the factory, each synth would be slightly different just from the nature of analog audio circuitry itself - it would depend entirely on the manufacturing tolerances of every sound-path part in the box all the way up the manufacturing chain. I'm still thankful for softsynths, though, as many of these analog synths are prohibitively expensive and strongly sought out devices.