Five questions to John Eaton

June 26, 2012, 6:31 pm

≫ Next: Interview with Manuel Göttsching

Born on March 30, 1935 in Bryn Mawr (Pennsylvania, USA), the composer John Eaton began his musical career watching his older brother play the piano, when he was a child. He began to take piano lessons and when he was only nine years old he made his first concert, playing Beethoven sonatas. In 1957, at age 22, John graduated in Princeton University. In 1959 he moved to Rome (Italy) and lived there in the following years. There he began a long time partnership with clarinetist Bill Smith and formed a band with him. Their band recorded two albums and made several concerts in Europe and in the United States. It was also in Rome that John Eaton met the electronic engineer Paul Ketoff, inventor of the famous and legendary Syn-Ket, in 1964. With the Syn-Ket, John Eaton has performed more than a thousand presentations around the world and was at before one of these presentations, in 1966 at Columbia University, that he met Robert Moog, who fixed the Syn-Ket, damaged during a flight, and also built a Moog synthesizer especially for Eaton! The partnership of John Eaton and Robert Moog also created the Eaton-Moog Multiple-Touch Sensitive Keyboard (which John briefly explained in the interview below).

I knew the music of John Eaton recently, during my researches on the pioneers of electronic music, and I searched for his contact and sent him an email asking about the possibility of an interview. John not only accepted my invitation but also was very quick and gentle replying in me! And here's the interview with the great John Eaton!

ASTRONAUTA - How did your life in music begin? And how did you become interested in electronic music?

JOHN - I began composing when I was very young - before I played an instrument actually. It was the depression. My older brother was taking piano lessons. I stood by him as he practiced and learned the notes by looking at his music. I thus wrote three (probably terrible ) piano sonatas before my parents decided they could afford to give me piano lessons right away! I gave a concert at a local resort, Buck Hill Falls, when I was 9, playing the four best known piano sonatas of Beethoven. Then, I stopped practicing and started playing jazz. Yet, all the time, I kept composing.

I first became interested in electronic music while a student at Princeton of Milton Babbitt, Edward Toner Cone, Earl Kim and, mainly, Roger Sessions. But, I was always a klutz in tape studios.

ASTRONAUTA - The jazz musician Bill Smith was a great friend of yours and one of the first persons you met when you moved to Italy in the late '50s/early 60's. Could you tell us a little about the period you played with him? Is there any record/film/photograph of that time?

JOHN - Bill (William O. Smith) was not a pianist, but a magnificent - the best in my opinion! - jazz and classical clarinetist. We had a group in Rome that toured Europe and the USA doing concerts of contemporary music, jazz, and especially, both on the same program. We met the fall of 1960 and immediately began performing written compositions, jazz and other music together around Italy, and then for Columbia Artists in the USA. We recorded 2 jazz albums, one for RCA Victor, New Sounds: Old World with Erich Peter and Pierre Favre, and one for Epic, New Dimensions with Richard Davis and Paul Motion. In addition I had done two earlier ones in the mid 1950's for Columbia, College Jazz: Modern, with a group of Princeton undergraduates, and Epic, Far Out: Near In with Herbie Mann, Bob Prince, and others.

ASTRONAUTA - How did you meet Paul Ketoff and what was your contribution in the development of the Synket? What kind of special features you asked him to do on the Synket to make it a performance instrument and not only a studio instrument? For some time you used both the Synket and the Moog synthesizers on your performances. What were the main differences between the two instruments?

JOHN - I met Paul Ketoff in 1960 (I believe) when the Composer-in-Residence at the American Academy, Otto Luening, and a group of the fellows interested in electronic music, George Balch Wilson, William O. Smith, and myself, asked him to build us a small classical tape studio. He showed up one afternoon with the Syn-Ket. I immediately exclaimed, "But, Paul. This is not just a group of components of a classical tape studio; this is an instrument!" I immediately began writing short pieces that could be played on it, without any pre-recording and asked him to build me one that could be modified for better use as an instrument. At my suggestion, he modified the three keyboards so they would respond to velocity, like a piano, and sideways motion, as in a clavichord's bisbigliando. Over the next few years, he added an overall volume pedal, a white or pink noise generator, alternate basic sonic material, a spring reverberation unit, and other various types of modulation. (I must quickly add that I have very little technical knowledge of electronics, and all the designs were entirely Paul's inventions.)

To my knowledge, after a few solo Syn-Ket essays of mine, the first piece written involving live performance - without pre-recording or tape studio manipulations - for a modern electronic sound synthesizer, by which I mean one that involved voltage control, was my Songs for R.P.B. It was at the Villa Aurelia of the American Academy, and involved the remarkable singer, Miciko Hirayama, the pianists Jane Schoonover Smith and myself. The two performers on the Syn-Ket were Paul Ketoff and Otto Luening on that occasion.

Here is a photo of Paul and myself presenting yhe Syn-Ket to a group of mainly Italian musical illuminati in, I believe, 1963 or 1964:

Between this and 1970, I made my living primarily as an electronic troubadour, giving approximately 1,000 concerts on the Syn-Ket and a special Moog Synthesizer Bob put together for me (see below) in most European and American countries, and under such auspices as the Venice Festival, the Hamburg Opera and Nord Deutscher Rundfunk, Tanglewood, the Los Angeles Philarmonic, many major colleges in the USA, USIS, and a Russian tour sponsered by the Soviet Composers Society. I recorded two albums for American Decca which involved the two synthesizers: Microtonal Fantasy and Electro-Vibrations. Some of the material recorded is available on a CD released by the Electronic Music Foundation called First Performances. This also includes two short improvisations on the Syn-Ket with a rock rhythm section: Blues Machine and Bone Dry. Someone told me this was to his knowledge the first use of a modern synthesizer in Rock. There is a picture of me with the Syn-Ket which appeared in Time Magazine in 1968, in the booklet with this CD.

ASTRONAUTA - How did you meet Robert Moog and how do you see Bob's legacy to the world of music?

JOHN - I first met Bob Moog on a 1966 concert tour in the USA involving the Syn-Ket. I had a concert at Columbia University. During the flight over, something juggled loose. I could usually fix most routine problems; but, this was more serious. I called a good friend from Rome who had settled in the US and was teaching at Albany, Joel Chadabe. He said the only person he know who could fix it was Bob Moog, who at that time lived in Trumansburg in Central New York State. I loaded the Syn-Ket into my 1956 yellow Cadillac, and took off for Appalachia!

Bob, one of the most generous people I've ever known, met me around noon, became fascinated with the Syn-Ket, and worked on it all night. At the end, it was in perfect condition again!

During the evening, we entered a conversation which changed my life. In earlier electronic music, the one element I almost always found missing was human nuance. I believed that would only enter if composers had more control in performance over the various aspects of electronic music. I asked Bob if he could design a keyboard that would allow much more control over all aspects of the musical continuity. I suggested that each key have four different sensitivities, derived from keyboard and string instruments: 1) the amount a key is depressed; 2) the front-to-back position on the surface of the key; 3) the side -to side position on the surface of the key; 4) the amount of pressure added to a completely depressed key. (Later, Bob was to add the amount of area a finger covered on the surface of a key.) These sensitivities should be able to be applied to any aspect (parameter) of the music made available by a dedicated computer. A larger touch-sensitive plate on the side of the keyboard could make the x, y and z axes of each key applicable to general control of the musical continuity. Banks of dual-action pedals applied to each keyboard could also control more general aspects of the music. You, of course, wouldn't have to use all of the sensitivities at once. And you should be able to change how the system works instantaneously. That very night, the Eaton-Moog Multiple Touch Sensitive Keyboard was born.

But with all the changes in miniaturization, mostly coming from the space program, it took some 25 years until a performable instrument was produced. We were aided by a grant from Indiana University, shortly after I joined the faculty there in 1970, which was later picked up by the University of Chicago, where I went in 1991. Bob built many versions of a key, then an octave keyboard. I performed on it in 1991 at Mandel Hall of the Universiyt of Chicago, and again for the Music Critics National Conference where my piece Genesis was televised. A part of this performance and concert was shown as a news item on CNN in 1992.

In the meantime, to enhance my musical activities, he gave me a two box unit consisting of a couple of sequencers and a number of sound producing and modifying units. These can be heard on the CD "First Performances", particularly in Duet and Blind Man's Cry.

Bob's legacy to the world of music is incredibly deep and profound. He gave the world of music, truly viable instruments for the live performance of electronic music. He, and Paul, both were eager to give musicians of all sorts, what they needed - not what would simply make a buck. They remain noble lights in the oft-times sordid world of music.

ASTRONAUTA - Please, tell us about your opera works and the Pocket Opera Players project. Do
you still perform live concerts? Do you have plans to release (or re-release) your recorded material?

JOHN - The Pocket Opera Players were founded in 1991 with the performance by the New York New Music Ensemble, which constituted the instrumentalists of the group, for about 15 years. There is a lot of information about it on my somewhat out-of-date web site, www.pocketoperaplayers.org

Basically, instrumentalists are always involved in our performances as characters in my operas - they act, speak, sing in non-operatic fashion, even perform gymnastic feats while playing their instruments. We use projections and props, nit expensive sets; costume elements, not costumes. Our Pocket Operas proper usually have a small group of singers in the major rolls. But, we also do Romps for Instrumentalists, another form of Pocket Opera in which the players perform all the characters parts.

I have written over a dozen of these Pocket Operas. A commercial DVD of "The curious case of Benjamin Button" will soon be commercially available from Albany Records.

As soon as the project is finished under the guidance of Bob Moog's first professor at Columbia, I intend to concertize again, using the Eaton-Moog Multiple Touch Sensitive Keyboard. I would like to re-release my earlier recordings in a CD format.

↧

Interview with Manuel Göttsching

July 9, 2012, 4:06 pm

≫ Next: Entrevista com Manuel Göttsching

≪ Previous: Five questions to John Eaton

Manuel Göttsching (photo: Sven Marquardt, 2006)
© MG.ART

Ash Ra Tempel, 1970 (left to right: Klaus Shulze,
Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke)
© MG.ART

Manuel Göttsching was born in Berlin on September 9, 1952. He began his studies of classical guitar when he was a child. At age 15 Manuel formed his first band, The Bomb Proofs, with his classmate Hartmut Enke and decided to play the drums, but soon he became the singer of their band. It was also with Hartmut that Manuel studied improvisation with the swiss avant-garde composer Thomas Kessler and it was in Kessler studio that the two met Klaus Schulze, the drummer who was just leaving Tangerine Dream, his previous band. Manuel, Hartmut and Klaus decided to form a new band, Ash Ra Tempel. Schulze left the band a year later, leaving for a solo career and from that time on Manuel and Hartmut had several guest drummers playing in their records. Hartmut left Ash Ra Tempel in 1973 and Manuel began to release both solo albums performed and produced entirely by himself - at his own Studio Roma - and albums performed and recorded with Lutz Ulbricht (ex-Agitation Free) on rhythm guitar and keyboards and Harald Grosskopf on drums (who had already played on the album "Ash Ra Tempel Starring Rosi", from 1973) as AshRa, shortening the name Asha Ra Tempel.

Manuel as a wax figure (photographie)
and his releases in
Tokyo Tower Museum
© MG.ART

Manuel has over 60 albums in his discography (check out: http://www.ashra.com/disco/welcome.htm) including solo records, albums recorded with various formations of Ash Ra Tempel, with the name shortened to AshRa from 1977 on and a few collaborations on albums by other artists. He has his own label since 2002, MG.ART, responsible for the release of his latest musical works and for the reissues of several titles originally released in the '70s that now we can find on the market again on CD's remastered by Manuel himself (some of this CDs with bonus tracks!!!!). In 2003 he founded CV Films, a film production company that he runs with his wife, the internationally known film director Ilona Ziok. Manuel divides his time between film production and constant gigs around the world (the next one will be on August 11, in Japan - a country in which he has a huge contingent of fans of his music - playing his famous album "E2-E4" entirely, in a benefit concert for victims of the Tsunami and the Fukushima accident that happened last year). On next september 8 - one day before his 60th birthday - Manuel will perform with the legendary Joshua Lightshow in Warsaw (Poland) at the Copernicus Center!

I contacted Manuel Gottsching - via Facebook - for the first time last year and since then he has been always very kind and gentle! And not only him but also his wife Ilona Ziok, whom I thank very much for sending me the interview with Manuel by email! I hope to have the opportunity to watch a Manuel Göttsching show soon, either a solo performance or with Ashra (featuring Harald Grosskpf on drums - also a friend of mine and interviewed by me in last February - and Steve Baltes on keyboards and electronic devices).

French solo concert tour (photo: Klaus D. Mueller, 1976)
© MG.ART

ASTRONAUTA - How was your first contact with music and how do you became a professional musician?

MANUEL - In the house where I grew up as a child was a piano which attracted me, and which I wanted to play. But my early childish attempts turned out to be rather non-musical noise and much too loud for the well-educated ears of the adults, and I was soon forbidden to use it. But I did not give up the idea and one day I found an old guitar of my grandfather, and I began to like the sound of the guitar. Some years later I got a chance to actually learn the classical guitar. I found a wonderful teacher in Mrs. Scheibitz, whom I liked and respected a lot, as she gave me a valuable and profound knowledge of the instrument in her lessons throughout the next six years.

ASTRONAUTA - And how was the beginning of Ash Ra Tempel, how did you met Hartmut Enke and Klaus Schulze - your band mates in the early days - and Conny Plank - the recording engineer of your first album?

MANUEL - Hartmut Enke and me were class mates, and on Hartmut's 15th birthday we decided to start our first band called "The Bomb Proofs", just for the fun of it. I actually wanted to be the drummer of the band but ended up as the singer :-) We covered famous songs of the time, and had some lovely concerts, but very soon we got bored with it and we wanted to create our own music. One year later we started our next group "Bad Joe", with completely free experimental music, and very soon we got the chance to work with famous Swiss avant-garde composer Thomas Kessler in his new project which was called Beat Studio in Berlin's district Wilmersdorf - to study our improvisations, now with the help of an experienced composer. In this place not only us were learning how to improvise, but some Berlin groups like Agitation Free or Tangerine Dream were rehearsing. One day Klaus Schulze, the drummer of Tangerine Dream, who had just left the band, joined us proposing to start a band together. This was Ash Ra Tempel. It was Hartmut Enke who created this name, each word according his philosophy. We 3 stayed together for 1 year. The result was the first Ash Ra Tempel album with the same title, finally recorded in Hamburg by famed Conny Plank - our one and only collaboration. There was no other engineer who would understand our music better at this time. 1971 Schulze left for a solo career, Hartmut and me continued with the next album SCHWINGUNGEN recorded with some guest musicians at Studio Dierks near Cologne. And not even noticing it we have become a professional band...

ASTRONAUTA - And how about Conrad Schnitzler and the concerts you played with Eruption, Schnitzler's group?

MANUEL - Conny was a great musician and composer. I also met him in 1970, and I bought his old VW Bus, which soon became the legendary Bus of Ash Ra Tempel. Conny Schnitzler's Eruption was one of his next projects after Kluster, and I played two of the first concerts with Eruption end of 1970. We always stayed in a friendly contact over the years. I am very sad, that it never happened that we played together again, and also Conny - shortly before his death - said in an interview with a German newspaper that one of the things he regrets to not having done is to perform again with me :-)

ASTRONAUTA - In the summer of 1972, Ash Ra Tempel recorded the album "Seven Up", with the participation of the writer Timothy Leary and many other guests.

MANUEL - Sorry to interrupt you, but Tim Leary was actually not a writer but a Harvard professor for neurology experimenting with LSD, and as such he also had to write :-)

ASTRONAUTA - How was this meeting and how was the recordings of this album?

MANUEL - Hartmut got to know that Timothy Leary was on the run from the CIA and had ended up in Switzerland. This was because Timothy Leary had escaped from prison in the US where he was sentenced for 10 years for a ridiculous little amount of Marihuana, because the US president Mr. Nixon had accused him as United States Enemy No. 1 for his research on LSD. Tim Leary was interested in music as a kind of illustration for his theory of the "SEVEN LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS", the title of the book that he was writing. Hartmut went to Switzerland to meet him - and after listening to SCHWINGUNGEN Tim happily agreed to collaborate with us. We gathered some friends and musicians from Germany and Switzerland at a farm in the Swiss mountains, rehearsed there and finally recorded the album SEVEN UP at Sinus Studio Bern, Switzerland , which was later mixed at Studio Dierks near Cologne where we already recorded SCHWINGUNGEN. This was the third Ash Ra Tempel album. We had a great time in Switzerland, Tim was really energetic, he even started singing on the recordings, and still today it seems to me like a miracle that all this has really happened.

ASTRONAUTA - You commented other day, in a Facebook message, that your wife Ilona Ziok is directing a documentary about "Seven Up". Is there already any date to finish/release this film?

MANUEL - That is true. She is actually searching all the girls and guys who joined Hartmut and me (Ash Ra Tempel) for the session with Leary, and is also trying to find money to finance this project, as well as a TV station - but this will work out for sure, as she has done some very successful films in the past, so people in film business know her well, and everywhere there is a big interest in this project.

ASTRONAUTA - You have used some Moog synthesizers (and many other analog synths) during your career. There is a video on youtube where you talk a little about the Moogs you played on your albums. Do you still have any of those Moogs or other analog synthesizers that you used to record in the '70s and '80s? Do you still use analog synthesizers in recordings or live performances? Is there any prefered analog synthesizer for you?

Manuel Göttsching and Joshua Light at
transmediale festival, Berlin (photo: Keiko Yoshida, 2012)
© MG.ART

MANUEL - I recently had a concert in Berlin together with Joshua Light Show - it was on February 4, 2012 - being the highlight of the transmediale music festival at a famous place of our capital, where I already performed in 1979 the music "Big Birds" for a fashion event with various analog synthesizers. I performed now with some of my old equipment again, my old Minimoog and my beloved Farfisa Synthorchestra, the one I used for my album "New Age Of Earth". I really enjoyed playing these instruments again after such a long time, they need some maintenance and replacement parts from time to time, but they are still doing fine. But I also love new technology, I perform with Ableton, combined with various "retro" plug ins like EMS Synthi A, ARP Odyssey, Farfisa organs, I also sampled my old EKO Rhythm Computer.

Nevertheless, it is the guitar which will remain my favourite "analog" instrument :-)

ASTRONAUTA - In october of 2011 I had the pleasure to meet film director Andrew Horn in a festival in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. In this festival I also watched "The Nomi Song", Andrew's movie about Klaus Nomi and I noted that the film was realized by CV Films (your production company) and that you and Ilona are the producers. So I researched on the internet and found more films films produced by you! How do you find time to keep a cinematographic carrer and a musical carrer at the same time?

MANUEL - My wife Ilona Ziok is film director from her profession, but also writer and film producer. And because she is always helping me when I need her, I started to help her as well, not only supplying her films with my music, but with producing them while she is directing. So CV Films was founded as our family business, which is also our label MG.ART - run by our daughter :-).

ASTRONAUTA - What are your next film projects?

MANUEL - There are some interesting project which we are developing - all documentaries or music films. For example Alex Snelling, an awarded BBC film maker, proposed us to do an art movie on my "E2-E4". Ilona thinks that this is a brilliant idea and she already suggested Alex a film title - she is very good at that - it is "E2-E4-Eternity" (she has created already a T-shirt like this:-)). And Richard England, a famous UK producer, f.e. of the film about the SEX PISTOLS, proposed to make a biopic about me - and here again Ilona suggested the concept and title: "From Berlin with Love! - yours, Manuel Göttsching" which means that my work and life in music will reflect the Berlin culture of the last 40 years, and doing so Berlin will tell about me :-). So lets see which of the two films will happen. Ilona thinks, that both would make sence :-).

And regarding other subjects that we are working on, it is about forgotten personalities important for German history, so f.e. the most famous Sudan archeologist, Mr. Hinkel or the music composer Werner Richard Heyman - but this film is meant to be more a piece made on theater stage - more artistic than being documental. Werner Richard Heyman was the one who brought songs into movies as a part of its music, and many German songs from the 30s actually originate from the films to which he wrote the music, but he also is the composer of famous Hollywood films like "To be or not to be" or "Ninotchka".

ASTRONAUTA - Various albums from Ash Ra Tempel were recently remastered and re-released and also your solo albums "Inventions for Electric Guitar" (recorded in 1974 and released in 1975) and "E2-E4" (recorded in 1981 and released in 1984). Is there any possibility of more reissues?

MANUEL - My label MG.ART also re-released the AshRa albums "Belle Alliance Plus" - a 2-CDs-album - which beside the original Virgin album contains bonus material on the second CD. And then there is "Correlations Complete", a 5-CDs-box: CD 1 is the original Virgin release, mixed by famous UK-producer Mick Glossop, CD 2 is the first never released mix by Udo Arndt and me, and CD 3-5 is the "Making Of"-material, i.e. our rehearsals at the legendary ufaFabrik (www.ufafabrik.de), a place where German films were born in the 1920s, and where in the 1930/1940s Goebbels produced his horrorful propaganda material. Today this historical location is an important cultural center, which started 1979, being occupied by young poeple.

Regarding other reissues, the next will be my solo album "Dream and Desire" from 1977. In Japan it is going to be re-released in July already, in the rest of the world in autumn. But while Japanese prefer the original, the world-edition will be a 2-CDs-album, because I found an additional track belonging to it :-) And I will also write a bit about its history.

And of course the re-release of "Blackouts" and " New Age Of Earth" will follow soon. - All reissues are re-mastered by me, but not reshaped or pimped as if they were made with today's technology.

AshRa (Steve Baltes, Manuel Göttshing
and Harald Grosskopf)
© MG.ART

ASTRONAUTA - And what about new material, is there any possibility that we have a new Ashra album, now with you, Lutz Ulbrich, Harald Grosskopf and Steve Baltes?

MANUEL - Lutz Ulbrich is no longer with AshRa, the last concert we did with him was in 2000, since then I play only with Harald and Steve. We had a great concert in Japan in summer 2008 and just now again in Berlin at the ufaFabrik. Of course I hope to release these concert recordings in the near future, but I am also working on some new AshRa material.

At first - the next concert release will be a CD/DVD of my recent solo performance with the Joshua Light Show at the transmediale Festival Berlin in February 2012 (here you can listen to some old Minimoog and Farfisa Synthorchestra:-)). For some fan videos check out here: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGC_eytBoPI)

ASTRONAUTA - And how about live shows in Brazil and South America, any chance?

Manuel Göttsching performing with
Steve Hillage, Elliott Sharp
and Zhang Shou Wang
INVENTIONS FOR ELECTRIC GUITAR
at Mt. Fuji in Japan, 2012
© MG.ART

MANUEL - The Brazilian promoter Alain Patrick invites me to Sao Paulo for a solo performance with my composition "E2-E4", but may be one day we can also play there with AshRa - who knows. Would be great!

Actually I also plan to show a film to which I did the music back in the 70s as Ash Ra Tempel: "Le Berceau de Cristal" by internationally awarded French film director Philippe Garrel, starring Anita Pallenberng, Dominique Sanda and Velvet Underground singer Nico - the muses of the 60s/70s, combining it with a concert, and of course I hope to perform again "Inventions For Electric Guitar", in an original line-up with four guitar players as I did in Japan in 2010 for the first time with Elliott Sharp, a central music figure in avant-garde and experimental music scene in N.Y.,Steve Hillage from London (former member of Gong, today System 7), and Zhang Shou Wang from Beijing (member of the Chinese bands Carsick Cars and White, who also plays with Sonic Youth).

French solo concert tour (photo: Klaus D. Mueller, 1976)
© MG.ART

↧

Entrevista com Manuel Göttsching

July 9, 2012, 6:02 pm

≫ Next: Moog 1125 Sample & Hold Controller (text in english)

≪ Previous: Interview with Manuel Göttsching

Manuel Göttshing (foto: Sven Marquardt, 2006)
© MG.ART

Ash Ra Tempel, 1970 (esquerda para a direita: Klaus Schulze,
Manuel Göttsching e Hartmut Enke)
© MG.ART

Manuel Göttsching nasceu em Berlin no dia 9 de setembro de 1952. Começou seus estudos de violão clássico quando era ainda criança e aos 15 anos de idade resolveu ser baterista, quando formou sua primeira banda - The Bomb Proofs - com o colega de classe Hartmut Enke. Acabou virando o cantor da banda. Foi também com Hartmut que Manuel estudou improvisação com o compositor suíço Thomas Kessler e foi justamente no estúdio do compositor que os dois conheceram o baterista Klaus Schulze, que recém estava deixando o Tangerine Dream, sua banda anterior. O trio resolveu então juntar-se e formar uma nova banda: Ash Ra Tempel. Schulze saiu da banda um ano depois, partindo para a carreira solo e, a partir daí, a dupla Manuel e Hartmut contou com diversos bateristas convidados nas suas gravações. Hartmut saiu em 1973 e Manuel passou a alternar entre discos solo executados e produzidos totalmente por ele no seu Studio Roma e discos gravados com Lutz Ulbricht (ex-Agitation Free) na guitarra e nos teclados e o baterista Harald Grosskopf (que já havia participado do disco "Ash Ra Tempel Starring Rosi", em 1973), abreviando o nome da banda de Ash Ra Tempel para apenas AshRa.

Figura de cera de Manuel com seus
álbuns no Tokyo Tower Museum
© MG.ART

Entre álbuns solo, discos gravados com as várias formações que o Ash Ra Tempel (apenas AshRa a partir de 1977) e colaborações em alguns discos de outros artistas, Manuel tem mais de 60 títulos na sua vasta discografia (confira no site oficial dele, http://www.ashra.com/disco/welcome.htm). Mantém desde 2002 o próprio selo, MG.ART, responsável pelos lançamentos de seus trabalhos mais recentes e pelos relançamentos de vários títulos lançados originalmente nos anos 70 e que agora saem no mercado em CD's remasterizados pelo próprio Manuel - alguns deles com bônus tracks e material inédito!!!! Em 2003 fundou a produtora cinematográfica CV Films - empresa que mantém em parceria com a esposa e diretora de cinema Ilona Ziok - e divide seu tempo entre a produção de filmes e os constantes shows pelo mundo todo (a próxima apresentação será no dia 11 de agosto no Japão - país onde ele tem um contingente enorme de fãs - apresentando seu famoso disco "E2-E4" na íntegra, em um show beneficiente às vitimas do Tsunami e do acidente em Fukushima no ano passado). No dia 8 de setembro - um dia antes de completar 60 anos de idade - Manuel se apresetará com o lendário Joshua Light em Varsóvia (Polônia), no Copernicus Center.

Contatei o Manuel através do Facebook no ano passado e ele sempre foi muito gentil e atencioso! E não só ele, mas também sua esposa Ilona Ziok, a quem agradeço muito por ter me enviado a entrevista com o Manuel por email! Espero que o público brasileiro tenha a oportunidade de assitir ao Manuel Göttsching em breve, seja em apresentação solo ou seja com o AshRa (banda que conta com o Harald Grosskpf na bateria - também amigo meu e entrevistado por mim em fevereiro passado - e Steve Baltes nos teclados e aparatos eletrônicos).

Tour solo na França, 1976 (foto: Klaus D. Muller)
© MG.ART

ASTRONAUTA - Como foi seu primeiro contato com a música e como você se tornou músico profissional?

MANUEL - Na casa onde eu vivia quando era criança havia um piano que me chamava a atenção e eu queria tocá-lo. Como as minhas primeiras tentativas infantis eram basicamente ruidos não-musicais e eram muito altas para os ouvidos bem-educados dos adultos, fui proibido de tocá-lo. Mas eu não desisti da idéia e um dia eu encontrei um velho violão do meu avô e passei a gostar do som do violão. Alguns anos depois eu tive a chance de aprender a tocar violão clássico. Eu encontrei uma professora maravilhosa na Sra. Scheibitz, de quem eu gostava e respeitava muito. Ela me deu um conhecimento valioso e profundo do instrumento em suas aulas durante os seis anos seguintes.

ASTRONAUTA - E como foi o início do Ash Ra Tempel, como você conheceu Hartmut Enke e Klaus Schulze - seus companheiros de banda nos primeiros dias - e Conny Plank - o engenheiro de gravação do seu primeiro álbum?

MANUEL - Hartmut Enke e eu eramos colegas de classe e no aniversário de 15 anos de Hartmut decidimos começar a nossa primeira banda chamada "The Bomb Proofs", só por diversão. Na verdade eu queria ser o baterista da banda, mas acabei virando o cantor :-) Nós tocavamos músicas famosas da época e fizemos alguns shows encantadores, mas logo ficamos entediados com isso e resolvemos criar a nossa própria música. Um ano depois nós começamos nossa próxima banda "Bad Joe", de música experimental livre, e muito logo em seguida nós tivemos a chance de trabalhar com o famoso compositor suíço avant-garde Thomas Kessler no seu novo projeto, que foi chamado Beat Studio, em um bairro de Berlim, Wilmersdorf - para estudarmos nossas improvisações, agora com a ajuda de um compositor experiente. Não eramos somente nós que aprendíamos a improvisar neste lugar, mas alguns grupos de Berlim, como o Agitation Free e o Tangerine Dream, também ensaiavam lá. Um dia Klaus Schulze, o baterista do Tangerine Dream, que havia acabado de deixar a banda, se juntou a nós com a proposta de começarmos uma banda juntos. Assim surgiu o Ash Ra Tempel. Foi Hartmut Enke que criou este nome, cada palavra de acordo com sua filosofia. Nós três tocamos juntos por 1 ano. O resultado foi o primeiro álbum do Ash Ra Tempel, com o mesmo título, finalmente gravado em Hamburgo pelo famoso Conny Plank - o nosso primeiro e único colaborador. Não havia outro engenheiro que pudesse entender melhor a nossa música naquele momento. Em 1971 Schulze partiu para a carreira solo e Hartmut e eu continuamos, gravando o proximo disco - SCHWINGUNGEN - com alguns músicos convidados no estúdio Dierks, perto de Cologne. E sem percebermos nós nos tornamos uma banda profissional...

ASTRONAUTA - E quanto a Conrad Schnitzler e os shows que você tocou com o Eruption, projeto de Schnitzler?

MANUEL - Conny era um grande músico e compositor. Eu o conheci em 1970 e comprei o sua velha van VW, que logo se tornaria o lendário ônibus do Ash Ra Tempel. O Eruption do Conny Schnitzler foi um de seus próximos projetos logo depois do Kluster e eu joguei dois dos primeiros shows do Eruption, no final de 1970. Nós sempre mantivemos em um contato amigável ao longo dos anos. Eu sou muito triste por nunca ter acontecido de tocarmos juntos de novo, e o Conny também disse em uma entrevista a um jornal alemão - um pouco antes de sua morte - que uma das coisas que ele lamenta não ter feito é ter se apresentado novamente comigo : -)

ASTRONAUTA - No verão de 1972 o Ash Ra Tempel gravou o álbum "Seven Up", com a participação do escritor Timothy Leary e muitos outros convidados.

MANUEL - Desculpe interrompê-lo, mas Tim Leary não era realmente um escritor, e sim um professor de neurologia em Harvard que fazia experiências com LSD, e por isso ele tinha que escrever :-)

ASTRONAUTA - Como foi esse encontro e como foi a gravação deste álbum?

MANUEL - Hartmut ficou sabendo que Timothy Leary estava fugindo da CIA e acabou parando na Suíça. Isso aconteceu porque Timothy Leary havia escapado da prisão nos EUA, onde ele foi condenado a 10 anos por causa de uma quantidade ridículamente pequena de maconha, porque Nixon, o então presidente dos EUA, havia acusado ele como o Inimigo número 1 dos Estados Unidos, por conta das suas pesquisas sobre o LSD. Tim Leary estava interessado na música como uma espécie de ilustração para a sua teoria dos "Sete Níveis de Consciência", título do livro que estava escrevendo. Hartmut foi para a Suíça para encontrá-lo - e depois de ouvir SCHWINGUNGEN Tim alegremente concordou em colaborar conosco. Reunimos alguns amigos e músicos da Alemanha e da Suíça em uma fazenda nas montanhas suíças, ensaiamos lá e finalmente gravamos o álbum SEVEN UP no Estúdio Sinus em Bern (Suíça), que mais tarde foi mixado no estúdio Dierks, perto de Cologne, onde já haviamos gravado o SCHWINGUNGEN. Este foi o álbum do terceira Ash Ra Tempel. Tivemos um ótimo periodo na Suíça, Tim era muito enérgico, ele mesmo começou a cantar nas gravações, e até hoje parece um milagre que tudo aquilo tenha acontecido de verdade.

ASTRONAUTA - Você comentou outro dia, em uma mensagem no Facebook, que sua esposa Ilona Ziok está dirigindo um documentário sobre o disco "Seven Up". Já existe uma data para finalizar e lançar este filme?

MANUEL - É verdade. Ela está realmente procurando todas as garotas e rapazes que se juntaram a Hartmut e a mim (Ash Ra Tempel) para a sessão com Leary e também está tentando captar o dinheiro para financiar este projecto, bem como uma estação de TV - e isso vai funcionar, com certeza, já que ela fez alguns filmes de muito sucesso no passado, então as pessoas na indústria do cinema a conhecem bem e existe um grande interesse neste projeto.

ASTRONAUTA - Você usou alguns sintetizadores Moog (e muitos outros sintetizadores analógicos) durante a sua carreira. Há um vídeo no youtube onde você fala um pouco sobre os Moogs que você tocou nos seus álbuns. Você ainda tem algum desses Moogs ou outros sintetizadores analógicos que você usou para gravar nos anos 70 e 80? Você ainda usa sintetizadores analógicos em gravações ou performances ao vivo? Existe algum sintetizador analógico preferido para você?

Manuel Göttsching e Joshua Light no
transmediale festival, Berlin (foto: Keiko Yoshida, 2012)
© MG.ART

MANUEL - Eu fiz recentemente um show em Berlim juntamente com o Joshua Light Show - foi em 04 de fevereiro de 2012 - sendo o destaque do festival de música Transmediale, em um local conhecido na nossa capital, onde eu já havia tocado em 1979 a música "Big Birds", em um evento de moda, com vários sintetizadores analógicos. Eu tenho tocado novamente com alguns dos meus equipamentos antigo, meu velho Minimoog e o meu amado Farfisa Synthorchestra, o que eu usei no meu álbum "New Age Of Earth". Eu realmente gostei de tocar com estes instrumentos novamente, depois de tanto tempo. Eles precisam de alguma manutenção e peças de reposição de tempos em tempos, mas eles ainda estão funcionando muito bem. Mas eu também amo a nova tecnologia, eu toco com Ableton, utilizando vários plug-ins "retro", como o EMS Synthi A, o ARP Odyssey, órgãos Farfisa. Eu também sampleei minha velha EKO Rhythm Computer (bateria eletrônica).

No entanto, é a guitarra que continua a ser o meu instrumento "analógico" favorito :-)

ASTRONAUTA - Em outubro de 2011 eu tive o prazer de conhecer o diretor de filmes Andrew Horn em um festival em Belo Horizonte, Brasil. Neste festival também assisti "The Nomi Song", filme de Andrew sobre Klaus Nomi e descobri que este filme foi realizado pela CV Films (sua produtora) e que você e Ilona são os produtores. Então eu pesquisei na internet e encontrei outros filmes também produzidos por você! Como você encontra tempo para manter sua carreira cinematográfica e a carreira musical ao mesmo tempo?

MANUEL - A profissão da minha esposa Ilona Ziok é diretora de cinema, mas também escritora e produtora de filmes. E porque ela está sempre me ajudando quando eu preciso dela, eu também comecei a ajudá-la, não apenas fornecendo minha música para seus filmes, mas também produzindo-os enquanto ela está dirigindo. A CV Films foi fundada como nosso negócio de família, que também tem nosso selo MG.ART - dirigido por nossa filha :-).

ASTRONAUTA - Quais são seus planos os próximos filmes?

MANUEL - Existem alguns projetos interessantes que estamos desenvolvendo - todos documentários ou filmes de música. Por exemplo, Alex Snelling, um cineasta premiado pela BBC, nos propôs fazer um filme de arte sobre meu "E2-E4". Ilona acha que é uma idéia brilhante e ela já sugeriu Alex um título para o filme - ela é muito boa nisso - que é "E2-E4-Eternity" (ela até já criou uma camiseta com isto :-)). E Richard England, um famoso produtor do Reino Unido (como por exemplo do filme sobre os Sex Pistols), propôs fazermos um filme biográfico sobre mim - e aqui novamente Ilona sugeriu o conceito e o título: "From Berlim with Love - yours, Manuel Göttsching", o que significa que meu trabalho e vida para a música refletirá a cultura de Berlim nos últimos 40 anos, e fazê-lo Berlim vai dizer sobre mim :-). Então vamos ver qual dos dois filmes vai acontecer. Ilona acha que ambos faria sentido :-).

E sobre os outros assuntos que estamos trabalhando, tratam-se de personalidades esquecidas, importantes para a história alemã, como o mais famoso arqueólogo do Sudão, o Sr. Hinkel, ou o compositor Werner Richard Heyman - mas a intenção é fazermos este filme mais como uma peça para palco de teatro - mais artístico do que ser documental. Werner Richard Heyman foi o único que fez das canções para filmes parte de sua música e muitas canções alemãs dos anos 30 na verdade originam-se dos filmes em que ele escreveu a música, mas ele também é o compositor de filmes famosos de Hollywood como "To be or not to be "ou" Ninotchka".

ASTRONAUTA - Vários álbuns do Ash Ra Tempel foram remasterizados e relançados recentemente, bem como seus álbuns solo "Inventions for electric guitar" (gravado em 1974 e lançado em 1975) e "E2-E4" (gravado em 1981 e lançado em 1984). Existe alguma possibilidade de relançamento de mais álbuns seus?

MANUEL - Meu selo MG.ART também re-lançou o álbum do AshRa "Belle Alliance Plus" - um álbum duplo -, que além do álbum original da Virgin contém material bônus no segundo CD. E também há o "Correlations Complete", um box com 5 CDs: o CD 1 é o disco original da Virgin, mixado pelo famoso produtor do reino unido Mick Glossop, o CD 2 é a primeira mixagem, nunca antes lançada, feita por Udo Arndt e por mim, os CD 3 a 5 são o "Making Of" do disco, ou seja, nossos ensaios no lendário ufaFabrik (www.ufafabrik.de), o local onde nasceram os filmes alemães da década de 1920 e onde Goebbels produziu o seu horroroso material de propaganda, nos anos 1930/1940. Hoje este local histórico é um importante centro cultural, que começou em 1979, quando foi ocupado pelos jovens.

Quanto a outras reedições, a próxima será o meu álbum solo "Dream and Desire", de 1977. No Japão será re-lançado em julho e no resto do mundo no outono. Porém, enquanto os japoneses preferem o original, a edição para o resto do mundo será um CD duplo, porque eu descobri uma faixa adicional que pertence ao disco :-) E eu também irei escrever um pouco sobre sua história.

E, claro, os re-lançamentos de "Blackouts" e "New Age Of Earth" acontecerão em breve. - Todos os relançamentos são re-masterizado por mim, mas não reformulados ou PIMPED como se eles fossem feitos com a tecnologia de hoje.

AshRA (Steve Baltes, Manuel Göttsching e
Harald Grosskopf)
© MG.ART

ASTRONAUTA - E material novo, existe alguma possibilidade de termos um novo álbum do AshRa, agora com você, Lutz Ulbrich, Harald Grosskopf e Steve Baltes?

MANUEL - Lutz Ulbrich não está mais com o AshRa, o último show que fizemos com ele foi em 2000. Desde então, toco apenas com Harald e Steve. Nós fizemos um grande show no Japão, no Verão de 2008, e somente agora tocamos de novo em Berlim, no ufaFabrik. Claro que eu quero lançar as gravações destes concertos em um futuro próximo, mas eu também estou trabalhando em algum material novo do AshRa.

Primeiramente - o próximo lançamento será um CD/DVD do meu concerto solo recente, com o Joshua Light Show no Festival Transmediale de Berlim, em fevereiro de 2012 (aqui você poderá ouvir alguma coisa com o velho Minimoog e o Farfisa Synthorchestra :-)). Para alguns vídeos de fãs confira aqui:

ASTRONAUTA - E quanto a shows ao vivo no Brasil e América do Sul, existe alguma possibilidade?

Manuel Göttsching tocando com
Steve Hillage, Eliott Sharp e
Zhang Shou Wang
no show INVENTIONS FOR ELECTRIC
GUITAR no Monte Fuji, Japão, 2012
© MG.ART

MANUEL - O produtor brasileiro Alain Patrick me convidou ir a São Paulo, para uma apresentação solo da minha composição "E2-E4", mas pode ser que um dia também podemos tocar lá com o AshRa - quem sabe. Seria ótimo!

Na verdade, eu também pretendo mostrar um filme para o qual eu fiz a música nos anos 70 como Ash Ra Tempel: "Le Berceau de Cristal", do cineasta francês premiado internacionalmente Philippe Garrel, estrelado por Anita Pallenberng, Dominique Sanda e Nico, a cantora do Velvet Underground - as musas dos anos 60/70 - combinando com um concerto e, claro, espero a executar novamente "Inventions for electric guitar", com um line-up original de quatro guitarristas, como eu fiz no Japão em 2010 pela primeira vez com Elliott Sharp, uma figura central na música avant-garde e na cena de música experimental de NY, Steve Hillage de Londres (ex-membro do Gong e hoje no System 7), e Zhang Wang Shou, de Pequim (membro das bandas chinesas Carsick Cars e White , que também toca com o Sonic Youth).

Tour solo na França, 1976 (foto: Klaus D. Muller)
© MG.ART

↧

Moog 1125 Sample & Hold Controller (text in english)

July 24, 2012, 9:24 pm

≫ Next: Five questions to Vince Clarke

≪ Previous: Entrevista com Manuel Göttsching

In 1973 Moog Music put on the market various accessories to be attached to the Minimoog model D and also to their Modular models (they released the Moog modular 15, 35 and 55 in the same year): the 1130 Percussion Controller, the 1121 footswitch, the 1120 foot controller, the famous 1150 Ribbon Controller and the 1125 Sample and hold unit. Nowadays it is very difficult to find one of these equipments, even they being only accessories (only worked attached to the synthesizers), although some of these units appears on ebay from time to time - especially in the USA.

The 1125 Sample and Hold is a device that captures the voltage range of the synthesizer, creates a pattern and repeats it constantly. The waveform (sawtooth or random) of this pattern is controlled by a slider on the left side of the 1125 -the other two sliders are a glide and the scale controla. Two knobs in the center of the equipment, one for speed (rate) and other for the sample pattern are located above three on/off switches: one to record and the other two to start and stop the sample (a red light indicates when it is working). Five switches on the right side complete the unit: one to control the extent of sampling, two on/off switches controls the outputs of the instrument, an on/off switch controls the trigger and another controls the size (short or long) of the gate.

I didn't find information on artists who have used - or at least credited in any album - the 1125 but since this unit was sold (usually, although it was optional) with modular models, I think some musicians that used the Moog Modular Synthesizers had this equipment in their sets.

I purchased my 1125 Sample and Hold unit - along with my Minimoog - in September 2008. As I wrote on the post about the Minimoog model D, my Minimoog was at Violeta de Outono's rehearsals place when I bought it, but the Sample and Hold was in another location so it took me a while to find some free time to "rescue" it. I tried to connect the 1125 with the Minimoog sometimes but I believe it has a poor contact it some component, but I intend to fix it soon.

The serial number of my Sample and Hold is 2913 and the informations about how to connect it to the Minimoog (as in my case) are printed at the bottom of the equipment. It also has multiple cables to be plugged into the synthesizer and they all seem to be in good condition. I do not believe that this accessory has been used by Violeta de Outono, although I may be wrong. When I bought my Minimoog from Angelo Pastorello (ex-bassist from Violeta de Outono) he also sold me the 1125!

photos: Kay Mavrides and found on the internet.

My 1125 Sample and Hold is not working and because of it I didn't record any video. But I found a unique and rare video posted on youtube by another Moog/vintage synth aficionado (or maybe someone that only wanted to demonstrate his 1125 to sell) and so I post it here, as a small illustration of the operation of this device:

And I found this ad of the Moog accessories:

(The photo used at the beginning of the text shows Dr. Robert Moog with Minimoog and a 1125Sample and Hold!)

↧

Five questions to Vince Clarke

August 1, 2012, 9:15 am

≫ Next: Cinco perguntas para Vince Clarke

≪ Previous: Moog 1125 Sample & Hold Controller (text in english)

Genius. I can't find another word to describe Vince Clarke. Born on july 3, 1960 in South Woodfort and raised in Basildon, Essex, Vincent John Martin studied violin and piano in his childhood. In the late '70s Vince and his schoolmate Andrew Fletcher formed a band called "No Romance in China", their first band together. "No Romance in China" was reformed and renamed "French Look" in 1979. In 1980 another band was born, "Composition of Sound", in which Vince provided vocals until David Grahan joined the band that was renamed again as "Depeche Mode" and that's it, DM recorded one of the greatest albums of all time ("Speak & Spell", 1981, almost composed entirely by Clake), became one of the greatest bands the world and it was the beginning of the Synthpop era!

Vince left "Depeche Mode" soon after the release of their first album and formed "Yazoo", a duo with Alyson Moyet and recorded many successful singles and two albums. In 1983 Vince and Alyson split "Yazoo" and Vince formed "The Assembly", a duo with Eric Radcliffe that had different collaborators in their singles. In the same year Vince started his career as a producer in his own label, Reset Records, producing four singles to his ex-bandmate Robert Marlow (from "French Look").

In early 1985 Vince put an ad in a magazine (Melody Maker) searching for a vocalist and one of the applicants was Andy Bell. One of the major selling acts in the world was born: Erasure!

Like almost everybody who has more that has 30 years or more today, both "Depeche Mode" and "Erasure" were part of my childhood and teenage days (I remember clearly when I heard "Blue Savannah" on the radio for the first time! And I also had a schoolmate called Rafael Collete - he died in an bike accident on a new eve's day, in the late '90s - who was simply crazy about "Depeche Mode"!). Vince Clarke became not only my superhero but also the guy who I mention everytime when some people bother me talking against my choice for vintage/analog synthesizers. As I use to say, if a genius like Vince Clarke still has (and uses) a lot of vintage/analog gear, no one in the world can convince me that any modern synth or gear is better than my old Minimoog and other stuff!

I found Vince's contact on twitter and I asked him to do this interview via his manager, Michael Pagnotta. Both these guys were very gentle and answered my emails very soon! I thank them so much for this interview and friendship!

ASTRONAUTA - Vince, I watched a video on youtube in which the interviewer asked you if you're a "synthesizers hunter" and you told him that you're not anymore but you was one in the past. When was your most obsessed period in the hunt for analog equipment? Is there any equipment of your dreams that you do not have yet? And what are your preferred instruments and/or the ones you use most nowadays?

VINCE - I think I seriously started collecting synths in the early 90's. And then, having run out of space, I stopped. I realized, the only keyboards worth owning were the one's that would be useful to my music making process, and that is still true today. I try to incorporate as many different synths as possible into my music, rather than favor one particular keyboard over another.

ASTRONAUTA - In the first albums recorded by you, especially on Depeche Mode's "Speak & Spell" you used only analog synthesizers (not ONLY by your choice but also because the digital technology was just emerging in the music world). How was the recording process on that time, how did you synchonized your equipment, especially those that were made by different manufacturers?

VINCE - The early Depeche stuff was recorded onto a 16 track Studer machine. Lot's of tracks had to be bounced together, decisions had to be made there and then. The engineer, Eric Radcliffe, devised a way of recording a rudimentary click track onto track 16 which enabled us to run an Arp sequencer in sync.

ASTRONAUTA - In some tours (especially on the Erasure's 1991/1992 tour, in which you had a "tank" with multiple keyboards inside), you traveled with many analog keyboards. How was the maintenance of this analog equipment, did you traveled with an electronic technician specialized in analog instruments to repair your synths on the road or did you (or do you) know how to repair your own instruments?

VINCE - All of the gear was serviced prior to the tour and required very little maintenance over the course of the tour..(just some TLC). My own knowledge of synth repair was, and still is limited. In the case of a breakdown we would usually find an engineer in whatever city we were performing.

ASTRONAUTA - How is your method of composition, do you write a song on the guitar first and then go to synthesizers or do you already compose direct on the analog synths, sequencers and drum machines?

VINCE - The songs are composed on either guitar or piano. That way, we can concentrate purely on the melody and lyrics, and not get distracted by the limitless world of sound sculpture.

ASTRONAUTA - I suppose that you have a lot of solo stuff, demos of several songs that you wrote for your bands and projects. If you have, do you want to release this material someday? And how about a Vince Clarke solo album, can we expect that you release a complete solo album someday?

VINCE - I doubt I'll ever release a solo record. I really get a kick out of 'collaboration'.

Vince Clarke's official website: THE CABIN STUDIO

↧

Cinco perguntas para Vince Clarke

August 3, 2012, 6:35 am

≫ Next: Moog catalog (late '70s)

≪ Previous: Five questions to Vince Clarke

Gênio. Não consigo encontrar outra palavra para descrever Vince Clarke. Nascido no dia 3 de julho de 1960 em South Woodfort e crescido na cidade de Basildon, Essex, Vincent John Martin estudou violino e piano na sua infância. No final dos anos 70 Vince e Andrew Fletcher, seu colega de escola, formaram a "No Romance in China", sua primeira banda juntos. A "No Romance in China" mudou de formação e passou a se chamar "French Look" em 1979. Em 1980 surgia outra banda, "Composition of Sound", na qual Vince exercia a função de vocalista até que David Grahan se juntou à banda, que novamente foi renomeada como "Depeche Mode" and é isto, o DM gravou um dos maiores àlbuns de todos os tempos ("Speak & Spell", 1981, composto quase que integralmente por Clarke), tornou-se uma das maiores bandas do mundo e ajudou a forjar o início da era do Synthpop!

Vince deixou o "Depeche Mode" logo após o lançamento do primeiro àlbum da banda e formou o "Yazoo", uma dupla com Alyson Moyet, com quem gravou vários singles de sucesso e dois grandes àlbuns. Eme 1983 Vince e Alyson acabaram com o "Yazoo" e Vince formou outra dupla - desta vez com o engenheiro de som Eric Radcliffe - chamada "The Assembly", que tinha diversos colaboradores nas suas gravações. No mesmo ano Vince deu início à sua carreira como produtor, gravando quatro singles do ex-colega da banda "French Look", Robert Marlow, e lançando pelo seu próprio selo, Reset Records".

No início de 1985, Vince colocou um anúncio em uma revista (Melody Maker), procurando por um vocalista e um dos candidatos foi o Andy Bell. Uma das bandas com maior vendagem do mundo nascia ali: Erasure!

Como quase todas as pessoas que estão com 30 anos ou mais hoje em dia, tanto o "Depeche Mode" quanto o "Erasure" fizeram parte da minha infância e adolescência (eu me lembro claramente do dia que ouvi "Blue Savannah" no rádio pela primeira vez! E tinhamos um colega de escola chamado Rafael Collete - ele faleceu em um acidente de bicicleta numa virada de ano, no final dos 90 - que era fanático pelo "Depeche Mode", ele tinha tudo lançado pela banda até então!). Vince Clarke tornou-se não só meu super-herói mas também o cara que eu menciono todas as vezes que alguém vem encher o meu saco, questionando sobre minha escolha por sintetizadores vintage/analógicos. Como eu costumo dizer, se um gênio como Vince Clarke ainda possiu (e utiliza) equipamento vintage/analógico, ninguém no mundo vai me convencer que sintetizadores e equipamentos modernos são melhores que meu Minimoog e minhas outras velharias!

Contatei o Vince Clarke pela primeira vez pelo twitter e perguntei-lhe se ele aceitava fazer esta entrevista, via seu produtor, Michael Pagnotta. Ambos foram muito simpaticos e responderam meus emails com muita rapidez! Eu agradeço aos dois pela entrevista e pela amizade!

ASTRONAUTA - Vince, eu assisti a um vídeo no youtube onde o entrevistador pergunta se você é um "caçador de sintetizadores" e você disse a ele que não é mais. Quando foi seu período mais intenso e obcecado na "caçada" por equipamentos analógicos? Existe algum equipamento dos seus sonhos que você ainda não possua? E quais são seus intrumentos preferidos e/ou aqueles que você utiliza mais hoje em dia?

VINCE - Eu acho que comecei a colecionar sintetizadores seriamente no início dos anos 90. E naquela época mesmo, como fiquei sem espaço, parei. Eu percebi que os únicos teclados que valiam a pena eu ter eram aqueles que seriam úteis para o meu processo de fazer música, e isso ainda é verdade hoje em dia. Eu tento incorporar o maior número de sintetizadores diferentes na minha música ao invés de escolher um ou outro teclado da minha preferência.

ASTRONAUTA - Nos primeiros discos gravados por você, especialmente no àlbum "Speak & Spell" do Depeche Mode, você usava apenas sintetizadores analógicos (não somente por uma questão de escolha sua mas também porque a tecnologia digital estava recém surgindo no mundo da música). Como era o processo de gravação naquela época, como você sincronizava seu equipamento, especialmente os que eram feitos por diferentes fabricantes?

VINCE - As primeiras coisas do Depeche Mode eram registradas em um gravador Studer de 16 canais. Vários canais tinham que ser reduzidos, as decisões tinham que ser feitas no momento certo. O engenheiro, Eric Radcliffe, arrumou uma maneira de gravar uma trilha com um click básico no canal 16, que nos permitia colocar o sequencer da ARP em sincronia.

ASTRONAUTA - Em algumas tours (especiamente na tour de 1991/1992 do Erasure, onde você tinha um "tanque" cheio de equipamentos), você viajava com muitos teclados analógicos. Como era feita a manutenção destes equipamentos analógicos, você viajava com um técnico em eletrônica especializado em instrumentos analógicos para reparar seus sintetizadores na estrada ou você sabia (ou sabe) como fazer a manutenção do seu própio equipamento?

VINCE - Todo o equipamento era revisado antes da tour e requeria pouquíssima manutenção durante a tour... (apenas algum TLC - nota: abreviação para Tender, Love, Care = Afeto, Amor e Cuidado). Meu próprio conhecimento em manutenção de sintetizadores era e ainda é limitado. No caso de acontecer algum problema, achavamos algum engenheiro na cidade onde estavamos nos apresentando.

ASTRONAUTA - Como é seu método de composição, você escreve suas músicas primeiro na guitarra e dai vai para os sintetizadores ou você compõe direto nos sintetizadores analógicos, sequencers e baterias eletrônicas?

VINCE - As músicas são compostas tanto na guitarra quanto no piano. Desta maneira nós podemos nos concentrar puramente na melodia e nas letras e não nos distrairmos com o ilimitado mundo das esculturas sonoras.

ASTRONAUTA - Eu suponho que você tenha muito material solo, demos de muitas músicas que você escreveu para suas bandas e projetos. Se você tem este tipo de material, pretende lançar algum dia? E um disco solo de Vince Clarke, podemos esperar que seja lançado no futuro?

VINCE - Duvido que eu lance algum disco solo. Eu realmente prefiro "colaborações".

Site oficial do Vince Clarke: THE CABIN STUDIO

↧

Moog catalog (late '70s)

August 19, 2012, 5:43 pm

≫ Next: CRUMAR Toccata organ (text in english)

≪ Previous: Cinco perguntas para Vince Clarke

MOOG Synthesizers

The Moog Philosophy

"If you're into synthesizers, you have a lot in common with us. We're concerned, and maybe you are too, about some of the hype that's been around on synthesizer design. It's the kind of hype that places too much importance on gimmicks that don't have any real musical purpose.

Musicians Like You Help Design Moog Sinthesizers

Fads, gimmicks and basically unmusical electronic features don't make a synthesizer a musical instrument. Feel, sound and playability do. That's why Moog has always designed its instruments in close collaboration with working musicians - people like Rick Wakeman, Jon Lord, Chick Corea, Jan Hammer, - some of the most talented performers of our time.
At Moog, literally thousands of hours are spent every year talking (and listening carefully) to our musician friends.We visit recording studios. Go on tour with major groups. Sometimes even participate in live performances. All this teaches us a great deal about what you, the players, need and want in a synthesizer.

From Moog "Musical Engineering", The Very Best Sound and Performance

Formulas and specs are critical, but without the taste and insight of Moog's "musical engineers", our synthesizers would just be sound generators and not the versatile musical instruments they are. For example, part of the famous Moog "fat sound" comes from the patented Moog filter. But the total sound of the instrument is the result of dozens of individual design features meticulously proportioned to give just the right sound and feel.
The spirit of "musical engineering" is behind Moog's many exclusive performance controls, too. Take our Pitch and Modulation Wheels and our Robbon Controller. They enable the player to easily control pitch bend, vibrato and other nuances so vital to brilliant solo performance. These are the features that make the difference between a "one note organ" sound and the soaring, fluid Moog lines you hear in the best contemporary electronic music.

The Truth About Sliders Versus Rotary Pots

Take a look at any recording console. You'll see that the faders are sliders, because the recording engineer has to manipulate many of them simultaneously, especially during a mix. But just about all the other controls on the console are rotaries, because they're so much easier to set precisely. Moog's answer? Use both... rotaries where precision is critical, sliders where speed is the thing (or where space is limited). But to say that there's only one right way, well again, that's just hype. Just try to accurately tune an all-slider instrument!
The point of all this is that if you're into synthesizers, you really ought to know the difference between electronic gimmickry and solid musical engineering. We're convinced that Moog offers equipment that gives you the most quality, playability and musical control over sound.
If you visit and Authorised Moog dealer he will be able to give you all the answers you're looking for... technical specifications, a demonstration and explanation, and a chance to try the Moog Products.
Once you've tried a Moog Synthesizer you'll understand the Moog Philosophy".

Multimoog

Multimoog is the synthesizer for the composer in you and the keyboard for the performer in you. The force-sensitive keyboard extends Moog's musical engineering to let you phrase, bend pitch, and introduce vibrato, trill, tremolo - even sample and hold - with a single hand.
While your right hand plays two hands worth of music, your left hand can play the Moog Pitch Ribbon and Performance Wheel for added expression. Multimoog puts control where it belongs - in your hands.
Variable control and Moog's open system input/output panel make the Multimoog a powerful synthesizer as well as an expressive keyboard.
Whether you're a performer, a synthesist - or both - check out the one-hand/two-hand punch of the versatile one-MULTIMOOG.

Features
• Two temperature-regulated ultra stable audio oscillators (heated chip technology)
• Separate modulation oscillator
• Filter can produce sine wave
• Controlled filter emphasis to prevent accidental oscillation
• Continuously variable voltage controlled waveshapes
• One or two suboctave doubling also blendable
• Octave "click" switching 32' to 2'
• Wide Frequency knob can sweep oscillator pitch continuously over 8 octave range
• Modulation section features quick source-destination orientation
• Dual mode Sample and Hold - synchronous triggering or control output only
• Force sensitive keyboard - touch can take the place of the modulation wheel
• Patented Moog voltage controlled low pass filter, 24 dB per octave
• Reversible filter contours to create a whole new class of sounds
• Separate contour generators for VCF and VCA
• Ribbon "return to center" pitch bender - zero intertia playing
• "Open system" - Input/output capacity make it compatible with other Moog synthesizers, accessories, and audio sources such as the guitar
• Glide (variable) switchable from panel or footswitch

Power Requirements
VAC or 180-260 VAC
50/60 Hz. 18 watts
Detachable international power cord

Micromoog

The Micromoog is a compact musical instrument. It is designed to be fast and easy to play.
Control over performance.
It is constructed to be durable but light. The controls and keyboard are protected by its casing.
Control over handling.
It is an example of musical engineering.
The intuitive centre-return ribbon controller and performance wheel introduce musical feeling into electronic music.
Control over sound.
There are a minumum number of controls but a great deal of functions. The open system design allows extended input/output capability.
Control over price.

Features
• Temperature regulated ultra stable audio oscillator (heated chip technology)
• Separate modulationg oscillator
• Filter can produce pure sine wave
• Controlled filter emphasis to prevent accidental oscillation
• Controlled filter emphasis to prevent accidental oscillation
• Continuously variable voltage controlled waveshape
• One or two suboctave doubling - blendable
• Octave "click" switching - 32', 16', 8', 4', 2'.

Power Requirements
180-260 VAC. 50/60 Hz. 5 watts.

Minimoog

with new Drift Free circuitry

Minimoog introduced synthesizers to the performing musician - it is the classic lead-line performance synthesizer. What the player needs is a logical built controllable musical instrument, that sounds great. The Minimoog is such a musical instrument. Moog's musically engineered left hand controllers let you bend pitch intuitively and vary modulations such as vibrato with musical feel.
Try out the sound - control over sound - find out what makes a classic synthesizer - MINIMOOG.

Features
• Ultra stable oscillatiors
• Logical control panel layout with signal processing from left to right
• Three tone oscillators, each with separate octave clickers, waveform selectors, volume controls, on/off switches. Oscillators 2 and 3 have separate tuning controls. (Oscillator 1 is tuned with master tune control).

Power Requirements:
200 - 260 volts, 50-60 Hz.
10 watts maximum.
Specifications subject to change.

Taurus Pedal

The Moog Taurus Pedal Synthesizer lets you make music with your feet while your hands are busy playing keyboard, guitar, or drums.
The Taurus has three programmed voices and a voice that you can program completely. In performance you can select a Moog voice or your voice instantly. The Taurus is a variable synthesizer that features two audio oscillators to create phasing effects, parallel intervals, and rich percussive sounds. In addition functions like glide, decay, and pedalboard octave may be switched by foot during performance. And its five octave range makes Taurus more than a bass instrument.
Add another dimension to your control over sound - add a Moog Taurus pedal synthesizer.

Taurus Features
Three pre-programmed synthesizer voices: Bass, Tuba and Taurus
• One fully programmable voice. You create the sound and pre-set it yourself.
• Five octave range - 32', 16', 8', 4', 2'.
• Foot sliders for loudness and tone color variation.
• Ultra stable oscillator design: less than one cent (0,06%) short term drift, less than two cents (0,18%) long term drift.
• Electronic preset selectors. Preset never have to be canceled.

Polypedal Controller Functions

• Volume
• Filter and/or Pitch
• Sustain
• Trigger Mode Selector and Touch Switch
• Pitch Selector Tuneable from 0 over 1 octave

Polymoog Synthesizer

The Polymoog synthesizer. The instrument that re-designed the world of synthesis.
No other instrument offers the variety of sound, and control over sound, present at the Polymoog control panel. The fully polyphonic, touch responsive keyboards gives the Polymoog instant-play capabilities. Eight pre-programmed voices and a user-programmable voice give it instant-change capabilities. At any time, the pro-programmed voices can be altered with the variable controls, allowing limitless creation of new sounds. The versatility of a Polyphonic synthesizer. The expression of a performing keyboard. Get it all with the Polymoog Synthesizer.

Specifications
Outputs: Output Levels (5 outputs) )dBm nominal
Output Impedances (5 outputs) 600 ohms
Output Coupling: Mix output, single ended or balanced (XLR). Direct, VCF, MODE, RES; single ended
Keyboard Voltage: Adjustable from 0.9 to 1.2 volts/octave
S-trig: Single or multiple negative trigger; retrig 20msec.
Inputs: Filter 0.64 volts/octave
Pitch: 0.9 volts/octave
Sell (Loudness): 5 volts for 30 dB change
Mod Amount: 0-5 volt range
Ext syn, trig mode, sustain, glide, on/off, Switch closure.
VCF, RES, AUX: 0dBm
Power Requirements: 200-260 VAC; 0.5A/0.25A

Polymoog Keyboard

The Polymoog Keyboard is musically engineered to give you the tonal variety and breadth of expression of a primary keyboard. Fourteen programmed voices give you a variety of characteristic sounds from one keyboard.
The Polymmog Keyboard is velocity sensitive. It allows the same kind of intuitive touch sensivity as the piano. An individual voltage controlled filter and voltage controlled amplifier for each key lets you play without triggering problems.
Polymoog polyphony is not restricted - either by the number of notes playable simultaneously, or by the size of the 71 note keyboard.
Synthesizer tonal variety goes right down to voltage controlled oscillators.
Primary keyboard musicality is a keyboard that feel your fingers. Get them both together in the Polymoog Keyboard.

Features
• 14 pre-programmed voices: Vox Humana, Strings I, Strings II, Electric Piano, Grand Piano, Honky Tonk Piano, Clavinet, Harpsichord, Brass Solo, Brass Chorus, Pipe Organ, Rock Organ, Vibes, Funk.
• Multi-oscillator output for chorus effects
• Totally polyphonic touch sensitive keyboard
• Studio quality signal/noise ratio
• Monophonic synthesizer interface connections
• Stereo output configuration
• Variable modulation rate and amount
• Variable attack time
• Filtered lower keyboard output with level and frequency controls
• Foot control or pitch, sustain, trigger, and volume with optional Polypedal

Specifications
Sound Sources
Number of oscillators - 2 (71 ranks; slaved to precision VCO)
Articulators - 142 (VCA and VCF for each key)
Frequency range - E1-D7, 71 note keyboard: Pitch ribbon and external frequency control gives maximum of +- octave pitch control
Pitch stability - +- 0.0z% (+- 1/3 cent)
Pitch ribbon range - +- 7 semitones minimum
Fine tune range - +- 1 semitone
Beat tune range - +- 1/4 semitone
Voices
Number - 14 programmed
Voice modification controls - modulation rate and amount, octave balance (3), attack (sustaining voices)
Bass - 14 programmed: variable cutoff frequency and separate gain controls
Main - Nominal output level 0dBm (0.7 volts) output impedance - less than 3k
Bass - Nominal output level 0dBm (0.7 volts) output impedance less than 3k (plugging into bass output automatically isolates bass signal from main output)
Control Outputs
Keyboard control - Scale adjustable from 0.9 to 1.1 volts/octave with rear panel scale pot: range adjustable +- 1 1/2 semitones
Trigger - S trig (+- 15 to 0.0 VAC) single/multiple determined by trig mode switch or foot-switch
Keyboard control voltage - 30 db control with 0 to 5 VAC input impedance - 200k
Filter - 0.5 volts/octave input impedance - 1 mag (for BRASS voices)
Trigger - Switch to ground gives single trigger mode with trig switch in multiple position
Pitch - 0.7 volts/octave
Sustain - Switch to ground gives sustain
Accessory Power Outputs - +- 15, +5VDC at 100 ma available for each supply voltage.

Signal Processors

Vocoder

The Moog Vocoder is an instrument which continuously analyzes the timbral characteristics of one sound (program) and impresses these timbral characteristics upon a second signal (carrier). The most familiar use of this type of instrument is to impose vocal characteristics onto instrumental sounds. As a musical instrument, a large variety of musical effects are possible by applying different types of signals to the two audio inputs called the program and the carrier input.
The 16-channel Moog Vocoder has a variety of features especially developed and engineered for musical performance. These features make the instrument a powerful sound modifier for both live performance and for studio work.

Features
• Sixteen channels plus a special high frequency channel which operates either in the "direct" mode or in a "switched" mode which is activated by the presence of very high frequency sounds
• Fast six millisecond response time especially useful for percussive sounds
• Full external patching between the analyzer and synthesizer sections
• Patch select controls allows quick switching from the "normal" to the pre-selected patched configuration
• A bypass control switches the Vocoder in and out rapidly
• Foot switch jacks provide for live performance control of sample hold, patch select and Vocoder bypass
• Rugged Moog Signal Processer chassis with reversible end plates for rack mounting or free standing use
• 110/220 VAC, 50/60 Hz line voltage for world wide use.
• Overload indicators for indicating optimum signal-to-noise settings on the program and carrier inputs.

Specifications
Program Input
Nominal level
Line: 0dBm (0.7 volts)
Mic: 40dBm (0.007 volts)
Input Impedance
Line: 20k ohms
Mic 30k ohms
Carrier Input
Nominal Level: 0dBm (0.7 volts)
Input Impedance 100k ohms
Output
Level: + 10dBm (2.2 volts)
Output: 1 ohm
Effective Signal/Noise Ratio 60dB
Frequency Range
Overall: 50-15.000 Hz
Vocoder: 50-5.080 Hz
Gates or bypassed: 5.080-15.000 Hz

Parametric and Graphic Equalizers
Bringing the studio closer to home

Now, with Moog's Ten Band Graphic Equalizer and Three Band Parametric Equalizer you have the answer. Engineered for the studio technician and build for the stage musician. In fact, Moog's Signal Processors are ready veterans in recording studios - among producers, engineers and musicians alike. That says a lot for units that were built to handle the road. Moog Signal Processors were designed to meet the wide range demands of keyboard instruments - to handle a very wide dynamic range and extended frequency response. The controls on Moog's Signal Processors have a smooth, quiet action for precision adjustments. The Graphic Equalizer's sliders are protected from dust entering their mechanisms, so they stay smooth and quiet. The slider centre points are detented for fast easy reference you can feel. You can bypass the Graphic or Parametric by flipping the Status Switch for fast sound changes. And the Drive control lets you adjust the level of the Equalizer's internal signal to match the input signal. It lets you maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio with low output instruments and guards against overload from high output instruments. You can also uses Moog's Signal Processors as line drivers for long cords stretching across the stage. Moog's Signal Processors are designed for the studio and the road, right down to the two way chassis. In one position the carrying handles also protect the front panel, extending beyond the controls. In the other position there are two flanges, complete with screwholes, for mounting in a standard 19' rack space.

Accessories

1125 Sample & Hold

(Usable with Micromoog, Minimoog, Polymoog, Modular systems)
You've heard Moog's Sample & Hold creating a lot of extra special effects on a lot of today's hit recordings. It delivers a steady, rhythmic pattern of notes climbing up the scale, over again, or down the scale, or just jumping all around the scale at random. The glide control gives your music "animation" like vibrato. The Sample & Hold is like a drummer playing notes, so it's great accompaniment for drum solos. It'll put new life in the band's "rhythmic breaks". And it's a show stopper too with its extra special sound effects.

1150 Ribbon Controller

(Usable with Micromoog, Minimoog, Modular systems)
One of Moog's most popular accessories, the Ribbon Controller, is a whole new group of instruments in itself. You can use it as a Hawaiian guitar, theremin, "musical saw", and a lot of instruments you never heard of. The Ribbon Controller is a fretless fingerboard you play by just touching the ribbon. As you slide your finger to the right, the pitches rises. You can adjust the Ribbon Controller so that it ten or more octaves, or so its range and length correspond to that of a keyboard. Another slide control lets you "filter" the high frequencies. You can also use the Ribbon Controller as a loudness control, or even as a percussive instrument, tapping the ribbon to trigger a sound.

1121 Glide/Decay Footswitch

(Usable with Micromoog, Minimoog, Polymoog)
A lot of professional musicians know how dramatic it is to switch sounds instantly in the middle of a tune. But, if both your hands are busy playing, even flipping one little function switch is impossible. That's why the 1121 Footswitch is so valuable. It lets you turn either the glide or decay on the MINIMOOG (or both with 2 footswithces) on or off at the tap of your foot. On MICROMOOG it lets you turn modulation on and off.

1130 Percussion Controller

(Usable with Micromoog, Minimoog, Modular systems)
Everybody talks about having a "new beat". But, Moog's Percussion Controller is no idle talking. It's a "touch sensitive" drum that can control the pitch of the synthesizer, the filter, or both simultaneously. When you hit it harder the pitch rises and/or the filter opens. You can control the "sensitivity" of the drum (how hard you have to hit it to get a response) and the "scale" (how much it responds when you hit it). Now the drummer can play chords, wah wah, repeating patterns and so much more, he can't even be called a "drummer" anymore.

1120 Foot Pedal Controller

(Usable with Micromoog, Minimoog, Polymoog, Modular systems)
Like the 1121 Footswitch, the 1120 Foot Pedal Controller gives the musician a third hand - or rather a foot. It's a variable control that lets you control the pitch bend, cutoff frequency (for wah wah or tone color) or loudness (for "expression") with your foot. The Foot Pedal Controller can even operate two or more synthesizer functions simultaneously.

Flight Cases

To protect your Moog Synthesizer we now offer a range of flight cases for all models. These rugged cases are a must for the traveling musicians.

Synamp

Ask a recording engineer - violins require one mike, while guitar require another. Ask a sound reinforcement technician - one speaker suits the bass while another suits the horns. Even amps have to vary as instruments vary. That's why even the thought of creating the SynAmp was such a vast concept - because the synthesizer is such a vast instrument with so many sounds. The SynAmp was created to sound superb with every sound the synthesizer makes. And it was developed with expert help of the people who advanced the synthesizer ever since its beginnings - Moog Synthesizers have proven to be truly outstanding instruments. And now, thanks to the SynAmp, they'll sound more outstanding than ever.
Synamp Head
Features
• 400 watts continuous average power output. User selectable as 2 x 200 watts biamp or 2-200 watt full range power amplifiers
• Four input channels (capable of taking up to eight inputs with LED overload indication)
• Three band parametric equalizer for each input channel
• 10 Band Graphic Equalizer
• Effects Channel for detachable reverb section, switchable to external effects source
• Internal headphone monitor amplifier and house sound kill button for changing, checking or adjusting input levels of synthesizer patches without turning system down. Warning light indicates house sound off
• 60dB range peak reading meter
• Internal four pole active crossover and equalizer for Biamp use
• Two compressors - one for each amplifier with indication lamps
• Clipping indicator for each power amp
• Comprehensive back panel for various patching operations
• Amp and Speaker test facility
Synamp Cabinet
Features
• Two 15' low frequency premium grade drivers in computer assisted vented enclosure design
• Compression driver and horn mid-range
• Compression driver wide dispersion tweeters
• Mid and High frequency driver protection circuitry with automatic reset
• Speaker cover panels for protection during transit

Studio Systems

The big modular systems from Moog are what started the synthesizer revolution. There are three basic systems in the modular range. Systems 15, 35 and 55. As the word modular implies the systems are moade up with modules which can be changed or simply added to the basic system you buy.
The biggest system, the 55, in two cabinets comprises:
• 6 x oscillators in two banks
• 2 x oscillator drivers
• 1 x low frequency oscillator
• 1 x fixed bank filter
• 1 x voltage controlled low pass filter
• 1 x voltage controlled high pass filter
• 5 x envelope generators
• 1 x dual trigger delay
• 1 x sequencer
• 1 x attenuator panel
• 1 x multiple panel
• 1 x random noise generator
• 5 octave keyboard

A total of 36 individual modules each with a specific function in sound generation, processing or control are contained in the system 55.
Only the finest, 100% professional quality components are used in construction of the Synthesizer to provide reliable performance and durability. Careful consideration has been given to the placement of individual modules within the system, to provide convenient and logical inter-connections. The most used control connections can be internally selected by switches to reduce patch-cord use.
Most important, these features are the culmination of more than a decade of collaboration between Moog Music and leading musicians throughout the world - to create a system providing musical control of the vast potential of electronic sound.

Moog Studio Systems are only available to special order.

Product Length Depth Height Weight
CM CM CM KG
Micro 61 38 14 9
Mini 72 41 14 13
Taurus 62 51 21 13
Poly Synthesizer 114 57 16 33
Poly Keyboard 114 57 16 32
Vocoder 44 39 17 9
Multimoog 81 38 14 12
Signal Processors 48 9 18 4
Syn Amp 56 57 28 45
Syn Amp Low Frequency
Cabinet 73 56 135 95
Syn Amp Mid Range
Cabinet 73 51 30 27

Norlin™
Another Quality Product from Norlin

Norlin Worldwide:
USA: 7373 N Cicero Avenue, Lincolnwood, Illinois 60646
Europe: Waalhaven ZZ48, Rotterdam, Nederlands
UK: Woolpack Lane, Braintree, Essex
International & Canada: 51 Nantucker Blvd., Scarborough, Ontario, Canada

Printed in the UK 0611503

↧

CRUMAR Toccata organ (text in english)

August 30, 2012, 8:03 pm

≫ Next: Moog Prodigy poster (late '70s)

≪ Previous: Moog catalog (late '70s)

Founded in the late '60s/early '70s by Mario Crucianelli, Crumar was an Italian company that became very famous in its time mainly by their synths, keyboards and organs (both in compact or not so compact models). Mario was brother from Pierro Crucianelli, president of Elka - another very well known Italian company. Crumar existed until 1987 and the company's golden age was in the second half of the '70s, when they put on the market their "Pianoman" and "Stringman" models (1974) and later the model that combined the two machines in one, the "Multiman" model (1977). Even with this machines achieving a great reputation on the market, for me Crumar's coolest instruments are the "Hammond organ clones" made from 1974 on which had a great sound, very close to Hammond organs, but much more compact and easier to carry than the originals.

The Crumar Toccata organ was released in 1981 as a more compact version of all previous models of these "Hammond clones", more specifically the model T1/C (whose main difference was having one extra octave - higher than the Toccata's four octaves - and drawbars, like that ones from Hammond organs). The Crumar Toccata organ was manufactured until 1986.

With four octave of extension (49 keys) the Toccata organ is fully polyphonic and has eight presets with various organ sounds (from the emphasis on the lower to the higher harmonic overtones). It also has controls of vibrato and a very interesting Leslie cabinet simulator, very close to the sound of the original - the closest I found in organs that have this feature built in. Both vibrato and Leslie simulator (called "Chorale" on Crumar Toccata) has two preset speeds and "Chorale" can be selected via a foot-switch connected by a single cable P-10 in the rear of the instrument. It also has two percussion controls on/off (in 4' and 2 2/3') with independent volume and decay plus a click to the notes. A knob for tuning and an audio output (along with the aforementioned jack for footswitch) on the rear complete the Crumar Toccata.

I did not find any information about artist who has used Crumar Toccata in recording or live performances. It's even hard to find anyone - to mention famous players - who has used a Crumar instrument (I only found references to Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran and the jazz/crazy musician Sun Ra, beyond the curious fact that Dr. Robert Moog and engineer Jim Scott were involved with the design of the Spirit synthesizer made by Crumar in 1983). But I used my Crumar Toccata organ as my main organ sound on almost anything, including my first solo album ("Petiscos: sabor churrasco/switched-on Bah!", 2004), on the CD I recorded with Jimi Joe ("Saudade do future", 2005), on Jupiter Maçã's CD "Uma tarde na fruteira" (this organ sound is pretty much the main instrument on the songs "Marchina psichotica do dr. Soup", "Mademoiselle Marchand" and "Sorvete com vocês") and I also played it on several songs from my good friend Plato Divorak! It is the organ that I take for every show I perform or play as a guest musician. My Crumar Toccata organ and my Moog Prodigy that travel more frequently with me (both have almost the same flight hours that me!)

I have my Crumar Toccata organ since 1997. The first album I used it was also the first professional recording in which I participated, the CD "Era uma vez um gato xadrex" by "Acretinice me Atray" (released in 1998). I purchased my Crumar from Fabio Bohn, owner of Arbon, a well known manufacturer of organs and harmoniums in Novo Hamburgo, Rio Grande do Sul. I do not recall how much I paid but I think that was the equivalent of about $ 500, an expensive amount for me in that time, especially if compared with other instruments that I bought in the same period. Fabio also had a "Leslie"-like rotary speaker from Yamaha and remember that I was happy and sad at the same time: happy to buy the organ and sad for not having enough money at this "Leslie". The serial number of my Crumar Toccata is R8/006 3 and, because I use it constantly, I've had to make some adjustments and fix it sometimes. The main repairs were replacing the fuse socket and remake the entire back of the organ - both the socket and the rear part of the cabinet were broken during a flight from Recife to Porto Alegre, in December 2009. To replace the wood from the back side of the organ, I had the help of my friend Roger Severo, an artist from Uruguaiana who lives in São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul - the city I was born.

photos: Kay Mavrides

I recorded this video on April 19, 2011!

I thought this ad nifty '80s, the internet:

↧

Moog Prodigy poster (late '70s)

September 11, 2012, 9:36 pm

≫ Next: Five questions to Jon Appleton

≪ Previous: CRUMAR Toccata organ (text in english)

Prodigy by MOOG

The Prodigy. Moog's new baby.

The Prodigy is the result of an extensive design and development programme aimed at producing a light, compact and simple to operate instrument which retains all of Moog's famous features at a price which brings it within even the most limited budget.

The Controls

Musical engineering is what Moog's design philosophy is all about. All the knobs and effects in the world are no good unless they are easily to hand and perform a truly musical function. From the beginning, the Prodigy was designed to incorporate all the essential features which go towards a complete performance instrument enabling fast sound changes with a minimum of fuss.
Moog's legendary attention to detail has even extended to developing our own "E-Z-See" knobs, designed to let players see the positions of each function from virtually any playing angle - a rather useful feature when your Prodigy is stacked on top of half a dozen other keyboards on a badly lit stage.

The Features

All on Moog's famous features are in the Prodigy. The fat Moog sound is there courtesy of our patented filter, together with two ultra stable voltage controlled oscillators. Fast action switches make changing functions easy and positive and Moog's famous pitch bend and modulation wheels are there to give your music added feeling through their special effects.
Clad in its real maple cabinet, the Prodigy is packed with exciting features, yet it weighs only sixteen pounds and costs a lot less than you would expect.

*

Le Prodigy est l'aboutissement d'un programme intensif de création et de développment visant à produire un instrument léger et compact, d'une utilisation facile, en conservant intégralement toutes les fameuses caractétistiques Moog, et cela à un prix à portée de toutes les bourses, même les plus modestes.

Les commandes

L'engineering musical, c'est vraiment la cause à laquelles s'est vouée la philosophie de conception de Moog. Tous les boutons et les effets du monde n'ont de valeur que s'ils sont commodes et très maniables et assurent une fonction vraiment musicale. Dès le départ, le Prodigy a été conçu pour intédrer toutes les caractéristiques essentielles d'un instrument de performance complet, permettant le passage rapide d'un son à autre avec le minimumde complications.
La minutie légendaire de Moog nous a amenés à mettre au point nos propres boutons dits "E-Z-See" conçus pous permettre aux exécutants de voir les positions de chaque fonction sous pratiquement n'importe quel angle d'utilisation - particularité fort utile lorsque votre Prodigy se trouve sur une demi-douzaine d'autres claviers sur une scène mal éclairée.

Les caractéristiques

Toutes les fameuse caractéristiques de Moog se restrouvent dans le Prodigy. Le fameux timbre Moog est dû à notre filtre breveté et l'on a aussi deux oscillateurs ultra-stables à régulation de tension. Grâce à leurs effets spéciaux, les sélecteurs à action rapide facilitent le passage d'une fonction à une autre et les fameuses commandes d'atténuation de hauteur du son et de modulation confèrent á votre musique un phrasé plus personnel et plus direct.
Protégé par son ébénisterie en bois d'érable autentique, le Prodigy est bourré de particularités intéressantes, ne pèse que 7,25 kg et coûte bien moins que vous ne pourriez l'imaginer.

*

Am Ende eines umfangreichen Forschings- und Entwicklungs-programms steht Progidy, ein Instrument, das von Anfang an so gebaut wurde, daß es leicht, handlich und einfach zu spielen ist. Und alles, was Moog berühmt gemacht hat, gibt es zu einem Preis, der auch noch kleinstein Kasse paßt.

Die Regler

Alle Regler und Tricks dieser Welt nützen Ihnen nichts, wenn sie nicht griffgünstig liegen und wenn wenn sie keine echte musikalische Funktion haben. Deshalb hat Moog sich den Begriff des "Musical Engineering" zum Grundsatz gemacht. Das heißt, daß der Prodigy schon von Grund auf für den Einbau aller Elemente ausgelegt wurde, die man für ein Instrument mit allen Funktionen braucht und die schnelle Tonwechsel ohne viel Gefummel möglich machen.
Die legendäre Gewissenhaftigkeit von Moog geht sogar so weit, daß eigene Reglerknöpfe entwickelt wurden, "E-Z-See" gennant. Damit sieht der Musiker praktisch aus jedem Blickwinkel genau, in welcher Position sie gerade stehen - nützlich, wenn Ihr Prodigy auf einem Stapel anderer Instrumentl steht oder wenn die Bühne nur schlecht ausgeleuchter ist.

Die Features

Der Prodigy kann alles, was ein richtiger Moog können muß. Mit dem patentierter Filter und zwei ultrastabilen, spannunggeregelten Oszillatoren wird der satte Moog-Sound geschaffen und mit den besonders schnellen Schaltern werden die Funktionen schnell und sicher gewählt. Die Sondereffekte, die durch die berühmte Moog-Tonstufeneinstellung und die Modulation-sscheiben erst möglich werden, geben Ihrer Musik ein ganz anderes Feeling.
Alle seine phantastischen Features stecken in einem Gehäuse aus echtem Ahornholz, aber trotzdem wiegt der Prodigy unter acht kilo und kostelet viel weniger, als Sie denken.

*

"E-Z-See" knob / Bouton "E-Z-See" / "E-Z-See" Spezialknopf

Fast action switch / Sélecteur à action rapide / Schnellschalter

Everything to hand / Tout à la portée de la main / Alles liegt griffgünsitg

Performance control wheels / Boutons de commande de performance / Performance - Scheiben

*

TUNE
Master Tuning for setting pitch to other instruments
TUNE
Accord principal servant à donner le ton aux autres instruments
ABSTIMMUNG
Hauptabstimmung zur Anpassung an anderes Instrumente

MODULATION RATE CONTROL
Varies modulation speed
COMMANDE DU TAUX DE MODULATION
Elle modifie le taux de modulation
REGLUNG DER MODULATIONSGESCHWINDIGKEIT
Steurt die Modulationsgschwindigkeit

MODULATION ASSIGNMENT
Separate switching to oscillators and/or filter
AFFECTATION DE LA MODULATION
Commutation distincte aux oscillateurs et/ou au filtre
MODULATIONSZUTEILUNG
Separate Schaltung für Oszilatoren und/oder Filter

OCTAVE
Each oscillator has three switchables octaves (footages) ranging from 32' on oscillator 1, to 4' on oscillator 2.
OCTAVE
Chaque oscillateur présente trois octaves commutables s'echelonnant de 32' sur l'oscillateur 1, à 4' sur l'oscillateur 2
OKTAVE
Jeder Oszillator hat drei schaltbare Oktaven (Dreichörig), von 32 fuß am Oszillator 1, bis zu 4 fuß am Oszillator 2.

SYNC
Switchable oscillator synchronisation automatically locks pitch of both oscillators together with pitch wheel to achieve dramatic harmonic phasing effects.
SYNCHRO
La synchronisation de l'oscillateur, commutable, accorde automatiquement les deux oscillateurs avec un bouton de variation de timbre pour produire des effets impressionants de mise en phase d'harmoniques.
SYNCH
Synchronisierschalter für Oszillator schaltet automatisch die Tonhöhe der beiden Oszillatoren mit dem Tonhöhenregler zusammen - für dramatische Oberwelleneffekte.

MIXER
Master volume control is sited at centre of control panel, next to the filter cutoff frequency control, for maximum control of sound. Mixing facility also includes individual oscillator volume controls.
MIXEUR
La commande principale de volume est située au centre du panneau de commande près du stabilisateur de fréquence de coupure du filtre, pour le contrôle maximal du son. Les moyens de mixage comprennent aussi les commandes individuelles de volume d'oscilateur.
MISCHER
Haupttonstärkenreglung liegt in der Mitte der Tafel neben der Filtergrenzfrequenzeinstellung, um die beste Klangreglung zu ermöglichen. Die Mischeinrichtung enthält auch separate Lautstärkenregler für die Oszillatoren.

THE MOOG FILTER
Moog's fat filter. 24dB/octave, including self oscillation feature to provide and extra sound source.
LE FILTRE MOOG
Filtre de timbre Moog. 24dB/octave, avec auto-oscillation pour fournir une source musicale supplémentaire.
DIE MOOG FILTER
Moog's satter Filter. 24dB/Oktave, mit Einrichtung für selbsterregte Schwingungen als zusätzliche Klangquelle.

FILTER AND LOUDNESS CONTOUR CONTROLS
Two envelope generators: one for VCF, one for VCA with Attack, Decay/Release, Sustain.
COMMANDES DE COUBRE D'INTENSITE SONORE ET FILTER
Deux générateurs d'enveloppe: l'un pour le VCF et l'autre pour le VCA avec Attaque, Atténuation/Coupure, "Soutenu".
FILTER-UND LAUTSTARKEN KONTURREGLER
Zwei Hüllkurvengeneratoren: einer für VCF, der andere für VCA mit Anstieg, Abklingen/lösen, Hatten.

RELEASE SWITCH
Assigns release control to keyboard
COMMANDE DE COUPURE
Elle attribue la fonction de coupure au clavier
AUSLOSESCHALTER
Schaltet Auslösereglung zur Tastatur

FILTER KEYBOARD TRACKING
For keyboard control of filter brightness.
REGLAGE DE FILTRE AU CLAVIER
Pour commander l'intensité du filtre au moyen du clavier
FILTEREINSTELLUNG AUF TASTATUR
Für Reglung der Filterhelligkeit auf der Tastatur.

GLIDE
Smooth linear glide (Portamento)
GLISSADE
Passage linéaire insensible d'un son à un autre (Glissade)
GLIDE
Weicher Linear-Glide (Portamento)

PERFORMANCE CONTROLS
For added musical feeling. Pitch wheel for bending notes. With notched centre position. Modulation wheel. Adds modulation for special effects.
COMMANDES DE PERFORMANCE
Pous um phrasé musical plus personnel. Bouton de hauteur pour modifier le ton. Position centrale crantée. Bouton de modulation. Fournit la modulation pour produire des effets spéciaux.
PERFORMANCE-SCHEIBEN
Für zusätzliches Musikgefühl. Tonstufen-Reglerscheiben für das Beugen von Tönen, mit Kerbe in Mittelstellung. Modulationsregler. Zusätzliche Modulation für Sondereffekte.

MODULATION SHAPE
Triangular and square wave shapes available.
FORMES D'ONDE MODULEES
Possibilité de formes d'onde triangulaires et carrées.
MODULATIONSFORM
Sägerzahn- und Rechteckwellenformen stehen zur Verfügung.

INTERVAL
Tuning control for oscillator 2. For detuning effects, adding intervals as marked on scale.
INTERVALLE
Commande d'accord pour l'oscillateur 2. Pous des effets de "désaccord", en ajoutant les intervalles indiqués seu l'échelle.
PAUSE
Regler für Oszillator 2. Für Resonanz-Effekte unter Zugabe der auf der Skala markierten Pausen.

WAVEFORMS
1. Sawtooth
2. Triangle
3. Square
4. Retangle
FORMES D'ONDE
1. En dents de scie
2. Triangulaires
3. Carrées
4. Rectanulaires
WELLENFORMEN
1. Sägerzahn
2. Dreieck
3. Viereck
4. Rechteck

INVIVIDUAL OSCILLATOR VOLUME CONTROLS
COMMANDES INDIVIDUELLES DE VOLUME D'OSCILLATEUR
SEPARATE LAUTSTÄRKENREGLER FÜR DIE OSZILLATOREN

*

SPECIFICATIONS

POWER REQUIREMENTS:
Operating voltage range: 200 to 270 volts 50Hz
Power consumption: less than 10 watts

CONTROLLERS:
Keyboard: 32 note F to C
Glide: Linear, continuously variable from less than 2 msec to 3 sec. (10% to 90%, bottom to top of keyboard).
Tune control range: +- 3 semitones
Pitch wheel range: Greater than +- perfect fifth
Keyboard Sample & Hold drift: Less than 1mV/10 sec.
Modulation oscillator rate: From .26Hz to 31Hz.
Modulation oscillator waveshapes: Triangle and square
Amount of Modulation (Square wave):
Oscillator: from zero to 1 octave
Filter: from zero to 4.5 octaves

OSCILLATOR 1:
Reference frequency for low F (octave=32'): 44.4 +- 0.1Hz
Scale factor accuracy: 0.1% from 44Hz to 1.5KHz
Range drift due to temperature: 32ºF to 100ºF less than .02%/ºC
Waveforms: Sawtooth, triangle, rectangular
Pulse duty cycle: 10%
Octave switch footages: 23', 16', 8'
Octave switch accuracy" 0.3%
Oscillators will not lock when not in sync.

OSCILLATOR 2:
Reference frequency for low F (octave=16'): 88.8+-0.2Hz
Scale factor accuracy: 0.1% from 88Hz to 3KHz
Range drift due to temperature: 32ºF to 100ºF less than .02%/ºC
Scale factor drift due to temperature: 32ºF to 100ºF less than .02%/ºC
Waveforms: Sawtooth, triangle, square
Pulse duty cycle: 50%
Octave switch footages: 16', 8', 4'
Octave switch accuracy: 0.3%
Interval control range: Greater than +- perfect fifth

OSCILLATOR SYNCHRONIZATION:
In the sync mode, Oscillator 2's sawtooth wave can be reset by itself orby the reset pulse from Oscillator 1. This locks the fundamental frequency of Oscillator 2 to Oscillator 1 generating a complex waveform. When in the Sync mode the pitch wheel is rerouted only to Oscillator 2.

CONTOUR GENERATORS:
Number: Two (one for controlling the filter through an attenuator, the other for controlling the voltage controlled amplifier)
Range of Attack times: From 1 msec to 10 sec.
Range of Decay/Release times: From 1 msec to 10 sec minimum
Range of Sustain level: From 0 to 100% of contour peak.

VOLTAGE CONTROLLED LOW PASS FILTER:
Type: 24dB/octave cutoff slope
Filter-Keyboard tracking: three position
Slide switch allows routing of control voltage to filter
0 filter does not track keyboard
1/2 2 octaves of keyboard equals to one octave on filter
1 filter tracks keyboard within 1%
Cutoff frequency (with control set to zero, in self oscillating mode) 666 +- 50Hz
Range of filter cutoff control: 8 octaves
Maximum sweep of cutoff frequency by filter contour generator: 8 octaves

VOLTAGE CONTROLLED AMPLIFIER:
Audio output level: 0dBm
Bleed through level: Better than -75dBm
Output offset: less than 100mV

BURN-IN (AGING):
Before final calibration, units are burned in for 72 hrs. at ambient of approximately 72ºF
208 VAC, 50Hz

DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHT:
Overall size: 5 5/8" high, 14 15/16" deep, 23 1/4" wide.
Net weight: 16 lbs.

ALIMENTATIONS ELECTRIQUES:
Plage de tension de service 220 à 270 volts, 50Hz
Consommation de courant: Inférieure à 10 watts

ORGANES DE COMMANDE:
Clavier: 32 notes de fa à do
Glissande: Linéaire, variable à l'infini despuis, moins de 2 ms jusqu'à 3 s (10 à 90%, partie inférieure à partie supérieure du clavier).
Plage de commande d'accord: +- 3 demi-tons
Plage du bouton de variation de timbre: supérieure à +- quinte juste
Glissement de discrimination & maintien du clavier: Moins de 1 mV/10s.
Taux de modulation d'oscillateur: de 0,26Hz à 31Hz.
Enveloppes de modulation de l'oscillateur: triangulaires et carrées.
Valeur de modulation (onde carrée)
Oscillateur: de zéro à 1 octave
Filtre: de zéro à 4,5 octaves.

OSCILLATEUR 1:
Fréquence de réference pour fa bas (Octave=32'): 44,4+-0,1Hz
Précisiondu facteur de proportionnalité" 0,1% de 44Hz à 1,5kHz
Glissement de gamme dû à la température: De 0 à 38ºC, moins de 0,02% par degré C.
Formes d'onde: en dents de scie, triangulaires, rectangulaires
Coefficient d'utilisation d'impulsions: 10%
Longueurs des électeur d'octave: 32', 16', 8'
Précision de sélecteur d'octave: 0,3%
Les oscillateurs ne sont accordés que s'ils sont synchronisés.

OSCILLATEUR 2:
Fréquence de réference pour fa bas (Octave 16'): 88,8 +- 0,2Hz
Précision de facteur de proportionnalité: 0,1% de 88Hz à 3kHz, moins de 0,02% par degré C
Glissement de gamme dû à la température: De 0 à 38ºC, moins de 0,02% par degré C
Glissement du facteur de proportinnalité dû à la température: De 0 à 38ºC, moins de 0,02% par degré C
Formes d'onde: dents de scie, triangulaire, carrée
Corfficient d'utilisation d'impulsions: 50%
Longeurs de sélecteur d'octave: 16', 8', 4'
Précision de sélecteur d'octave: 0,3%
Plage de commande d'intervalle: Supérieure à +- quinte juste.

SYNCHRONISATION DES OSCILLATEURS:
Dans le mode synchro, l'onde en dents de scie del'oscillateur 2 peut être réenclenchée soit automatiquement soit par l'impulsion de réenclenchement de l'oscilateur 1, ce qui accorde la fréquence fondamentale de l'oscillateur 2 sur celle de l'oscillateur 1, de manière à produire una forme d'onde complexe. Dans le mode synchro, de réglage du bouton de variation de timbre n'est retransmis qu'à l'oscillateur 2.

GENERATEUR D'ENVELOPPE:
Nombre: deux (une pour la commande du filtre, par l'intermédiaire d'un atténuateur, l'autre por la commande de l'amplificateur à reegulation de tension).
Plage des temps d'attaque: 1ms à 10s
Plage des temps d'atténuation/coupure: 1ms à 10s minimum.
Plage de niveau de "Soutenu": 0 à 100% de la crête d'enveloppe.

FILTRE PASSE-BAS A REGULATION DE TENSION:
Type: seuil de coupure de 24dB/octave
Réglage filter-clavier: trois positions
Le curseur permet d'amener la tension de commande au filtre

0 le filtre este indepéndent du clavier

1/2 2 octaves de clavier = une octave de filtre

1 le filtre suit le clavier dans les limites de 1%

Fréquence de coupure (avec la commande amenée sur zéro, dans le mode à auto-oscillation)

666+-50Hz.

Plage de la commande d'arrêt de filtre: 8 octaves

Balayage maximal de la fréquence de coupure par le générateur d'enveloppe de filtre: 8 octaves.

AMPLIFICATEUR A REGULATION DE TENSION:
Niveau de sortie audio: 0 dBm
Niveau de fuite: meilieur que -75 dBm.
Décalange de sortie: moins de 100 mV.

EPREUVE DE VIELLISSEMENT:
Avant l'étalonnage définitif, les équipements sont mis en service pendant 72 heures, à une température ambiante de l'ordre de 22ºC 208 V c.; 50Hz.

DIMENSIONS ET POIDS:
Dimensions globales: 14cm (haut.) x 38cm (prof.) x 59cm (larg.)
Poids net: 16 livres (7,25kg).

TECHNISCHE DATEN EINGANGSLEISTUNG:
Betriebßpannung Verbrauch: 200 bis 270V 50Hz weniger als 10W

BEDIENUNGSELEMENTE:
Tastatur: 32 Tasten F bis C
Gide: Linear, stufenlos regelbar von weniger als 2m/s bis 3 s (10% bis 90%, unten bis oben Tastatur).
Abstimmbereich: +- 3 Halbtöne
Tonstufenregelbereich: Größer als +- vollkommene quinte.
Tastatur Sample & Hold Drift: Weniger als 1mV/10s.
Modulationsgeschwindigkeit: Von 0,26 bis 31Hz
Modulationswellenformen des Oszillators: Sägezahn und Rechteck.
Modulationsstärke (Rechteckwelle)
Oszillator: von Null bis 1 Oktave
Filter von Null bis 4,5 Oktaven

OSZILLATOR 1:
Bezugfrequenz für unteres F (Oktave = 32'): 44,4 +- 0,1Hz
Genauigkeit des Maßstabfaktors: 0,1% von 44Hz bis 1,5kHz.
Teperaturdrift im Bereich 0 bis 40ºC: weniger als 0,02%
Wellenformen: Sägezahn, Dreieck, Rechteck.
Impulstastverhältnis: 10%
Oktaveshaltlängen: 32', 16', 8'
Oktavenschaltgenauigkeit: 0,3%
Oszillatoren verriegeln nur in 'Sync'

OSZILLATOR 2:
Bezugsfrequenz für unteres F (Oktave 16'): 88,8 +- 0,2Hz.
Genauigkeit des Maßstabfaktors: 0,1% von 88Hz bis 3kHz.
Teperaturdrift im Bereich 0 bis 40ºC: weniger als 0,2%
Temperaturdrift des Maßstabfaktors im Bereich 0 bis 40ºC: weniger als 0,2%
Wellenformen: Sägerzahn, Dreieck, Rechteck
Impulsastverhältnis: 50%
Oktavenschaltlängen: 16', 8', 4'
Oktavenschaltgenauigkeit: 0,3%
Pausenregelbereich: Größer als +- volkommene Quinte

SYNCHRONISIERUNG DER OSZILLATORE:
In Arbeitweise Sync. wir die Sägezahnwelle von Oszillator 2 automatisch oder durch einen Impuls von Oszillator 1 zurückgestellt. Dadurch wir die Grundwelle von Oszillator 2 mit Oszillator 1 verriegelt um eine komplexe Welenformen zu erreichen. In Betriebsart Sync. wirkt die Tonstufenreglung nur auf Oszillator 2.

KONTURGENERATOREN:
Anzahl: 2 (einer für Reglung des Filtres durch ein Dämpfungsglied, einer für Steuerung des spannungsregelten (Verstärkers).
Bereich der Anstiegszeiten: Von 1ms bis 10s.
Bereich der Abkling/Lösezeiten: Von 1ms bis 10s Min.
Bereich für Dauerton: Von 0 bis 100% von Konturspitze.

TIEFPASSFILTER MIT SPANNUNGSREGLER:
Typ: 24dB/Oktave Grenzgerfälle
Nachführung Filter/Tastatur: Drei Stellungen
Gleitregler erlaubt Anlegen der Steuerspannung an den Filter

0 Kein Nachführen von Filter zur Tastatur

1/2 2 Oktaven der Tastatur = 1 Oktave am Filter

1 Nochführen des Filter zur Tastatur innerhalb 1%

Grensfrequenz (Regler auf Null gestellt, in selbsterregender Betriebsart): 666+-50Hz

Bereich der Grenzfrequenzreglung 8 Oktaven

Größte Ablenkung der Grenzfrequenz durch Filterkonturgenerator: 8 Oktaven

VERSTÄRKER MIT SPANNUNGSREGLER:
Tonfrequenzleistung: 0dBm
Durchlaßbereich: besser als - 75dBm
Ausgangsverschiebung: weniger als 100mV

EINLAUFEN (ALTERRUNG):
Vor der endgültigen Eichung werden die Geräte 72 Stunden bei einer Umgebungstemperatur von 25ºC eingelaufen, Ausführungen bei 208V Wechselstrom 50Hz

ABMESSUGEN UND GEWICHT:
Gesamtabmessungen: 142,8mm hoch, 380mm tief, 590mm breit
Nettonewicht: 7,25kg.

MOOG® SYNTHESIZERS

NORLIN

Europe:
Waalhaven ZZ48
Rotterdam
Nederland.

International & Canada:
51 Nantucket Boulevard
Scaraborough
Ontario.

Printed in U.K. 061 510

↧

Five questions to Jon Appleton

September 26, 2012, 4:26 pm

≫ Next: Cinco perguntas para Jon Appleton

≪ Previous: Moog Prodigy poster (late '70s)

Jon Howard Appleton was born in Los Angeles, California on January 4th, 1939. He is a composer, author, music teacher and a pioneer in electro-acoustic music. In the late '50s he became a college professor after graduating at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In the early '60s he moved to San Francisco, California and simultaneously to his studies with Andrew Imbrie at the University of California he began to teach music at the Verde Valley School in Sedona, Arizona where he conducted the choir and orchestra, taught music theory, history and piano lessons. After graduating at University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, he assembled a primitive electronic music studio and composed his first works in this genre. In the mid-sixties he was invited by Vladimir Ussachevsky to study at the legendary Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Studios and soon after that he began to teach at the Dartmouth College in New Hampshire (where he formed the graduate program in electro-acoustic music in 1989 and taught until 2009). In the mid seventies Jon left the Dartmouth College in 1976-1977 when he assumed the position of director of Elektronmusikstudion, Sweden's national center for electronic music. After that Jon returned to Dartmouth College and taught in several institutions and Universities all around the world (like Keio University in Tokyo) and helped the composer/engineer Andre Smirnov to establish the Theremin Center at the Moscow Conservatory of Music, where Jon also teaches at least once a year!

In 1969 Appleton published his first recordings ("Appleton Syntonic Menageire" and also his collaboration with jazz musician Don Cherry on the album "Human Music"). Since that he recorded several albums, many of them played on the Synclavier (called Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer in the first years), an instrument he developed with Sydney Alonso and Cameron Jones. This instrument was very famous - mainly in the eighties, when it became very well known even being a very expensive machine. His compositions includes works for Orchestra, Chamber, Vocal, Choral, Piano, Synclavier and other digital instruments and, of course, electro-acoustic music!

You can find more infos on Jon's website: www.appletonjon.com

I met Jon Appleton in São Paulo on last august. He was invited by his former student Vanderlei Lucentini to come to Brazil to some lectures and a pocket concert at an event called Actamedia 10 in which Vanderlei was the curator. Jon Appleton is a very kind and gentle man. And very funny (what was one of the main things I liked in Jon: his good sense of humor!). I wish to thank so much Jon for this interview and for being always very kind! And also want to thank Vanderlei Lucentini for the opportunity of meeting Jon personally!

Jon Appleton & Astronauta Pinguim - São Paulo (august, 2012)

Here's my five questions to Jon Appleton:

ASTRONAUTA - Jon, what are your musical memories from your childhood and when did you noticed that you'd like to be a professional musician? And how did you became interested in electro-acoustic/electronic music?

APPLETON - I wanted to become a composer from the time I was six years old. At nine years old I composed "The Martian Concerto". Juvenal.

ASTRONAUTA - In the early '90s you helped to organize the Theremin Center for Electronic Music at the Moscow Conservatory of Music. And since then you continue to teach there once a year. How is your relation with the theremin, is that an instrument you like to play or to compose for? And how about Leon Theremin, did you knew him? What's your impression about him and the instrument he created?

APPLETON - I met Lev Theremin in Bourges, France. (See this historic photo with Theremin, me, Moog, Buchla, etc.) I have composed three pieces for theremin - all of them for Lydia Kavina. The instrument is difficult to play musically. I don't understand why people are so fascinated with it.

ASTRONAUTA - You are one of the few persons in the world who invented/developed a musical instrument (the Synclavier, the first commercial digital synthesizer). How was the process to build the first prototype and make the necessary adjustments till you, Sydney Alonso and Cameron Jones said "ok, here's the synclavier!"? Do you still have one of these first Synclaviers (and still plays this instrument sometimes)?

APPLETON - I have the first and the second Synclavier but I don't play them. I am not sure they work. Sydney and Cameron and I developed the instrument first from something called The Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer. It was my conception and their design.

ASTRONAUTA - I'm a MOOG aficionado, as you may have noticed. You used a Moog Synthesizer as your main instrument in the album you recorded with Don Cherry, "Human Music" (1970). How did you meet Robert Moog and what are your impressions about him? And how about Don Cherry and your impressions about the album you recorded together?

APPLETON - Bob Moog was a very gentle and kind person. He was a terrible businessman. See photo. I met Bob at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1965. Don Cherry and I met through our record label Flying Dutchman. He had an enormous musical imagination and was willing to try anything.

ASTRONAUTA - Your piece "Chef d'Ouevre" is very nice! It's an electro-acoustic piece but, in my head, I make a comparison with Andy Warhol and pop-art that was emerging almost at the same period (don't know if I'm being fool to make this comparison...) Did you like the pop-art movement in the sixties and it kind of influenced you somehow? Or, better, what other art forms influenced your music?

APPLETON - Maybe many artists at the time were interested in incorporating elements of popular culture in the late 1960s. I don't know many composers who did this. "Chef d'Ouevre"attracted a lot of attention because of this. It was actually released on a 45 rpm record with "Newark Airport Rock" on the second side. My favorite piece from this era is "Time Square Times Ten" (http://www.folkways.si.edu/TrackDetails.aspx?itermid=32519). You can hear a Moog Synthesizer in the piece.

Jon.

↧

Cinco perguntas para Jon Appleton

September 26, 2012, 7:11 pm

≫ Next: ELKA Rhapsody 490 (text in english)

≪ Previous: Five questions to Jon Appleton

Jon Howard Appleton nasceu em Los Angeles (California, USA) no dia 4 de janeiro de 1939. Ele é compositor, autor, professor de música e um dos pioneiros no campo da música eletro-acústica. No final dos anos 50 ele passou a lecionar depois de se formar no Reed College, em Portland (Oregon, USA). No início dos anos 60 ele mudou-se para San Francisco (também na California, USA) e, simultâneamente aos seus estudos com Andrew Imbrie na Universidade da California, ele passou a lecionar música na Verde Valley School em Sedona (Arizona), onde ele regia o coral e a orquestra e ensinava teoria musical, história da música e piano. Depois de se formar na Universidade do Oregon em Eugene, Oregon, ele contruiu um estúdio de música eletrônica básico e compôs seus primeiros trabalhos neste gênero. Na metade dos anos 60 ele foi convidado por Vladimir Ussachevsky para estudar música no lendário estúdio de música eletrônica da Universidade Columbia-Princeton e, logo após, ele passou a lecionar no Dartmouth College em New Hampshire (onde ele fundou o curso de graduação em música eletro-acústica em 1989 e lecionou até 2009). Na metade dos anos 70 Jon deixou o Dartmouth College por um período de um ano (entre 1976-1977), quando ele assumiu o cargo de diretor do Elektronmusikstudion, o centro nacional de música eletrônica na Suécia. Depois disto Jon retornou ao Dartmouth College e também passou a lecionar em diversas instituições e Universidades pelo mundo todo (como a Keio University, em Tokyo, Japão) e colaborou com o compositor e engenheiro de som Andre Smirnov para montarem o Theremin Center no Conservatório de Música de Moscow, onde Jon leciona até hoje pelo menos uma vez por ano!

Em 1969, Appleton publicou suas primeiras gravações ("Appleton Syntonic Menageire" e também seu álbum em colaboração com o músico de jazz Don Cherry, "Human Music"). Depois disto ele gravou diversos outros discos, muitos deles executados no Synclavier (que era chamado de Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer nos primeiros anos de existência), um instrumento desenvolvido por ele em parceria com Sydney Alonso e Cameron Jones. Este instrumento se tornou bastante famoso, principalmente nos anos 80, quando ficou bastante conhecido apesar muito caro. Suas composições incluem trabalhos para orquestra, câmara, voz, coral, piano, Synclavier e outros instrumentos digitais e, naturalmente, música eletro-acústica!

Você pode encontrar mais informações no website do Jon Appleton: www.appletonjon.com

Eu encontrei o Jon Appleton em São Paulo, no mês de agosto passado. Ele foi convidado pelo seu ex-aluno Vanderlei Lucentini para vir ao Brasil para realização de algumas palestras e um "pocket concert em um evento chamado "Actamedia 10", no qual o Vanderlei estava fazendo a curadoria. Jon Appleton é uma pessoa muito gentil e agradável. E muito bem-humorado (o que foi uma das características que mais gostei em Jon: seu senso de humor!). Gostaria de agradecer muito ao Jon por esta entrevista e por ser esta pessoa tão gentil! E também quero agradecer ao Vanderlei Lucentini pela oportunidade que tive de conhecer o Jon Appleton pessoalmente!

Jon Appleton & Astronauta Pinguim - São Paulo (agosto de 2012)

Aqui estão minhas cinco perguntas para Jon Appleton:

ASTRONAUTA - Jon, quais são as memorias musicais que vocie tem da sua infância e quando você percebeu que gostaria de ser músico profissional? E quando você se interessou por música eletro-acústica?

APPLETON - Eu resolvi me tornar compositor quando eu tinha seis anos de idade. Aos nove anos de idade eu compus "O Concerto Marciano". Juvenil.

ASTRONAUTA - No início dos anos 90 você colaborou na fundação do Theremin Center for Electronic Music, no Conservatório de Música de Moscow. E desde então você continua a lecionar lá pelo menos uma vez por ano. Como é sua relação com o theremin, é um instrumento que vocie gosta de tocar ou utilizar para compôr? E quanto ao Leon Theremin, você o conheceu pessoalmente? Qual sua impressão sobre ele e sobre o instrumento que ele criou?

APPLETON - Eu conheci o Lev Theremin em Bourges, na França. (Veja a foto histórica ao lado, com Theremin, eu, Moog, Buchla, etc.) Eu compús três peças para theremin - todas as três para a Lydia Kavina. O intrumento é musicalmente dificil de tocar. Eu não entendo porque as pessoas são tão fascinadas por ele.

ASTRONAUTA - Você é uma das poucas pessoas no mundo que inventaram e/ou desenvolveram um instrumento musical (no caso o Synclavier, to primeiro sintetizador digital a ser comercializado). Como foi o processo de construção do primeiro protótipo e os ajustes necessários até que você, Sydney Alonso e Cameron Jones dissesem "ok, este é o Synclavier!"? Você ainda tem algum destes primeiros Synclaviers (e, se tem, ainda toca nele de vez em quando)?

APPLETON - Eu tenho o primeiro e o segundo Synclaviers mas eu não toco neles. Eu nem tenho certeza se eles estão funcionando. Sydney, Cameron e eu desenvolvemos o instrumento a partir de algo chamado The Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer. O conceito era meu e o design deles.

ASTRONAUTA - Eu sou louco por sintetizadores MOOG, como você pode notar. E você utilizou um sintetizador Moog como seu principal instrumento no álbum que você gravou em parceria com Don Cherry, "Human Music" (de 1970). Como você conheceu o Robert Moog e quis suas impressões sobre ele? E quanto a Don Cherry e suas impressões sobre o disco que vocês gravaram juntos?

APPLETON - Bob Moog era uma pessoa muito gentil e querida. E era um péssimo homem de negócios. Veja a foto. Eu conheci o Bob no centro de música eletrônica de Columbia-Princeton, em 1965. Don Cherry e eu nos conhecemos através da nossa gravadora, Flying Dutchman. Ele tinha uma enorme imaginação músical e estava sempre disposto a tentar qualquer coisa.

ASTRONAUTA - Sua peça "Chef d'Ouevre" é muito legal! É uma peça de música eletro-acústica eu sei mas, na minha cabeça, eu faço uma comparação dela com Andy Warhol e a pop-art que estava surgindo quase no mesmo período (não sei se estou sendo tolo por fazer esta comparação...) Você gostava do movimento de pop-art nos anos 60 e aquilo te influenciou de alguma maneira? Ou, melhor, alguma outra forma de arte influenciava sua música?

APPLETON - Talvez muitos artistas na época estivessem interessados em incorporar elementos da cultura popular no final dos anos 60. Eu não conheço muitos compositores que fizeram isto. "Chef d'Ouevre" chamou muito a atenção justamente por causa disto. Foi lançada, na verdade, em um disco de 45 rotações, com "Newark Airport Rock" no lado B. Minha peça favorita desta era é "Time Square Times Ten" (http://www.folkways.si.edu/TrackDetails.aspx?itermid=32519) Você pode ouvir Sintetizadores Moog nesta peça.

Jon.

↧

ELKA Rhapsody 490 (text in english)

October 21, 2012, 1:20 pm

≫ Next: Interview with Hans-Joachim Roedelius

≪ Previous: Cinco perguntas para Jon Appleton

Elka was an Italian company that existed in the '70s and had Piero Crucianelli (brother of Mario Crucianelli, founder of Crumar, another famous brand of analog synthesizers and keyboards) as the company's president. Perhaps his most famous instrument - and nowadays most valued - has been the Synthex (designed by Mario Maggi, Italian electrical engineer and one of the technicians responsible for the album "Automat" in 1977), but without a doubt the keyboard that was their "best-seller" and one of the main reasons for Elka becoming a world renowned company were the "string machines" Rhapsody 490 and Rhapsody 610. The main differences between the 490 and 610 is that the latter has sounds of piano and clavinet besides the violoncello and strings that could be found on the 490 model. The number present in each name indicates the length of the keyboard - the 490 has 49 keys (4 octaves) and the 610 has 61 keys (5 octaves).

The Elka Rhapsody 490 began to be manufactured around 1974, exactly on the market boom of keyboards that emulated strings instruments sounds. But, of course, its sound doesn't sound exactly like a violoncello or a strings ensemble and not even sounds as a mellotron. The 490/610 sound is very very unique. Its manufacturing lasted until about the year 1980.

With a rugged and very strange chassis - which does not diminish in any way the sound of the instrument - and a simple electronics, the Rhapsody 490 has only two different timbres (violoncello and strings), which can be added to each other resulting in a third - and more interesting - sound tone. Sliders for volume and sustain complete its few possibilities. The keyboard has 4 octaves (C to C) - as already discussed above - and total polyphony. On the back there's only one instrument audio output and a 3-pin socket for the sustain pedal.

Among the artists and bands that have used such a model I can quote the krautrock band Tangerine Dream and musicians and composers Jean-Michael Jarre and Vangelis Papathanassiou. Tony Banks, the Genesis keyboard player, used an Elka on the intro for the song "Here comes the supernatural Anaesthesist" from the magnificent album "The lamb lies down on Broadway" (1975), adding the Elka Rhapsody sound to the mellotron. Already Steve Hackett (Genesis guitarist) also used - probably the same instrument - on his "Voyage to Acolyte", in the same year. The Italian band Locanda Delle Fate used one on their album "Forse le più amino luciolle non si" (in 1977) and Claudio Simonetti from the also Italian band Goblin - known for the soundtracks to the films of Dario Argento and George Romero - also used a Rhapsody 490 in several songs (some videos can be found on youtube, from Italian TV shows in the 70s!)

The curious thing is that the StringVox, a keyboard manufactured by the German company Hohner, and the Elka Rhapsody 490 are exactly the same instrument! The only differences between the two is that Elka's instrument came in a black chassis while Hohner's instrument came in a beige chassis and had the on/off switcher's inscriptions in German - "aus" and "ein".

I have my Elka Rhapsody 490 for about fifteen years (maybe more, I have no way of knowing for sure). I remember going with my father's car in the town of Portão (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) to pick it. At the time I bought a Fender Rhodes Mark I 88 from a nice guy called Jones and the Rhapsody 490 came too, as a gift. I ended up selling the Fender Rhodes (only by sheer stupidity) but I kept the 490 for all these years. It is a very cool instrument and I use it in some shows and recordings, mainly when I need a nice string sound. Indeed, it was one of those shows that I lost the original volume slider. Its serial number is 3341 and my Elka still has a "Casas Manon" sticker pasted on it - "Casas Manon" was an old musical instrument store in São Paulo and probably it was the first place where it was purchased, still in the 70s. The keyboard is working well, though needing an internal cleansing on the electronics.

photos: Kay Mavrides

I recorded a demo of my Elka Rhapsody 490 on March 14, 2011!

↧

Interview with Hans-Joachim Roedelius

October 25, 2012, 7:00 pm

≫ Next: Entrevista com Hans-Joachim Roedelius

≪ Previous: ELKA Rhapsody 490 (text in english)

Hans-Joachim Roedelius was born in Berlin on October 26th, 1934. In fact we can say that Roedelius career as an artist began when he was a child and acted in some UFA movies in the late '30s/early '40s but it was only after several different works in different areas (and living in different places all around Europe) that Roedelius began his career as a self-taught musician and recorded albums that changed lifes and artistic/musical thoughts and minds all around the world!

Kluster

In the late '60s Roedelius, Conrad Schnitzler and Boris Schaak founded the Zodiak Free Arts Lab (the place where a lot of bands were born or made their first concerts, including Tangerine Dream, Ashra Tempel and Agitation Free) and the music commune Human Being (that recorded a live album at the Zodiak in 1968). The birthplace of Kluster - a trio formed by Conrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius - was the "Hochschule für Bildenden Künste" and the "Gallery Hammer" in Berlin (end of 1969). Kluster recorded three albums: "Klopfzeichen" (1970) and "Zwei-osterei" (1971) - both produced by Conny Plank - and "Eruption", a live album from their last live performance as Kluster (Conrad Schnitzler left the trio in 1971 to begin a long solo career. Unfortunately Con died on August 4th, 2011).

Cluster

After Schnitzler's departure from Kluster, the duo Roedelius and Moebius changed the band's name to Cluster (with C instead of K) and recorded "Cluster '71" (1971) and "Cluster II" (1972), both also produced by their longtime collaborator Conny Plank. These albums show the transition from the initial Kluster sound to a more electronic approach that marked the Cluster sound in their third album ("Zuckerzeit", 1974) and also in their new band Harmonia (formed by Roedelius, Moebius and ex-Kraftwerk/ex-Neu! guitarrist Michael Rother). Harmonia recorded four albums between 1973 and 1976: "Muzik von Harmonia" (1974), "Live '74" (released only in 2007), "Deluxe" (1975) and "Tracks and Traces" (with Brian Eno joining the band as a co-composer/musician, "Tracks and Traces" was recorded in 1976 but released only 20 years later, in 1997 and in 2009 again via Grönland Records).

After the end of Harmonia, Roedelius and Moebius recorded Cluster's fourth album, "Sowiesoso" (1976, produced by Conny Plank) and in june 1977 Brian Eno went back to Germany to join Cluster and record the albums "Cluster & Eno" (released in 1977) and "After the Heat" (credited to Eno, Roedelius and Moebius, released in 1978). Roedelius and Moebius also collaborated on the track "By this river", from Brian Eno's album "Before and after science" (1977).

In 1978 Hans-Joachim Roedelius released his first solo album, "Durch die wüste", begining his solo career parallel to Cluster. "Jardin au fou", his second solo album was released in 1979 and his third solo release, "Selbsportrait" (also from 1979) is the first of the "Selbsportrait" (or self portrait, in english) albums, most of them recorded at his home (in the seventies) in Forst, Germany. Since that time Roedelius released more than 40 solo albums (check out his discography in the end of this post, it's amazing!!!) and several albums in collaboration with other artists (including Conrad Schnitzler in 2001).

Cluster disbanded for the first time in 1981 (Moebius also went to a solo career) but reunited again two times more (from 1989 to 1997 and from 2007 to 2010). In 2011 Roedelius formed Qluster with musician Onnen Bock and released three albums with this third Kluster/Cluster/Qluster era ("Fragen", "Rufen" and "Antworten", all from 2011).

All of the albums recorded by Hans-Joachim Roedelius are great and essential to everyone who wants to discover (and rediscover again and again) how far music can go, searching for new horizons and breaking "established" rules! I had the pleasure to contact Roedelius for the first time in 2011 and it's awesome how this man is always gentle and kind when I send him an email. When I asked for this interview I didn't know that he was hospitalized after a surgery in his belly (he mentioned it on the interview but I knew he was fine via his official Facebook page). Well, a man who finds some time to answer an interview when he is in the hospital must be some kind of a special man and deserves all my respect and gratitude!

Thanks mr. Roedelius! Be sure that you'll will be very welcome when we have the chance to bring you to Brazil! And happy birthday, my friend!

Well, here's my interview with Hans-Joachim Roedelius!

ASTRONAUTA - I read in some of your interviews and articles about your life that you was a child actor in the '30s and '40s, acting in some UFA films. So, I think that it was your first steps in the world of arts, correct? How was this contact with the movies and UFA? And how (and when) did you decide to become a musician?

ROEDELIUS - My father was a dentist, he had to do therefore with some directors who worked at the UFA and one of them saw me when he came to our place. He liked me and asked my parents whether they would agree if I would play a child character in a film, they did at the time and so it happened that I played in about 6 films lateron with actors such as famous singer/whistler Ilse Werner, actress Brigitte Horney, actors Willy Birgel, Carl Raddatz and many others.

I first wanted to become a doctor, but because of worldwar II and the troubles in germany afterwards I wasn't able to manage it the classical way I had to go the very practical way first I became a nurse and guider of the dying then a physiotherapist and masseur at the University of Eastberlin the "Charite" but when I moved to Westberlin in 1960 everything changed.

When I'm home from hospital next friday I'll look for my curriculum and send it to you.

(note: Roedelius is already at his home right now and sent me his discography/curriculum. You can check on the end of this interview)

ASTRONAUTA - I contacted Conrad Schnitzler almost at the same time that I contacted you for the first time. It was only three or four months before Schnitzler's death, in 2011. He seemed to be a nice guy (as you are). In 2001 you and Schnitzler released the album "ACON 2000/1", your first (and only) album together after 30 years of the last Kluster album ("Eruption", recorded and released in 1971). How was to play and record with Conrad Schnitzler again after all these years? And did you kept in contact with him in these 30 years between "Eruption" and "ACON 2000/1"?

ROEDELIUS - Conrad was a very good friend even so our reception of the so called reality was somehow extremely divers which was the reason of Kluster's split in 1971. We kept the friendship and Acon I was the result.

ASTRONAUTA - What was your equipment in Kluster, Cluster and Harmonia? Did you and your band mates built some of the equipment you used on concerts and recordings? And Brian Eno, did he brought any kind of equipment or devices when he was in Germany with you and played in Harmonia's album "Tracks and Traces" (1976, released only in 1991), "Cluster & Eno" and Eno Moebius Roedelius' "After the heat" (both recorded in 1977 and released in 77 and 78 respectively)?

Harmonia (Rother, Moebius and Roedelius)

ROEDELIUS - We used electric organs, cello, guitar, kneeviola, tonegenerators, echomachines and many mostly selfbuilt little electronic devices in the beginning. Brian when he came to our place brought one of the first synths that existed at the time but nothing else, so he played this synth, guitar, bass and he sang. It was not him who produced that album it were the four of us first with/on a fourtrack tapemachine that Michael Rother provided. About 20 years later I with the help of austrian friends I worked on parts of that material and 1997 the first edition as "Harmonia 76 tracks & traces" came out via Rykodisc USA and Sony Germany but without great public interest. Groenland Records took care of a second edition with 3 bonustracks.

Cluster & Eno and After the Heat were / are productions of Conni Plank, not Brian Eno!

Silver Qluster (2011)

ASTRONAUTA - You influenced a lot of musicians all around the world and your music is still a great influence to the new generations. And (thanks!) you're one of the most prolific artists, with more than 100 records released. How do you see your career and what are your further steps in arts? Any possibility of a reunion with Dieter Moebius again? And any possibility of another Silver Qluster (your concert with Simeon Coxe III from The Silver Apples that happened in the USA in 2011?

ROEDELIUS - I was and still am rather busy working with artist from all over the globe as well as continously with Qlustermember Onnen Bock. There's none reason to revitalize Cluster at all for me. With Simeon it might be possible to collaborate again. Its all about budgets.

ASTRONAUTA - You're the director and producer from a festival in Lunz (Austria) called "More ohr Less". Can you tell us a little about this festival (it's not easy to find informations about "More ohr less" in english...)?

There's a new facebook site (http://www.facebook.com/MoreOhrLess) about more ohr less and videomaterial at Youtube : go there to : moreohrless (http://www.youtube.com/moreohrless).

ASTRONAUTA - One last question... And how about working with producer and engineer Conny Plank?

ROEDELIUS - As for the relationship with Conni Plank:

Without his creative input as a friend and artist as well as producer Cluster wouldn't have got its status and fame.

We became friends with him from the first moment on when he worked with us as sounding on "Klopfzeichen" and "Klusterzwei" (zwei-osterei). He sponsored us we lived in his flat in Hamburg he was a big treasure.

Not to forget:

Without his input neither Kraftwerk nor Neu nor many other groups in the first row of german respectively european contemporary music would have been able to are what they became.

Thanks so much dear Astronauta for your interest and appreciation

Muito obrigado.

Joachim

ASTRONAUTA - Thank you so much, Mr. Roedelius!

Hans-Joachim Roedelius

Cluster (Roedelius and Moebius)

Qluster (Roedelius and Onnen Bock)

Cluster

Harmonia 1976 (Eno, Roedelius, Rother and Moebius)

Check out Roedelius' discography/curriculum (text in German only):

Gesamte Werk- / CD- / Projektliste Hans-Joachim Roedelius

Veröffentlichungen auf CDs / LPs :
( Als Mitglied in den Gruppen Kluster/Cluster/Harmonia, in anderen Formationen und solo)

01. „Klopfzeichen“ ( Schwann-Düsseldorf ) 1970
02. „Klusterzwei-Osterei“ ( Schwann-Düsseldorf ) 1971
03. „Kluster-Eruption“ ( Galerie Block –Berlin ) 1971
04. „Cluster I“ ( Phillips –Hamburg ) 1971
05. „Cluster II“ ( Metronome-Hamburg ) 1972
06. „Musik von Harmonia“ ( Metronome-Hamburg ) 1974
07. „Cluster-Zuckerzeit“ ( Metronome-Hamburg ) 1974
08. „Harmonia de Luxe“ ( Metronome-Hamburg ) 1975
09. „Cluster-Sowiesoso“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1976
10. „Cluster & Eno“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1977
11. „Cluster-Grosses Wasser“ ( Sky-hamburg ) 1978
12. „After the heat“ ( Eno & Cluster, Sky-Hamburg ) 1978
13. „Cluster71“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1980 ) 1980
14. „Cluster & Farnbauer“ ( Privatlabel-London ) 1980
15. „Cluster-Curiosum“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1981
16. „Apropos-Cluster“ ( Curious-music /Iowa /USA) 1990
17. „ Cluster-One Hour“ ( Sky-Hamburg & Nova Era-Barcelona ) 1990
18.. „Friendly Game“ ( materiali Sonori-San Giovanni-Valdarno ) 1992
19. „To Cover The Dark“ ( Privat-London ) 1993
20. „Cluster-live/USA“ ( Hypnotic/USA ) 1996
21. „Harmonia-Tracks&Traces“ ( Rykodisc/USA-Sony/Deutschland ) 1996
22. „ Cluster-Japan-Live“ ( Soul-Static-London ) 1997
23. „Meeting the Magus“ ( Hermetic-London ) 1997
24. „Aquarello“ ( All Saints-London ) 1998
25. „GlobalTrotters-Drive“ ( Rykodisc-London ) 1999
26. „Global Trotters-Drive ( Biosphere-Tokyo ) 1999
27. „ Persistence of Memory“ ( Seventh Chance-Maumee-Ohio ) 2000
28. „Acon“ ( Captain Trip-Tokyo ) 2001
29. „Das verwirrte Schaf“ ( Privatedition
30. „Digital Love“ ( Plag Dich Nicht-Wien ) 2002
31. „Lunz“ ( Groenland-London ) 2002
32. „Neverless“ ( Klanggalerie-Wien ) 2003
33.. „Harmonia 1974“ ( Groenland-London ) 2007
34. „Snapshots-Sidesteps“ ( Psychonavigation-Dublin ) 2007
35. „Roedelius-Works 1968-2005“ ( Groenland-London ) 2008
36. „Ars Errata“ ( Nepenthe-Toledo-Ohio ) 2008
37. „Inlandish“ ( Groenland-London ) 2008
38. „Cluster-Live-Berlin 2007“ ( Important/USA ) 2008
39.. „Human Being 1968“ ( Nepenthe/USA ) 2009
40. „Fibre“ ( Barking Green ) 2009
41. „Cluster-Qua“ ( Klangbad-Deutschland, Nepenthe/USA ) 2009
42. „Sustanza di cose sperata“ ( Transparency/USA ) 2009
43. „Harmonia & Eno 1976“ ( Groenland-London ) 2009
44. „Cluster-live-Wien 1980“ ( Important/USA ) 2010

Solo-arbeiten veröffentlich auf CD / LP.

45. „Open Doors“ ( re- release Nepenthe ) 2010
46. „Durch die Wüste“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1978
47. „Jardin au Fou“ ( EGG-Paris ) 1979
48. „Selbstportrait I“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1979
49. „ Selbstportrait II“ ( Sky-Hambur) 1980
50. „Selbstportrait III“ ( Sky-Hamburg) 1980
51. „Lustwandel“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1981
52. „Wenn der Südwind weht“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1981
53. „Offene Türen“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1982
54. „Flieg Vogel Fliege“ (Sky-Hamburg ) 1982
55. „Wasser im Wind“ ( Schallter-Wien ) 1982
56. „Auf Leisen Sohlen“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1984
57. „Gift oft he Moment“ ( EGED-London ) 1984
58. „ Wie das Wispern des Windes“ ( Uniton-Oslo ) 1986
59. „Momenti Felici“ ( Virgin/Venture-London ) 1987
60. „Weites Land“ ( Ariola-Wien ) 1987
61. „Fortress of Love“ ( Virgin/Venture-London ) 1989
62. „Variety of Moods“ ( Nova Era-Barcelona ) 1990
63. „Der Ohrenspiegel“ ( Multimood-Göreborg ) 1991
64. „Piano Piano“ ( Materiali Sonori-San Giovanni-Valdarno ) 1991
65. „Cuando Adonde“ ( Nova Era-Barcelona ) 1992
66. „Frühling“ ( BSC-München ) 1992
67. „Tace“ ( BSC-München ) 1993
68. „Sinfonia Contempora Nr. 1“ ( BSC-München ) 1994
69. „Move and Resonate“ ( BSC-München ) 1994
70. „Theaterworks“ ( Multimood-Göteborg ) 1994
71. „Selbstportrait VI-The Diary oft he Unforgotten“ ( Curious-Iowa ) 1995
72. „61zigjahr Roedelius“ ( Artbase-Wien ) 1995
73. „Vom Nutzen der Stunden-Lieder vom Steinfeld I“ ( Waku Word Sessler-Wien ) 1995
74. „Pink Blue and Amber“ ( BSC-München ) 1996
75. „Sinfonia Contempora II – La Nordica“ ( Multimood-Göteborg ) 1996
76. „Vom Nutzen der Stunden-Lieder vom Steinfeld II“ ( Privat ) 1999
77. „Selbstportrait VII-Dem Wind voran“ ( Captain Trip-Tokyo ) 1999
78. „Roedeliusweg“ ( BSC-München ) 2000
79. „veni cretor spiritus“ ( Spaceformusic-USA ) 2000
80. „Amerika Recycled“ ( Spaceformusic-USA ) 2002
81. „Evermore“ ( Klanggalerie-Wien ) 2002
82. „Selbstportrait VIII-Introspection“ ( Horizon-USA ) 2002
83. „ Vom Nutzen der Stunden III“ ( Privat ) 2003
84. „American Steamboat“ ( Spaceformusic ) 2003

Weiterhin eine bereits unüberschaubare Menge an CDs / Tonträgern, an deren Entstehen ich mitgewirkt habe, oder die Stücke von mir beinhalten, insgesamt sind es bisher ungefähr 170 Tonträger, von denen ich weiss.

Zur Erstveröffentlichung in 2011 geplant :

85. „Stunden“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
86. „Qluster-Rufen“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg)
87. „Roedelius plays Piano“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
88. „Roedelius & Lloyd Cole“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
89. „Qluster Fragen“ (Bureau B-Hamburg )

Seit 2007 aus dem Backkatalog wiederveröffentlicht und somit weltweit wieder erhältlich :

90. „Klopfzeichen“ ( Captain Trip-Tokyo )
91. „Klusterzwei Osterei“ ( Captain Trip-Tokyo )
92. „Cluster & Eno“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
93. „After the Heat“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
94. „Cluster I „ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
95. „Cluster II“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
96. „Zuckerzeit“ (Universal-Hamburg )
97. „ Musik von Harmonia“ ( Universal-Hamburg )
98. „Harmonia de Luxe“ ( Universal-Hamburg )
99. „Cluster-Curiosum“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
100.“Cluster Sowiesoso“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
101.“Cluster Grosses Wasser“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
102.“Cluster Curiosum“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
103“Durch die Wüste“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
104.“Selbstportrait I“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
105.“Selbstportrait II“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
106.“Jardin au Fou“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
107.“Wenn der Südwind weht“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
108.“Gift oft he Moment“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
109.“Lustwandel“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
110.“Selbstportrait VI“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
111.“Offene Türen“ ( Nepenthe/USA )
112.“La Nordica“ ( Nepenthe/USA )
113.“Momenti Felici“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )

Zur Neuherausgabe in 2011 vorgesehen :

114.“Wasser im Wind“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
115.“Wie das Wispern des Windes“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
116.“Piano Piano“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
117. „American Steamboat“ ( Erototox / Asheville )

Weiterhin eine bereits unüberschaubare Menge an CDs / Tonträgern, an deren Entstehen ich mitgewirkt habe, oder Compilations, die Stücke von mir beinhalten,bisher etwa weitere 60 Tonträger, von denen ich weiss. Vertonungen von Rilketexten.

Projekte : Musiken zu Tanztheaterstücken mit den Choreografen :

Caroline Carlsen : „Teatro e Danz la Fenice- Venedig, „Teatre de Ville-Paris „
Roberto Castello : „Persistence of Memory“ - Krems
Esther Linley : Wiener Festwochen, Donaufestival, Eurokaz-Zagreb, Kampnagelfabrik Hamburg, Szene Salzburg.
Vesna Ventura : Zagreb

Ein Oratorium mit dem Titel „Oh Mensch wo willst Du hin“ uraufgeführt in Nova Gorica / Slowenien mit einer weiteren Aufführung in Zagreb.

Ein Musiktheaterstück : „Happy Kitchen aufgeführt Biennale Zagreb.

„Kommen/Bleiben/Gehen“ - : Musiken und Texte zu heilsamen Zwecken mit
Prof. Christian Ludwig Attersee. Mit Attersee ist Roedelius durch eine tiefe
Freundschaft verbunden.

Roedelius ist Intendant des hauptsächlich vom Land Nö. geförderten „More Ohr Less“ Symposions/Festivals in Lunz am See, das jährlich einmal Anfang August stattfindet und von Christian Ludwig Attersee unterstützt wird. www.more-ohr-less.at

Von Roedelius gegründete aktuell tätige Musikgruppen und andere Aktivitäten :
„Tempus Transit“
mit den Musikern Albin Paulus, Stephan Steiner, Heidelinde Gratzl, Roedelius und
( gelegentlich ) weiteren Mitspielern )
„Qluster“ als Folge-formation von „Cluster“ mit Onnen Bock und Roedelius.
„Das Lunzprojekt“ mit dem US-Amerikanischen Komponisten / Musiker Tim Story.

Ehrenpräsident des Festivals „Moving Cultures“ in Tirana/ Albanien.
www.movingculture.org/TirJazzFest06/jazz_06.html
Ehrenmitglied in der einst von Aldous Huxley, John Cage, Krishnamurti und anderen Zelebritäten gegründeten “Happy Valley-Foundation“ „ Beatrice-Wood-Center oft he Arts“ in Ojai / Californien. www.beatricewood.com
„Grateful Vanity-Projekt“ mit dem Künstlerduo Florence Deygas & Olivier Kuntzel www.addadog.com in Paris/Frankreich
Geplante Tourneen in 2011 :
Eine Österreichtournee mit der Präsentation der CD Ex Animo, April bis August 2011
Eine Frankreichtournee anlässlich der Präsentation der Klangskulptur „Grateful Vanity“
mit drei ersten Konzerten im kommenden Juni in Paris.
Eine Skandinavientournee mit Beginn in Aarhus / Dänemark im September.
Eine US- Tournee anlässlich einer Einladung zu einem Auftritt beim ATP-Festival in New Jersey im Oktober.

Das schriftstellerische Werk :

Ungefähr 1500 Texte ( Poeme, Prosa und anderes )
Davon etwa 100 selbst vertont und auf CDs veröffentlicht.

↧

Entrevista com Hans-Joachim Roedelius

October 26, 2012, 1:46 pm

≫ Next: Five questions to Tim Blake

≪ Previous: Interview with Hans-Joachim Roedelius

Hans-Joachim Roedelius nasceu em Berlim, no dia 26 de outubro de 1934. Na verdade podemos dizer que a carreira artística de Roedelius começou quando ele era uma criança e atuou em alguns filmes da UFA no final dos anos 30/início dos anos 40, mas foi só depois de passar por diferentes profissões nas mais variadas áreas (e de morar em vários locais diferentes por toda a Europa) que Roedelius começou sua carreira como músico autodidata e gravou álbuns que apresentaram novas idéias artísticas, mudaram vidas e abriram mentes o redor do mundo!

Kluster

No final dos anos 60, Roedelius fundou - juntamente com Conrad Schnitzler e Boris Schaak - o Zodiak Free Arts Lab (lugar onde várias bandas surgiram ou fizeram seus primeiros shows, incluindo Tangerine Dream, Ashra Tempel e Agitation Free) e a comunidade musical Human Being (que gravou um álbum ao vivo no Zodiak, em 1968). Os locais de nascimento do Kluster - um trio formado por Conrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius e Moebius Dieter - foram a "Hochschule für Bildenden Künste" e a "Hammer Gallery", em Berlim (final de 1969). O Kluster gravou três álbuns: "Klopfzeichen" (1970) e "Zwei-osterei" (1971) - ambos produzidos por Conny Plank - e "Eruption", um álbum ao vivo, registrado na última apresentação do trio como Kluster (Conrad Schnitzler deixou a banda em 1971 para iniciar uma longa carreira solo. Infelizmente Con morreu em 04 de agosto de 2011).

Cluster

Com a saída de Schnitzler do Kluster, o duo Roedelius & Moebius mudou o nome para Cluster (com C ao invés de K) e gravou "Cluster '71" (1971) e "Cluster II" (1972), ambos também produzidos por seu colaborador de longa data Conny Plank. Estes dois álbuns marcam a transição da sonoridade inicial (e primitiva) do Kluster para uma abordagem mais eletrônica, que caracterizou o som do Cluster no seu terceiro álbum ("Zuckerzeit", 1974) e também no novo grupo, o Harmonia (formado por Roedelius, Moebius juntamente com Michael Rother, ex- guitarrista do Kraftwerk e do ex- Neu!). O Harmonia gravou quatro álbuns entre 1973 e 1976: "Muzik von Harmonia" (1974), "Live '74" (lançado apenas em 2007), "Deluxe" (1975) e "Tracks & Traces" (com Brian Eno, que havia se juntandoà banda como músico e co-compositor, "Tracks & Traces" foi gravado em 1976 mas foi lançado somente 20 anos mais tarde, em 1997 e reeditado em 2009 pelo selo Groenland-Records).

Após o fim do Harmonia, Roedelius e Moebius gravaram o quarto álbum do Cluster ("Sowiesoso", 1976, produzido por Conny Plank) e em junho de 1977 Brian Eno voltou para a Alemanha para se encontrar novemante com a dupla e participar dos álbuns "Cluster & Eno" (lançado em 1977) e "After the Heat" (creditado como Eno Roedelius & Moebius, lançado em 1978). Roedelius e Moebius também colaboraram na faixa "By this river"(do álbum "Before and after science") do Brian Eno (1977).

No ano seguinte, 1978, Hans-Joachim Roedelius lançou seu primeiro álbum solo -"Durch die wüste" - iniciando sua carreira solo paralela ao Cluster. "Jardin au fou", seu segundo álbum solo, foi lançado em 1979 e seu terceiro disco solo, "Selbsportrait" (também de 1979), é o primeiro da série de discos chamada "Selbsportrait" (ou auto-retrato, em português), a maioria deles registrados na sua casa (na década de setenta) em Forst, Alemanha. Desde então, Roedelius lançou mais de 40 álbuns solo (confira sua discografia no final deste post, é incrível!) e vários álbuns em colaboração com outros artistas (incluindo Conrad Schnitzler em 2001).

O Cluster encerrou suas atividades pela primeira vez em 1981 (Moebius também partiu para uma carreira solo), mas se reuniu novamente em outros dois periodos (de 1989 a 1997 e de 2007 a 2010). Em 2011 Roedelius formou o Qluster com o músico Onnen Bock e já lançou três álbuns desta terceira fase do Kluster/Cluster/Qluster ("Fragen", "Rufen" e "Antworten", todos de 2011).

Todos os álbuns gravados por Hans-Joachim Roedelius são grandes discos e essenciais para todos aqueles que desejam descobrir (ou redescobrir de novo e de novo) o quão longe a música pode ir em busca de novos horizontes, quebrando regras "estabelecidas"! Eu tive o prazer de entrar em contato com o Roedelius pela primeira vez em 2011 e é incrível como esse homem é sempre muito gentil e amável quando eu lhe enviou um e-mail. Quando o convidei para esta entrevista, eu não sabia que ele estava hospitalizado após uma cirurgia na barriga (ele mencionou na entrevista, mas eu soube que ele estava bem através de sua página oficial do Facebook). Bem, um homem que encontra algum tempo e forças para responder a uma entrevista, mesmo estando em um hospital, deve ser alguma figura realmente especial e merece todo o meu respeito e gratidão!

Obrigado sr. Roedelius! Tenha certeza que você será muito bem-vindo quando tivermos a oportunidade de trazer você para o Brasil! E feliz aniversário, meu amigo!

Bem, aqui está a minha entrevista com Hans-Joachim Roedelius!

ASTRONAUTA - Eu li em algumas das suas entrevistas e em artigos sobre sua vida que você foi ator infantil nos anos 30 e 40, atuando em filmes da UFA. Então, eu acho que era os seus primeiros passos no mundo das artes, correto? Como foi esse contato com os filmes e com a UFA? E como (e quando) você decidiu que seria músico?

ROEDELIUS - Meu pai era dentista e ele tinha como pacientes alguns diretores que trabalhavam na UFA e um deles me viu quando esteve na nossa casa. Ele gostou de mim e perguntou aos meus pais se eles concordariam que eu interpretasse um personagem infantil em um filme que eles estavam fazendo na época e assim aconteceu, eu atuei em cerca de 6 filmes depois disso, com atores famosos como a cantor e assobiadora Ilse Werner, a atriz Brigitte Horney, os atores Willy Birgel, Carl Raddatz e muitos outros.

Primeiro eu quis ser médico, mas por causa de Segunda Guerra Mundial e os problemas posteriores na Alemanha, eu não consegui realizar isso do modo clássico. Eu tive que achar uma maneira mais prática e primeiro me tornei enfermeiro, acompanhante de pacientes terminais, fisioterapeuta e massagista na Universidade de Eastberlin - a"Charite" - mas quando me mudei para Westberlin em 1960 tudo mudou.

Quando estiver em casa, voltando do hospital na próxima sexta, eu vou procurar o meu currículo e envio para você.

(nota:. Roedelius já está na sua casa agora e me enviou a sua discografia/currículo Você pode verificar no final desta entrevista)

ASTRONAUTA - Entrei em contato com Conrad Schnitzler quase ao mesmo tempo que contatei você pela primeira vez. Isso aconteceu uns três ou quatro meses antes da morte de Schnitzler, em 2011. Ele pareceu ser um cara legal (assim como você é). Em 2001, você e Schnitzler lançaram o álbum "ACON 2000/1", o primeiro (e único) álbum de vocês dois juntos, depois de 30 anos do último disco do Kluster ("Eruption", gravado e lançado em 1971). Como foi tocar e gravar com Conrad Schnitzler depois de todos esses anos? E você manteve contato com ele nestes 30 anos entre "Eruption" e "ACON 2000/1"?

ROEDELIUS - Conrad era um ótimo amigo, mesmo com as nossas grandes divergências na percepção da assim chamada realidade, o que foi o motivo da separação do Kluster em 1971. Nós mantivemos a amizade e Acon 1 foi o resultado.

ASTRONAUTA - Qual equipamento você utilizava nas gravações e apresentações do Kluster, Cluster e Harmonia? Você e seus colegas de banda construiram alguns dos equipamentos que vocês utilizavam? E o Brian Eno, ele trouxe qualquer tipo de equipamento ou dispositivos quando ele esteve na Alemanha com vocês e tocou nos álbuns "Tracks e Traces" (do Harmonia, gravado em 1976, lançado apenas em 1997), "Cluster & Eno" e '"After the heat "(Eno Moebius Roedelius, ambos gravadas em 1977 e lançados em 77 e 78, respectivamente)?

Harmonia (Rother, Moebius and Roedelius)

ROEDELIUS - Usavamos órgãos elétricos, violoncelo, guitarra, kneeviola, tonegenerators, echomachines e muitos pequenos dispositivos eletrônicos feitos por nós mesmos, no início. Quando Brian veio ao nosso encontro, ele trouxe um dos primeiros sintetizadores que existiam na época, mas nada além disso, então ele tocou este sintetizador, guitarra, baixo e cantou. Não foi ele quem produziu o álbum, foi feito por nós quatro, primeiramente em um Tape Machine de quatro canais que Michael Rother possuia. Cerca de 20 anos depois, com a ajuda de amigos austríacos, eu trabalhei neste material e em 1997 a primeira edição de "Harmonia 76 Tracks & Traces" saiu, através da Rykodisc/EUA e Sony/Alemanha, mas sem grande interesse público. A Groenland Records tomou conta de uma segunda edição com 3 bonustracks.

Cluster & Eno e After the Heat foram/são produções de Conni Plank, não do Brian Eno!

Silver Qluster (2011)

ASTRONAUTA - Você é referência para muitos músicos de todo o mundo e sua música ainda é uma grande influência para as novas gerações. E (obrigado!) você é um dos artistas mais prolíficos, com mais de 100 discos lançados. Como você vê sua carreira e quais são seus novos passos nas artes? Existe a possibilidade de um reencontro com Dieter Moebius de novo? E existe a possibilidade de outro concerto do Silver Qluster (com Simeon Coxe III, dos Silver Apples, que aconteceu nos EUA em 2011)?

ROEDELIUS - Eu era e ainda sou muito ocupado, tanto trabalhando com artistas de todo o mundo quanto com o membro do Qluster, Onnen Bock. Não há razão nenhuma para revitalizar o Cluster para mim. Com Simeon, pode ser possível uma nova colaboração. É tudo uma questão de orçamento.

ASTRONAUTA - Você é o diretor e produtor de um festival em Lunz (Áustria), chamado "More ohr Less". Você pode nos contar um pouco sobre este festival?

Existe uma nova página no facebook (http://www.facebook.com/MoreOhrLess) sobre o "more ohr less" e videos no Youtube, procure por : moreohrless (http://www.youtube.com/moreohrless).

ASTRONAUTA - Uma última pergunta... E quanto a trabalhar com o produtor e engenheiro Conny Plank?

ROEDELIUS - Em relação á amizade com Conni Plank:

Sem a contribuição criativa dele como um amigo e como artista, bem como produtor, o Cluster não teria atingido seu status e fama.
Nós nos tornamos amigos dele desde o primeiro momento em que ele trabalhou conosco no "Klopfzeichen" e no "Klusterzwei" (zwei-osterei). Ele nos permitiu que morassemos no seu apartamento em Hamburgo, ele era um grande tesouro.
Não esquecer:
Sem a sua colaboração nem o Kraftwerk, nem o Neu e nem muitos outros grupos na primeira linha da música alemã e européia contemporânea teria sido capaz de ser o que se tornou.

Muito obrigado, querido Astronauta, pelo seu interesse e apreciação.

Muito obrigado.

Joachim

ASTRONAUTA - Muito obrigado, sr. Roedelius!

Hans-Joachim Roedelius

Cluster (Roedelius and Moebius)

Qluster (Roedelius and Onnen Bock)

Cluster

Harmonia 1976 (Eno, Roedelius, Rother and Moebius)

Dê uma olhada na discografia/curriculo do Roedelius' discography/curriculum (texto apenas em alemão):

Gesamte Werk- / CD- / Projektliste Hans-Joachim Roedelius

Veröffentlichungen auf CDs / LPs :
( Als Mitglied in den Gruppen Kluster/Cluster/Harmonia, in anderen Formationen und solo)

01. „Klopfzeichen“ ( Schwann-Düsseldorf ) 1970
02. „Klusterzwei-Osterei“ ( Schwann-Düsseldorf ) 1971
03. „Kluster-Eruption“ ( Galerie Block –Berlin ) 1971
04. „Cluster I“ ( Phillips –Hamburg ) 1971
05. „Cluster II“ ( Metronome-Hamburg ) 1972
06. „Musik von Harmonia“ ( Metronome-Hamburg ) 1974
07. „Cluster-Zuckerzeit“ ( Metronome-Hamburg ) 1974
08. „Harmonia de Luxe“ ( Metronome-Hamburg ) 1975
09. „Cluster-Sowiesoso“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1976
10. „Cluster & Eno“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1977
11. „Cluster-Grosses Wasser“ ( Sky-hamburg ) 1978
12. „After the heat“ ( Eno & Cluster, Sky-Hamburg ) 1978
13. „Cluster71“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1980 ) 1980
14. „Cluster & Farnbauer“ ( Privatlabel-London ) 1980
15. „Cluster-Curiosum“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1981
16. „Apropos-Cluster“ ( Curious-music /Iowa /USA) 1990
17. „ Cluster-One Hour“ ( Sky-Hamburg & Nova Era-Barcelona ) 1990
18.. „Friendly Game“ ( materiali Sonori-San Giovanni-Valdarno ) 1992
19. „To Cover The Dark“ ( Privat-London ) 1993
20. „Cluster-live/USA“ ( Hypnotic/USA ) 1996
21. „Harmonia-Tracks&Traces“ ( Rykodisc/USA-Sony/Deutschland ) 1996
22. „ Cluster-Japan-Live“ ( Soul-Static-London ) 1997
23. „Meeting the Magus“ ( Hermetic-London ) 1997
24. „Aquarello“ ( All Saints-London ) 1998
25. „GlobalTrotters-Drive“ ( Rykodisc-London ) 1999
26. „Global Trotters-Drive ( Biosphere-Tokyo ) 1999
27. „ Persistence of Memory“ ( Seventh Chance-Maumee-Ohio ) 2000
28. „Acon“ ( Captain Trip-Tokyo ) 2001
29. „Das verwirrte Schaf“ ( Privatedition
30. „Digital Love“ ( Plag Dich Nicht-Wien ) 2002
31. „Lunz“ ( Groenland-London ) 2002
32. „Neverless“ ( Klanggalerie-Wien ) 2003
33.. „Harmonia 1974“ ( Groenland-London ) 2007
34. „Snapshots-Sidesteps“ ( Psychonavigation-Dublin ) 2007
35. „Roedelius-Works 1968-2005“ ( Groenland-London ) 2008
36. „Ars Errata“ ( Nepenthe-Toledo-Ohio ) 2008
37. „Inlandish“ ( Groenland-London ) 2008
38. „Cluster-Live-Berlin 2007“ ( Important/USA ) 2008
39.. „Human Being 1968“ ( Nepenthe/USA ) 2009
40. „Fibre“ ( Barking Green ) 2009
41. „Cluster-Qua“ ( Klangbad-Deutschland, Nepenthe/USA ) 2009
42. „Sustanza di cose sperata“ ( Transparency/USA ) 2009
43. „Harmonia & Eno 1976“ ( Groenland-London ) 2009
44. „Cluster-live-Wien 1980“ ( Important/USA ) 2010

Solo-arbeiten veröffentlich auf CD / LP.

45. „Open Doors“ ( re- release Nepenthe ) 2010
46. „Durch die Wüste“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1978
47. „Jardin au Fou“ ( EGG-Paris ) 1979
48. „Selbstportrait I“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1979
49. „ Selbstportrait II“ ( Sky-Hambur) 1980
50. „Selbstportrait III“ ( Sky-Hamburg) 1980
51. „Lustwandel“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1981
52. „Wenn der Südwind weht“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1981
53. „Offene Türen“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1982
54. „Flieg Vogel Fliege“ (Sky-Hamburg ) 1982
55. „Wasser im Wind“ ( Schallter-Wien ) 1982
56. „Auf Leisen Sohlen“ ( Sky-Hamburg ) 1984
57. „Gift oft he Moment“ ( EGED-London ) 1984
58. „ Wie das Wispern des Windes“ ( Uniton-Oslo ) 1986
59. „Momenti Felici“ ( Virgin/Venture-London ) 1987
60. „Weites Land“ ( Ariola-Wien ) 1987
61. „Fortress of Love“ ( Virgin/Venture-London ) 1989
62. „Variety of Moods“ ( Nova Era-Barcelona ) 1990
63. „Der Ohrenspiegel“ ( Multimood-Göreborg ) 1991
64. „Piano Piano“ ( Materiali Sonori-San Giovanni-Valdarno ) 1991
65. „Cuando Adonde“ ( Nova Era-Barcelona ) 1992
66. „Frühling“ ( BSC-München ) 1992
67. „Tace“ ( BSC-München ) 1993
68. „Sinfonia Contempora Nr. 1“ ( BSC-München ) 1994
69. „Move and Resonate“ ( BSC-München ) 1994
70. „Theaterworks“ ( Multimood-Göteborg ) 1994
71. „Selbstportrait VI-The Diary oft he Unforgotten“ ( Curious-Iowa ) 1995
72. „61zigjahr Roedelius“ ( Artbase-Wien ) 1995
73. „Vom Nutzen der Stunden-Lieder vom Steinfeld I“ ( Waku Word Sessler-Wien ) 1995
74. „Pink Blue and Amber“ ( BSC-München ) 1996
75. „Sinfonia Contempora II – La Nordica“ ( Multimood-Göteborg ) 1996
76. „Vom Nutzen der Stunden-Lieder vom Steinfeld II“ ( Privat ) 1999
77. „Selbstportrait VII-Dem Wind voran“ ( Captain Trip-Tokyo ) 1999
78. „Roedeliusweg“ ( BSC-München ) 2000
79. „veni cretor spiritus“ ( Spaceformusic-USA ) 2000
80. „Amerika Recycled“ ( Spaceformusic-USA ) 2002
81. „Evermore“ ( Klanggalerie-Wien ) 2002
82. „Selbstportrait VIII-Introspection“ ( Horizon-USA ) 2002
83. „ Vom Nutzen der Stunden III“ ( Privat ) 2003
84. „American Steamboat“ ( Spaceformusic ) 2003

Weiterhin eine bereits unüberschaubare Menge an CDs / Tonträgern, an deren Entstehen ich mitgewirkt habe, oder die Stücke von mir beinhalten, insgesamt sind es bisher ungefähr 170 Tonträger, von denen ich weiss.

Zur Erstveröffentlichung in 2011 geplant :

85. „Stunden“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
86. „Qluster-Rufen“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg)
87. „Roedelius plays Piano“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
88. „Roedelius & Lloyd Cole“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
89. „Qluster Fragen“ (Bureau B-Hamburg )

Seit 2007 aus dem Backkatalog wiederveröffentlicht und somit weltweit wieder erhältlich :

90. „Klopfzeichen“ ( Captain Trip-Tokyo )
91. „Klusterzwei Osterei“ ( Captain Trip-Tokyo )
92. „Cluster & Eno“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
93. „After the Heat“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
94. „Cluster I „ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
95. „Cluster II“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
96. „Zuckerzeit“ (Universal-Hamburg )
97. „ Musik von Harmonia“ ( Universal-Hamburg )
98. „Harmonia de Luxe“ ( Universal-Hamburg )
99. „Cluster-Curiosum“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
100.“Cluster Sowiesoso“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
101.“Cluster Grosses Wasser“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
102.“Cluster Curiosum“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
103“Durch die Wüste“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
104.“Selbstportrait I“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
105.“Selbstportrait II“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
106.“Jardin au Fou“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
107.“Wenn der Südwind weht“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
108.“Gift oft he Moment“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
109.“Lustwandel“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
110.“Selbstportrait VI“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
111.“Offene Türen“ ( Nepenthe/USA )
112.“La Nordica“ ( Nepenthe/USA )
113.“Momenti Felici“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )

Zur Neuherausgabe in 2011 vorgesehen :

114.“Wasser im Wind“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
115.“Wie das Wispern des Windes“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
116.“Piano Piano“ ( Bureau B-Hamburg )
117. „American Steamboat“ ( Erototox / Asheville )

Weiterhin eine bereits unüberschaubare Menge an CDs / Tonträgern, an deren Entstehen ich mitgewirkt habe, oder Compilations, die Stücke von mir beinhalten,bisher etwa weitere 60 Tonträger, von denen ich weiss. Vertonungen von Rilketexten.

Projekte : Musiken zu Tanztheaterstücken mit den Choreografen :

Caroline Carlsen : „Teatro e Danz la Fenice- Venedig, „Teatre de Ville-Paris „
Roberto Castello : „Persistence of Memory“ - Krems
Esther Linley : Wiener Festwochen, Donaufestival, Eurokaz-Zagreb, Kampnagelfabrik Hamburg, Szene Salzburg.
Vesna Ventura : Zagreb

Ein Oratorium mit dem Titel „Oh Mensch wo willst Du hin“ uraufgeführt in Nova Gorica / Slowenien mit einer weiteren Aufführung in Zagreb.

Ein Musiktheaterstück : „Happy Kitchen aufgeführt Biennale Zagreb.

„Kommen/Bleiben/Gehen“ - : Musiken und Texte zu heilsamen Zwecken mit
Prof. Christian Ludwig Attersee. Mit Attersee ist Roedelius durch eine tiefe
Freundschaft verbunden.

Roedelius ist Intendant des hauptsächlich vom Land Nö. geförderten „More Ohr Less“ Symposions/Festivals in Lunz am See, das jährlich einmal Anfang August stattfindet und von Christian Ludwig Attersee unterstützt wird. www.more-ohr-less.at

Von Roedelius gegründete aktuell tätige Musikgruppen und andere Aktivitäten :
„Tempus Transit“
mit den Musikern Albin Paulus, Stephan Steiner, Heidelinde Gratzl, Roedelius und
( gelegentlich ) weiteren Mitspielern )
„Qluster“ als Folge-formation von „Cluster“ mit Onnen Bock und Roedelius.
„Das Lunzprojekt“ mit dem US-Amerikanischen Komponisten / Musiker Tim Story.

Ehrenpräsident des Festivals „Moving Cultures“ in Tirana/ Albanien.
www.movingculture.org/TirJazzFest06/jazz_06.html
Ehrenmitglied in der einst von Aldous Huxley, John Cage, Krishnamurti und anderen Zelebritäten gegründeten “Happy Valley-Foundation“ „ Beatrice-Wood-Center oft he Arts“ in Ojai / Californien. www.beatricewood.com
„Grateful Vanity-Projekt“ mit dem Künstlerduo Florence Deygas & Olivier Kuntzel www.addadog.com in Paris/Frankreich
Geplante Tourneen in 2011 :
Eine Österreichtournee mit der Präsentation der CD Ex Animo, April bis August 2011
Eine Frankreichtournee anlässlich der Präsentation der Klangskulptur „Grateful Vanity“
mit drei ersten Konzerten im kommenden Juni in Paris.
Eine Skandinavientournee mit Beginn in Aarhus / Dänemark im September.
Eine US- Tournee anlässlich einer Einladung zu einem Auftritt beim ATP-Festival in New Jersey im Oktober.

Das schriftstellerische Werk :

Ungefähr 1500 Texte ( Poeme, Prosa und anderes )
Davon etwa 100 selbst vertont und auf CDs veröffentlicht.

↧

Five questions to Tim Blake

November 15, 2012, 4:35 pm

≫ Next: Cinco perguntas para Tim Blake

≪ Previous: Entrevista com Hans-Joachim Roedelius

Timothy Blake was born in Shepherd's Bush, west London, in February 6th, 1952. He was a recording engineer in his teenage days when he met Daevid Allen and was invited to join Gong, a jazz-space-rock band that became very famous, partly because of Tim's synthesizers, electronic effects and his compositions, recorded mainly in the "Radio Gnome Invisible" trilogy. Tim was part of Gong "family" from 1971 to 1975.

When Tim left the band he was already working with French Light Artist Patrice Werrener since 1971, under the name Crystal Machine. The format of concert that Tim and Patrice took to stages was very innovative and together they became one of the first acts in the whole world to work exclusively with analog synthesizers and lighting on their concerts (introducing the Laser to the entertainment world for the first time in 1975). Crystal machine recorded two amazing albums ("Crystal Machine", 1977, and "Blake's New Jerusalem", 1978, with Jean-Philippe Rykiel on the Minimoog) before Tim joined another great "Space Rock" band - Hawkwind - for a brief period of time, between 1979 and 1980. After playing on several occasions during the years Tim Blake is back to the band since 2007, playing Theremin and "Virtual Lead Guitar".

Tim Blake's discography contain more that 25 albums, including 6 records as Tim Blake/Crystal Machine. They are available to download on Tim's website ("Crystal Machine", 1977, and "Magick", 1992, are also available on CD). Gong and Hawkwind albums that have Tim on the line up are commented by himself on the website too!

I contacted Tim Blake for the first time via Facebook and I asked him if we could do this interview via email. He was very gentle and found some time in his busy life to send me back the interview and here it is! Ladies and gentlemen, Mr, Tim Blake, the man who put some "space" into "rock"!

Crystal Machine live at Théâtre le Palace, 1977 (photo: Rosa Gauditauno)

ASTRONAUTA - How did you become a musician, what were your first steps on (electronic) music and what was your first synthesizer (or keyboard)? Do you still have the instruments you played on the seventies?

TIM - I left school quite early, at 16 - and Yes - it was 1968! I was immediately projected into a world where the 'Summer of Love' contrasted with the repression of Freedom in Tchequeslovakia.
I had pretty deep musical interests all through my life with a liking for all from very choral music, through the Baroque to the blues and burgeoning rock of the '60s to even some stranger electronic stuff... Berio - Pierre Henri (who try twice to mix his music concrete to a rock element). I was a fairly competent Trumpet player when I left school, but also enjoyed Blues harp and guitar playing...

I did a year (68-69) at a Performing Art School in London, too. In parallel, I became an apprentice sound engineer, and spent more and more of my time hanging out with musicians (notably the late Paul Kossof). One day, a fellow student, Celia Humphris, told me that she had landed a job singing in an upcoming folk-rock band, Trees (with whom she sang the haunting 'Garden of Jane Delawney').
Thanks to Celia, I was now in the middle of a very creative Hub of people, groups, managers, artist of all sort... It ended up with me doing sound for Clearwater's once a week gigs at All Saints Hall, and on the road with High Tide.
One evening, in the end of august 1969, when setting up my sound for a High Tide gig, some guys approached me as asked me if they could play support, and that's how Hawkwind was born.

Electronics in music at this time was all sort of tape looping and collage (the second phase of music concrete, I suppose) and fun with oscillators and echo units...

Of course by then, we'd all heard "Switched-on Bach" - and then EMS - a UK company started making synths, and we were all on the case, Floyd, Hawkwind, and myself!

There were some great music festivals in those days, too, and I suppose I had met and worked with all my heroes by the time I was 18!

By 1971, I had a good reputation with handling sound, and was introduced to Daevid Allen, and left for France with him, just before Easter.

ASTRONAUTA - You were a member from the two most important bands from the so called "Space Rock", Gong and Hawkwind (Tim is currently playing with Hawkwind again). What was the main differences from Gong to Hawkwind? And what was the most grateful and the most hateful things for playing with Gong and Hawkwind?

Hawkwind 1979: Harey Brianbridge, Dave Brock,
Huw Lloyd-Lagton, Tim Blake and Simon King

TIM - I find very little similarity between the two groups at all, really. Hawkwind's music has always been highly influenced by Dave Brock's love of simple Folksy Ballads (he was a fantastic street musician at the beginnings) and basic Blues Rock, 4/4 rhythm. If you look through the amazing repertoire of the past 43 years, you see these two elements coming up time and time again, especially in all the "hits"!

Gong, on the other hand, was something quite new to me. Daevid had made his way into the music world being surrounded by very Jazz-influenced musicians... Soft Machine in particular. His first explorations into what was to become Gong was with very 'avant-garde' jazzers - of whom we must point out the amazing wind player, Didier Malherbe. The making of the Gong Band in the early '70s, with Christian Tritsch, gave us the bass of rhythm gliss, a very important part of Gong music.

The common line has, of course, been the opening to "Spaciness", and that is where, both as an engineer and later, a musician, I was able to find my place in both bands.

The most Hateful things? Well, "Doggy" business dealings for one - in both bands - but surely not for the same reason!
With Hawkwind it's been mostly unsafe, greedy management, whilst, with Gong, the honesty of Daevid Allen has really to be put into question!
Art and business have always, in my life, been highly difficult to combine.

The Grateful things? - Well in Gong's case, Daevid 'copping' out of the Band, at the Flying Teapot recordings, allowed me and Didier to reform the group into a highly harmonious unit with Steve Hillage and Pierre Moerlen, and later to absord Mike Howlett.
This was the format that gave me the real opportunity to expand my own musical ideas with them, and of course that's when 90% of Angels Egg and You were written. Malherbe, Hillage and Moerlen are some on the most amazing musicians I have lived, played and written with in my live.

Hawkwind have always been able to tune in to me when I was putting everything I had doing into question, and offering me a chance to go different ways - Dave and I both think 'Onwards' - You cannot do the same thing for 40 years - one must develop.
I imagine that it is because so little of the "Classic" Gong music was actually written when Daevid was around, that he has persistently toured for so many years playing the same music... Daevid just changes the names and the authors in order to dispose of the financial gain in the way that suits him best! I suppose this is essentially because he is ashamed not to have been at the source of so much of the music that he enjoys performing so much. It must be so very sad for him, deep inside!
It was very glad to see Steve Hillage back in the band for the 2009/10 tours, and hear some real new music written!

But does not seem such creativity has continued since he slipped out again!

Of course - the great thing about playing with Hawkwind in the years 2010s is that I have completely changed my music making techniques, playing virtual synths, controlled by Theremin and my AX - Onwards - there is No Turning Back!!!

ASTRONAUTA - How was the recording process of the albums "Crystal Machine" (1977), "New Jerusalem" (1978) and "Waterfalls in space" (1979)? What was the synthesizers you used to record this albums? Do you still have some of those synths?

TIM - Ah. Analogue days! Well, my double EMC outfit, a Modular Synth, either Roland or Moog, and my trusty Mini Moog, with a variety of the first polyphonic stuff!

Of course - from Jerusalem onwards - the greatest input into Crystal machine music was finding someone I really enjoyed playing with, Jean- Philippe Rykiel.
Apart from being a great mini-moogist from a very early age, Jean-Phi is also a pioneer of polyphonic synthesis.
He has become a great record producer too, these days, specializing in African Music...

Waterfalls in Space was recorded by Jean-Phi while we were rehearsing.

Most of my Analogue gear is in the hands of a specialized collector in England. He is a very competent eletronician and restorer, and they all look a play beautifully again!
My Roland modular system is in the hands of Romain Turzi, one of the Today's French electronic rock musicians.

ASTRONAUTA - You are always mentioned when the subject in a conversation is the EMS synths! What was your relation with this equipment and with the EMS synth inventors (Peter Zinovieff, David Cockerell and Tristan Cary), did you meet them personally in the '70s?

Tim Blake's EMS syntheseizers

TIM - My EMS relations were mostly with Robin Woob (now the owner) and the technical people, Graham Wood, Graham Hinton, with whom most of the unique modifications to my set-up were designed.
I've met Zinovieff, of course, but not Cockerell or Cary. Peter seemed to look down on those who played the EMS synths, regarding them as toys he sold to finance his huge computer music studio. I have never heard a note of his music!!
I believe I once impressed Peter at an EMS lunch, by enjoying his Cheese with very hottest oh his home-made chutneys!! Strange stuff, Electronic musicians!

ASTRONAUTA - Your albums are difficult to find both in LP's and CD's but you keep your entire solo discography to download in your website. Why did you choose to keep your albums available in a digital format instead of keeping them in the older formats? Are you recording or planing to record new material to release as Crystal Machine someday?

TIM - I have not enjoyed a good relationship with the music industry, and some of my best selling records have never bought me a single royalty cheque.
So, I prefer to work as a one-man cottage industry!

CRYSTAL MACHINE is still available as a CD - http://moonweed.free.fr/Cds/c-machine.html
as is MAGICK - http://moonweed.free.fr/Cds/Magick.html

There is no "Market" these days for my albums in physical format that makes it worthwhile for me to produce them, but despite being only a tiny of the sales, by doing downloads my self, I can keep the losses down!
You can get my music from my own site:

http://moonweed.free.fr/store.hmt

I am also experimenting with a Bandcamp page:

http://timblake.bandcamp.com

This was basically to allow people to choose their format, but it seems a bit of an online-jukebox to me, with 99% of plays, and 1% of sales, so I do not know if I will continue with it.

ASTRONAUTA - Well, thank you, my friend. Hope you can come to Brazil soon!!! My best wishes to you, Tim!

Dave Brock and Tim Blake (London, 2010)

Tim Blake with GONG, 1974
(Minimoog and EMS Synthi A)

Hawkwind - Masters of Universe tour (winter 1979)

Crystal Machine World Tour 1979
Jean-Philippe Rykiel and Tim Blake playing at
'The Space' Hanne Mori - Tokyo, Japan
photo: Patrice Werrener

TIM BLAKE

Download Shop:

http://moonweed.free.fr/store.htm

Website:

http://moonweed.free.fr

Myspace:

www.myspace.com/timblakecrystalmachine

Hawkwind Official Site:

www.hawkwind.com

↧

Cinco perguntas para Tim Blake

November 18, 2012, 7:50 am

≫ Next: ARP Omni 2 (text in english)

≪ Previous: Five questions to Tim Blake

Timothy Blake nasceu em Shepherds Bush - no oeste de Londres - no dia 06 de fevereiro de 1952. Na adolescência, Tim trabalhou como engenheiro de gravação e foi nesta época que ele conheceu o músico Daevid Allen e foi convidado para fazer parte do Gong, uma banda de "Space-jazz-rock" que ficou muito famosa, em parte por causa de sintetizadores, efeitos eletrônicos e das composições de Tim, registradas principalmente na trilogia "Radio Gnome Invisible". Tim fez parte da "família" Gong entre1971 e 1975.

Quando deixou a banda, Tim já estava trabalhando com o artísta e iluminador francês Patrice Werrener desde 1971, sob o nome de Crystal Machine. O formato de show que a dupla levou aos palcos era muito inovador e o Crystal Machine tournou-se uma das primeiras bandas em todo o mundo a trabalhar exclusivamente com sintetizadores analógicos e iluminação em seus shows (eles foram os primeiros a utilizarem o Laser no mundo do entretenimento, em 1975). O Crystal Machine gravou dois álbuns incríveis ("Crystal Machine", de 1977, e "Blake's New Jerusalem", de 1978, com Jean-Philippe Rykiel no Minimoog) antes de Tim ser convidado para ingressae em outra grande banda de "Space Rock" - o Hawkwind - por um breve período, entre 1979 e 1980. Depois de tocar com a banda em várias ocasiões durante os anos seguntes, Tim Blake voltou a integrar a banda desde 2007 e continua tocando Theremin e "Virtual Lead Guitar" com o Hawkwind desde então.

A discografia de Tim Blake contém mais que 25 álbuns, incluindo seis discos como Tim Blake/Crystal Machine. Estes discos estão disponíveis para download no site de Tim ("Crystal Machine", de 1977, e "Magick", de 1992, estão disponíveistambém em CD). Discos do Gong e do Hawkwind que têm a participação de Tim também são comentados por ele mesmo no site!

Entrei em contato com Tim Blake pela primeira vez via Facebook e perguntei-lhe se poderíamos fazer esta entrevista por e-mail. Ele foi muito gentil e encontrou algum tempo em sua vida ocupada para me enviar de volta a entrevista e aqui está! Senhoras e senhores, Sr. Tim Blake, o homem que colocou muito "Space" dentro do "Rock"!

Crystal Machine ao vivo no Théâtre le Palace, 1977 (foto: Rosa Gauditauno)

ASTRONAUTA - Como você resolveu que seria músico, quais foram os seus primeiros passos na música (eletrônica) e qual foi o seu primeiro sintetizador (ou teclado)? Você ainda tem os instrumentos que você utilizava nos anos setenta?

TIM - Eu deixei a escola muito cedo, aos 16 anos - e SIM - era 1968! Fui imediatamente projetado para dentro de um mundo onde o 'verão do amor' contrastava com a repressão da liberdade na Tchecoslovaquia.
Sempre tive interesses musicais muito profundos durante toda a minha vida. Gostava de tudo, desde música coral, passando pelo barroco até o blues e o rock emergentes nos anos 60 e até mesmo algumas coisas estranhas de musica eletrônica... Berio, Pierre Henri (que tentou, por duas vezes, misturar a sua música concreta a um elemento de rock). Eu tocava trumpete com bastante competencia quando deixei a escola, mas também gostava da harmônica do Blues e de tocar guitarra...

Eu cursei um ano (entre 68 e 69) em uma Escola de Artes em Londres, também. Paralelamente eu me tornei um aprendiz de engenheiro de som, e passei cada vez mais a conviver com músicos (principalmente com o falecido Paul Kossof). Um dia, uma colega - Celia Humphris - me disse que ela tinha conseguido um emprego, iria cantar em uma banda de folk-rock que estava começando, 'Trees' (com quem ela cantou a assombrosa "Garden of Jane Delawney").
Graças à Celia, eu estava no meio de um circuito muito criativo de pessoas, bandas, empresários, artistas de todo o tipo... No final eu fazendo som para o Clearwater uma vez por semana, em shows no All Saints Hall, e na estrada com o High Tide.
Uma noite, no final de agosto de 1969, quando eu estava montando meu equipamento de som para um show do High Tide, alguns rapazes se aproximaram de mim como me perguntaram se eles poderiam tocar como banda de abertura e foi assim que o Hawkwind começou.

A eletrônica na música naquele momento era todo feito com loops e colagens de fita (a segunda fase do Música Concreta, eu suponho) e se divertir com osciladores e unidades de eco...

É claro que naquela época todos nós já tinhamos ouvido o "Switched-on Bach" e, em seguida, surgiu a EMS - uma empresa britânica que começou a fazer sintetizadores - e entramos todos nesta onda, Floyd, Hawkwind, e eu!

Também existiam grandes festivais de música naqueles dias e eu acho que conheci e trabalhei com todos os meus heróis quando eu tinha 18 anos!

Em 1971 eu já tinha uma boa reputação com a manipulação de equipamentos de som. Fui apresentado então ao Daevid Allen e parti para a França com ele, um pouco antes da Páscoa.

ASTRONAUTA - Você fez parte de duas das bandas mais importantes do assim chamado "Space Rock", Gong e Hawkwind (Tim está tocando atualmente com Hawkwind novamente). Quais eram as principais diferenças entre o Gong e o Hawkwind? E qual foi a coisa mais gratificante e a mais irritante de tocar com o Gong e com o Hawkwind?

Hawkwind 1979: Harey Brianbridge, Dave Brock,
Huw Lloyd-Lagton, Tim Blake and Simon King

TIM - Eu vejo pouca similaridade entre os dois grupos, na verdade. A música do Hawkwind sempre foi muitíssimo influenciada pelo amor de Dave Brock pelas baladas folk simples (ele era um músico de rua fantástico, no início) e pelo Blues Rock básico, ritmo 4/4. Se você analisar o repertório surpreendente dos últimos 43 anos, você verá esses dois elementos aparecendo em várias ocasiões, especialmente nos "hits"!

O Gong, por outro lado, era algo muito novo para mim. Daevid tinha trilhado o seu caminho no mundo da música cercado por músicos muito influenciados por Jazz... Soft Machine, em particular. Suas primeiras experiências no que veio a se tornar o Gong foram com jazzistas muito 'avant-garde' - dos quais devemos descatar o incrível músico de instrumentos de sopro Didier Malherbe. O início da banda Gong nos anos 70, com Christian Tritsch, deu-nos uma base deslizante de ritmo, parte muito importante da música Gong.

A linha comum, é claro, foi a abertura para o "espacial", e é aí que, tanto como engenheiro e, mais tarde, como músico, eu fui capaz de encontrar o meu lugar em ambas as bandas.

As coisas mais irritantes? Bem, os acordos e negócios "cachorros" para um dos lados - em ambas as bandas - mas certamente não pela mesma razão!
Com o Hawkwind tem sido principalmente o gerenciamento ganancioso e inseguro, e com o Gong, a honestidade de Daevid Allen tem realmente a ser posta em questão!
Arte e negócios sempre foram, na minha vida, muito difíceis de combinar.

As coisas mais gratificantes? Bem, no caso do Gong, o Daevid 'amarelando' e saíndo da banda nas gravações do "Flying Teapot", o que permitiu, eu e Didier, reformarmos o grupo para uma unidade altamente harmoniosa, com Steve Hillage e Pierre Moerlen e, mais tarde, Mike Howlett.
Este foi o formato que me deu a oportunidade real de expandir minhas próprias idéias musicais e, claro, foi quando 90% dos "Angel's Egg" e "You" foram escritos. Malherbe, Hillage e Moerlen são alguns dos músicos mais incríveis com quem convivi, toquei e compús na minha vida.

O Hawkwind sempre foi capaz de me colocar em sintonia quando eu colocava tudo o que eu tinha feito em questão, me oferecendo a chance de encontrar maneiras diferentes para seguir adiante - Dave e eu pensamos 'Onwards' (avante). Você não pode fazer a mesma coisa por 40 anos, deve-se evoluir.
Eu imagino que isto seja assim porque porque muito pouco do material "clássico" do Gong foi realmente escrito quando Daevid estava por perto, que ele tem excursiona persistentemente por tantos anos tocando a mesma música... Daevid muda apenas os nomes e os autores a fim de usufruir do lucro da maneira que melhor lhe convém! Acho que isto acontece basicamente porque ele se envergonha de não ter estado presente na origem de grande parte das músicas que ele tanto gosta e tocar. Deve ser muito triste para ele, lá no fundo!
Fiquei muito contente de ver Steve Hillage de volta na banda, na tour de 2009/10 e ouvir música nova de verdade sendo escrita!

Mas não parece que a criatividade tenha continuado desde que ele saiu de novo!

É claro - a grande coisa sobre tocar com Hawkwind nos 2010s é que eu mudei completamente minhas técnicas musicais, tocando sintetizadores virtuais, controlados pelo Theremin, e minha guitarra - "Onwards" (avante) - não há mais volta!

ASTRONAUTA - Como foi o processo de gravação dos álbuns "Crystal Machine" (1977), "New Jerusalem" (1978) e "Waterfalls in Space" (1979)? Qual foram os sintetizadores que você usou para gravar este álbum? Você ainda tem alguns desses sintetizadores?

TIM - Ah, Dias Analógicos! Bem, meu EMS duplo, um sintetizador modular (tanto Roland quanto Moog), meu fiel Mini Moog, e uma variedade de primeiros equipamentos polifônicos!

É claro - de "Jerusalem" em diante - a maior contribuição para a música do Crystal machine foi encontrar alguém com quem eu realmente gostei de tocar, Jean-Philippe Rykiel.
Além de ser um grande 'mini-moogista' desde muito cedo, Jean-Phi é também um dos pioneiros da síntese polifônica.
Ele se tornou um produtor musical bm sucedido, hoje em dia, especializado em música africana...

Waterfalls in Space foi gravado por Jean-Phi enquanto estávamos ensaiando.

A maior parte do meu equipamento analógico está nas mãos de um colecionador especializado na Inglaterra. Ele é um técnico em eletrônica muito competente, um restaurador. E todo o equipamento parece estar funcionando muito bem de novo!
Meu sistema modular Roland está nas mãos de Romain Turzi, um dos músico de rock eletrônico de hoje em dia.

ASTRONAUTA - Você é sempre mencionado quando o assunto em uma conversa é os sintetizadores EMS! Qual era a sua relação com este equipamento e com os inventores dos synths EMS (Peter Zinovieff, David Cockerell e Tristan Cary), você os conheceu pessoalmente nos anos 70?

Os famosos sintetizadores EMS do Tim Blake

TIM - Minhas relações com a EMS eram em principalmente com Robin Woob (proprietário hoje em dia) e os técnicos, Graham Wood, Graham Hinton, com quem a maioria das modificações exclusivas para o meu set-up foram concebidos.
Eu conheci Zinovieff, é claro, mas não Cockerell ou Cary. Peter parecia olhar de uma forma estranha para aqueles que tocavam com os sintetizadores EMS, considerando-os como brinquedos que ele vendia para financiar seu enorme estúdio de música para computador. Eu nunca ouvi uma nota de sua música!
Eu acredito que uma vez impressionei Peter, em um almoço na EMS, provando de seu queijo com muito chutney feito em casa (espécie de tempero)! Povo estranho, os músicos eletrônicos!

ASTRONAUTA - Seus álbuns são difíceis de encontrar, tanto em LP quanto em CD, mas você mantém sua discografia solo para download no seu site. Por que você escolheu para manter seus álbuns disponíveis em formato digital em vez de mantê-los nos formatos antigos? Você está gravando ou planejando gravar material novo para lançar como Crystal Machine algum dia?

TIM - Eu não tive um bom relacionamento com a indústria da música e alguns dos meus discos mais vendidos nunca me renderam um cheque com roalties.
Então, eu prefiro trabalhar como uma indústria de um homem só!

CRYSTAL MACHINE pode ser encontrado em CD - http://moonweed.free.fr/Cds/c-machine.html
e também MAGICK - http://moonweed.free.fr/Cds/Magick.html

Não há "mercado" nos dias de hoje para os meus álbuns em formato físico que faça valer a pena para mim produzi-los. Mas apesar de representar uma pequena das vendas apenas, fazendo downloads por conta própria eu consigo manter as perdas baixas!
Você pode obter minha música do meu próprio site:

http://moonweed.free.fr/store.hmt

Também estou expermentando uma página no Bandcamp:

http://timblake.bandcamp.com

Isto foi feito basicamente para permitir que as pessoas a escolher seu formato, mas parece um pouco com uma jukebox online para mim, com 99% de plays, e 1% de vendas, então eu não sei se vou continuar com ele.

ASTRONAUTA - Bem, obrigado, meu amigo. Espero que você venha ao Brasil em breve!!! Tudo de bom para você, Tim!

Dave Brock e Tim Blake (Londres, 2010)

Tim Blake com o GONG, 1974
(Minimoog e EMS Synthi A)

Hawkwind - Masters of Universe tour (inverno de 1979)

Crystal Machine World Tour 1979
Jean-Philippe Rykiel e Tim Blake no
'The Space' Hanne Mori - Tokyo, Japan
foto: Patrice Werrener

TIM BLAKE

Download Shop:

http://moonweed.free.fr/store.htm

Website:

http://moonweed.free.fr

Myspace:

www.myspace.com/timblakecrystalmachine

Hawkwind Official Site:

www.hawkwind.com

↧

ARP Omni 2 (text in english)

November 26, 2012, 8:56 am

≫ Next: Cinco perguntas para Bernie Krause

≪ Previous: Cinco perguntas para Tim Blake

Located in Lexington (Massachusetts USA), the ARP Instruments, Inc. - named with the initials of the name of its founder, the electronic engineer Allan Robert Pearlman, in 1969 - entered the '70s as a very famous company in the synthesizers market. Several artists used to use their equipment and a large number of musicians and studios owned their instruments, mainly for reasons of cost/benefit (although still very expensive, the ARP instruments were considerably cheaper than the equipment manufactured by Moog, for instance). The company also endorsed several artists very well known by the general public, as Pete Townshend and Stevie Wonder (among many others), as a way to promote the company's name. This strategy made the company's name to become very famous, mainly for their instruments appearing in the credits of several hit albums at the time.

In 1974, ARP brought to market their most popular equipment: ARP String Ensemble or ARP Solina, as it is also known. I say that this device may have been their most popular because almost any dance band owned a keyboard of this model to emulate the sounds of a strings orchestra. After that, the company was always increasing the ARP String Ensemble and creating new versions and new models (ARP only stopped manufacturing it in 1981). Some of these new models - that used basically the same principles of the string ensemble with some additions - were the ARP Omni, ARP Omni 2 and ARP Quadra, all with polyphonic and bass synthesizers added to systems.

The Omni model emerged in late 1976 and was manufactured until the summer of 1978, when it was replaced by ARP Omni 2 (manufactured until the summer of 1981 - the year that the ARP was sold to CBS, due to pay the debts acquired in more than ten years of existence mismanaged).

The ARP Omni 2 (the model I own) has a 49-note keyboard - 4 octaves, from C to C - with full polyphony and is divided in three sessions: a string ensemble with 4 preset sounds ("bass", "cello" "viola" and "violin", with sliders to control ATTACK and RELEASE and a slider to control the LFO rate), a polyphonic synthesizer (range of octaves between 8 'and 4') and a "bass synthesizer" (with variation between 16 'and 8' and a selector for "staccato"). Both the polyphonic synthesizer and the bass synthesizer have sliders to control ATTACK, DECAY, SUSTAIN and RELEASE and a 24 dB/octave Low Pass Filter (with controls of FREQUENCY, RESONANCE and LFO). A switch to turn on and off the Chorus/Phaser, another switch to select the waveform generated (between a square wave and a sawtooth wave), another switch to choose between single mode and multi trigger for envelope, and sliders for general volume, a mixer between the string ensemble and polyphonic synthesizer and a independent volume slider to control the bass synthesizer completes the front panel of the ARP Omni 2.

In the rear of the ARP Omni 2 there are separate outputs for each of the sessions (strings, synth and bass), a footswitch jack to control sustain, jacks for pedals control volume and filter, an P-10 output jack and another XLR output jack (with level control between high and low) and a synthesizer's interface, with gate, trigger and CV jacks.

There are few differences between the internal structure of ARP Omni and ARP Omni 2: only small changes in the Chorus/Phaser circuit, a separate output to the bass synthesizer (on Omni 2, the first model only had individual outputs for strings and synthesizer ) and a selectror switch between "single" and "multi"-trigger to control the envelope polyphonic synthesizer. On the other hand, the external structure of the two models are very different, mainly because the ARP Omni 2 started to adopt a chassis made entirely of steel (with leather sides, a characteristic of various ARP synthesizers) and the orange, black and white control switches and logos - one of ARP's most recognizable trademarks).

Some of the artists who played on an ARP Omni and/or an ARP Omni 2 recordings were: Joy Division (several of the songs on the album "Closer" has the characteristic sound of the strings of an ARP Omni 2. In "Love Will Tear Us Apart" - perhaps Joy Division's most famous song - guitarist Bernard Sumner appears in the official video clip using one ARP Pmni 2. On the picture on the right Bernand Sumner appears alongside Martin Hannett, the producer of the band's albums), New Order (on the first album, probably the same instrument, used by Joy Division, since New Order was born from the ashes of Joy Division), Gary Numan (on youtube you can find a christmas special edition of "Top of the pops" in 1979, which an ARP Omni 2 and a Polymoog are being played, in the songs "Are Friends Electric?" and "Cars"), Tangerine Dream, The Cars (on "Let The Good Times Roll"), Kraftwerk, Supertramp (keyboardist and vocalist Rick Davies used to travel with two instruments of this model), Modern Inglês (on the track "I Melt With You", 1982), John Foxx (his latest band, John Foxx and the Maths, is traveling with an ARP Omni), Steve Hillage (on the album "Rainbow Dome Musick", 1979), american jazz musician Roy Ayres, the bands Boston and Kansas (in "Dust In The Wind"), The Commodores, Al Kooper, keyboardist Allan Zavod (from Jean-Luc Ponty's band), Cat Stevens, Dave Greenslade, Electric Light Orchestra, and many others, including the already mentioned at the beginning of the text as "endorsers" of the ARP instruments, Stevie Wonder and Pete Townshend.

My ARP Omni 2 (serial number 2473- 3879. The first four numbers indicate the model) was one of the first instruments I bought in my life. Before him, I think I only had the Korg 700S, maybe some other one, I don't not remember so well. But it was certainly among the first instruments I ever bought. At 18 years old - in 1994 - I worked in a music store in New Harburgo - Rio Grande do Sul - and this keyboard had been put up for sale by a guy named Ivo, the keyboardist and owner of a popular dance band in Rio Grande do Sul. As I worked there in that store, I bought it straight from him. I remember I paid R$ 200,00 (U$ 100) or something like that, but this was more or less what I gained in a whole month of work, so it wasn't so cheap like it seems. Anyway, I bought that already knowing that I would have to fix some things and during these almost 18 years that this instrument is with me, it worked and stopped working several times. The last time I fixed it and put it to work was to record the song "Harajuku Girl" to my latest album, "Zeitgeist/Propaganda". As the Omni 2 did get back to work fone and it was standing in my parents' house for a long time, I decided to use it in a some shows I did in North American Cultural Center in Porto Alegre, in 2009 (there are some videos on youtube of these shows). After that, I took it for a mini-tour that I played with a brazilian comic/parody singer Jupiter Maçã, in Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná. Unfortunately - and given the brutality with which the baggage handlers in the brazilian airports use to deal with the belongings of their passengers - the keyboard came back from this series of concerts with two broken keys and it also showed some components malfunction. In November 2011, I stayed some days in my parents' house in São Leopoldo (RS), I decided to open and start a reform in my ARP Omni 2, including fix the two broken keys (and cleanup of other keys), glue the sides of leather and paint the chassis, which was rusty since I bought it. Unfortunately my limited knowledge of electronics (for now) made me stop, so I had to fix the components that are not working. But I am already scheduling to visit my friend and genial electronics technician Cardoso and soon we can resolve and make to come back to work this great piece in my collection of analog instruments!

photos: Kay Mavrides / internet

I found some ads from the time of release of the ARP Omni:

At the time (obviously), the ARP sent a ARP Omni demo disc by mail, to the people who was interested enough to contact the company. Here is the announcement:

And here are some ads from the days when the ARP Omni 2 replaced the first model:

As my ARP Omni 2 is momentarily in the reform process and still not working perfectly, not recorded my video demonstrating it. Put here a video I found on youtube, recorded by American musician Mike Thompson:

The song "Harajuku Girl" (from third solo album, "Zeitgeist/Propaganda"), can be heard and downloaded here in two versions:

Harajuku Girl (vocoder version) by astronautapinguim

Harajuku Girl (MOOG version) by astronautapinguim

↧

Cinco perguntas para Bernie Krause

December 7, 2012, 8:06 pm

≫ Next: Five questions to Bernie Krause

≪ Previous: ARP Omni 2 (text in english)

O músico, compositor, escritor, sintetista e soundscape ecologist Bernard L. Krause nasceu na cidade de Detriot (Michigan/USA), no dia 8 de dezembro de 1938. Seus primeiros passos na música foram ainda na infância: Bernie começou a estudar violino aos 3 anos de idade e com apenas 4 anos ele passou a estudar composição clássica! Nos anos seguintes, ele aprendeu a tocar vários outros instrumentos de cordas (viola, violoncelo, contrabaixo, harpa), mas foi na adolescência que ele descobriu o instrumento que mais gostava de tocar naquela época, a guitarra, e foi justamente tocando guitarra que ele começou sua carreira como músico profissional, tocando como músico de estúdio em gravações de jazz e também nas primeiras gravações da Motown (sim, o lendário selo de soul music). Aos 25 anos - em 1963 -, Bernie juntou-se a banda de folk The Weavers, tocando com eles até que o grupo se desfez, no início de 1964.

Mais tarde naquele mesmo ano, Bernie Krause se mudou para San Francisco (California), com a intenção de estudar música eletrônica no Mills College, numa época em que compositores como Karlheinz Stockhausen e Pauline Oliveros realizavam palestras e concertos naquela instituição. Foi também nesta época que, praticamente ao mesmo tempo, os engenheiros eletrônicos Robert Moog e Don Buchla estavam começando a mostrar ao mundo as suas primeiras criações: os sintetizadores Moog e Buchla, respectivamente. Claro que Bernie interessou-se pelo novo instrumento e seu interesse o levou ao encontro de outro grande nome da história dos sintetizadores: Paul Beaver. Beaver & Krause trabalharam juntos em seu estúdio em Los Angeles, participaram de muitas gravações de outros artistas e bandas, criaram música e paisagens sonoras para muitos filmes e gravaram cinco álbuns de enorme importância: The Nonesuch Guide to Eletronic Music (1968), Ragnarök (1969), In a Wild Sanctuary (1970), Gandharva (1971) e All The Good Men (1972).

Após a morte de Paul Beaver (em 1975), Bernie passou a ter um interesse maior em dar continuidade às suas gravações de paisagens sonoras do que na programação de sintetizadores. Ele começou a gravar os sons da natureza nos anos 60, tanto para usar em seus álbuns quanto em trilhas sonoras para filmes e também para o The Krause Natural Soundscape Archive, uma enorme coleção que consiste em mais de 4,500 horas de sons gravados de mais de 15,000 espécies, marinhas e terrestres! No final dos anos setenta Bernie completou seu Ph. D. em bioacústica no Union Institute and University, em Cincinatti. Ele é autor de quatro livros e muitos artigos, principalmente sobre seu trabalho de gravação de paisagens sonoras e tem mais de 50 discos com sons da natureza disponíveis para download!

Meu primeiro contato com Bernie foi via facebook, quando eu perguntei se ele aceitava fazer esta entrevista. Ele foi muito gentil e gentilmente aceitou meu convite, me pedindo para escrever um e-mail para Katherine Krause (sua esposa), para que ela pudesse transmitir-lhe a mensagem e assim ele responderia às minhas perguntas. E aqui está, é com muito orgulho que posto esta entrevista com o grande Dr. Bernie Krause, exatamente no dia do seu aniversário de 74 anos de idade! Feliz aniversário, Dr. Bernie Krause e muito obrigado por me dar a oportunidade de tê-lo entrevistado aqui no meu blog!

Bernie and the Moog synthesizer (photo by Jon Sievert)

ASTRONAUTA - Bernie, como foram os seus primeiros passos no mundo musical e como você se interessou pela guitarra elétrica e, depois disso, pelos sintetizadores e pela música eletrônica?

BERNIE - Como eu não enxergo muito bem, minhas informações sobre o mundo chegam principalmente pelo som. Então, naturalmente, quando eu era criança, passei a estudar música, indo violino para composição. Quando me tornei adolescente, eu mudei para guitarra (quando os hormônios chamaram) porque... bem, você sabe. Quando eu tinha 25 anos de idade, entrei para um grupo folk muito famoso nos Estados Unidos, chamado The Weavers. Depois que a banda se separarou, no início de 1964, eu me mudei de New York para a California e passei a estudar música eletrônica no Mills College, em Oakland, que na época era a principal instituição de técnicas experimentais. Enquanto estava lá, eu conheci o Paul Beaver, que se tornou meu parceiro musical e, juntos, ajudamos a introduzir o sintetizador Moog na música pop e no cinema, tanto na Costa Oeste (dos Estados Unidos) quanto no Reino Unido.

ASTRONAUTA - Você conheceu Robert Moog e Don Buchla logo nos primeiros dias da invenção do sintetizador. Como foi fazer parte desta emergente cena, que mudou muito a música e os métodos para a composição, criação e execução musical? E sobre o Paul Beaver, como você o conheceu e como vocês tiveram a idéia de gravar "The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music" (1968)?

BERNIE - Aqueles primeiros tempos (dos sintetizadores) analógicos eram muito emocionantes porque o instrumento tornou-se um ímã para muitos dos grandes artistas da época e todos eles passavam pelos nossos estúdios, em Los Angeles ou em San Francisco, para trabalhar e conviver. (Sobre a segunda parte da sua pergunta, veja a resposta à número 1, acima).

Bernie, Beaver and their Moog III synthesizer (1967)

ASTRONAUTA - Você e Paul Beaver são creditados como músicos, tocando os sintetizadores (principalmente o Moog, eu imagino) em alguns dos mais importantes álbuns de música pop de todos os tempos e também foram vocês dois que apresentaram o sintetizador Moog para alguns dos artistas mais conhecidos no mundo da música mundial, incluindo Sir George Martin e George Harrison, dos Beatles. Na sua opinião, das gravações que você participou de discos de outros artistas, qual foi a mais importante, a mais divertida, a mais gratificante e a menos gratificante/mais sem graça (se tiver alguma) de todas? E sobre as trilhas sonoras de filmes que você gravou, com sintetizadores sons e/ou paisagens sonoras naturais? Quais foram as trilhas que você mais gostou de fazer parte?

BERNIE - Na maior parte do tempo, depois de introduzirmos o sintetizador nos estúdios de Los Angeles e do Reino Unido, estávamos constantemente ocupados - nós trabalhavamos muitas vezes por até 80 horas por semana e ficávamos vagando como zumbis, de estúdio em estúdio nestas cidades, trabalhando. Quase não dormiamos e embora tenhamos tocado nas gravações de muitos artistas e também em muitas trilhas sonoras de filmes, apenas alguns poucos se destacam como memoráveis. O texto seguinte é um trecho do meu livro de 1998, intitulado "Into a Wild Sanctuary: A Life in Music and Natural Sound"e relata uma experiência - atípica porém notável - com o falecido George Harrison:

San Francisco, Novembro de 1969. Uma noite, já tarde, eu peguei o telefone e ouvi a voz de George Harrison do outro lado da linha. Ele ligou para perguntar se eu poderia ir a Londres, levar um sintetizador Moog comigo e ensiná-lo a tocar. Paul Beaver e eu já tinhamos vendido um para George Martin e outro para Mick Jagger. Harrison - que um mês antes tinha me pedido para tocar sintetizador no disco do Jackie Lomax, que ele estava produzindo e gravando no Armin Steiner's Sound Recorders em Hollywood - tinha que ter um, disse ele, e queria isto imediatamente. Ele não queria ser superado pelos seus amigos.

Depois de encerrada a sessão com o Lomax, Harrison pediu-me para ficar mais um pouco e demonstrar as configurações do Moog que eu tinha utilizado na gravação e também outros sons possíveis. Já era bem tarde, por volta de 3 da madrugada, e eu havia vindo de San Francisco cedo no dia anterior. Eu lhe disse que estava cansado e que eu precisava voltar na manhã seguinte para uma sessão agendada, mas que ficaria por uma hora. Eu estava exausto e não percebi que ele havia ordenado para que o engenheiro mantivesse um gravador rodando e tudo o que eu demonstrava estava sendo gravado. Se eu soubesse que isso estava acontecendo, nunca teria mostrado exemplos do que Paul e eu estávamos trabalhando para o álbum da Warner Brothers que estávamos planejando ("Gandharva"). Como eu demonstrei a ele as configurações e dei exemplos de como tocar, Harrison obviamente pareceu impressionado com as possibilidades. Eu não tinha idéia no momento do quanto ele estava impressionado exatamente.

No final da demonstração George me perguntou quando ele poderia ter um Moog III enviado para Londres. Eu disse que ele poderia tê-lo 30 dias depois de recebermos um depósito de 50 por cento do valor. Ele me lembrou, pela primeira de inúmeras vezes, de que ele era um Beatle no final das contas e que a Apple Music Organization geralmente não fazia depósitos antecipados. Tentando manter a calma, respondi que, assim que eu recebesse um cheque com o depósito da Apple e sacasse o dinheiro no banco, um sintetizador estaria a caminho dentro de um mês. Ele perguntou se poderíamos mudar o acordo para ele - de novo, porque ele era um Beatle. Eu disse a ele que não haviam exceções - até mesmo para a Rainha.

Depois de meses de silêncio, houve outra chamada tarde da noite, era Harrison perguntando onde estava o seu sintetizador. Sentindo que eu estava falando com um idiota, mais uma vez repeti os termos. Finalmente pronto para pegar para o instrumento, George perguntou se eu iria pessoalmente viajar para Londres quando o instrumento fosse enviado, para ajudar na alfândega e para ensiná-lo para operar a máquina. Eu concordei, desde que ele pagasse minhas despesas e pelo meu tempo, imaginando que seria maravilhoso conhecer os outros membros da banda. Eu tinha ouvido a notícia de separação deles e queria experimentar a convivência com eles antes da estrofe final da ruína.

No início de janeiro, outra chamada veio de Harrison, desta vez dizendo que um depósito havia sido enviado e que eu deveria me organizar para ir a Londres para trabalhar com ele no momento em que o instrumento estivesse pronto. Falando como se estivesse se dirigindo a um escravo, ele nunca perguntou se era conveniente ou possível, ou se o momento era certo, ele só ordenou: "organize sua vinda." Ele reiterou que ele iria pagar pelas despesas, mas nada pelo meu tempo. "Você está vendendo a maldita coisa!" ele me lembrou. "Agora me mostrar como tocar!" Afinal, ele era um Beatle.

Uma passagem de primeira classe chegou pelo correio, que eu imediatamente troquei por duas passagens comuns, para que minha esposa Denise pudesse me acompanhar. Mesmo que não tivessemos filhos, ela nunca teve um emprego ou se ofereceu para ajudar em certos aspectos práticos de nossas vidas, embora arcar com todas as despesas tivesse sido, muitas vezes, um fardo muito grande para eu carregar sozinho e isto acrescentasse mais tensão para o nosso já conturbado casamento. Sem se preocupar com a forma como as questões práticas de nossas vidas seriam abordadas, quando chegou a hora de viajarmos, especialmente quando estávamos perto de Paris, onde ela cresceu, Denise estava sempre pronta para lucrar com as regalias. Na sexta-feira antes de sairmos, eu liguei para a secretária de Harrison, para confirmar a viagem. O escritório da Apple verificou todas as providências e disse que eu era esperado. Na primeira terça-feira de fevereiro de 1970, nós estavamos saindo de Los Angeles no vôo do meio-dia, pela TWA.

Sentados no corredor e no assento do meio da primeira fileira, logo atrás da área reservada à primeira classe de um antigo 707, tinhamos uma visão clara da cabine de primeira classe. Quando o avião se afastou do portão de embarque, uma passageira da primeira classe se levantou e começou a arrancar as roupas dela, gritando "o avião vai cair! Todo mundo fora porque o avião vai cair!" Robert Mitchum, que aparentemente estava sentado uma fileira atrás dela, levantou-se calmamente e envolveu um cobertor em torno da mulher, enquanto o avião retornava ao portão, para que o pessoal pudesse retira-la do vôo. Dory Previn, no pior momento da separação do seu marido, o maestro André Previn, sofreu um colapso mental que posteriormente a levou a um período que ela viria a escrever de forma tão eloquente mais adiante. A viagem começou de forma dramática nunca mudou.

Londres, Fevereiro de 1970. A Apple havia reservado um quarto no Dorchester Hotel. Como o hotel ficava a uma curta distância do escritório, depois de nos acomodarmos, eu caminhei sozinho para o santuário da Apple, para descobrir o que estava acontecendo. A rua mais parecia um circo, com muitas crianças zanzando em trajes diferentes, rindo com caras de bobos para quem passasse pelos portões sagrados. Quando entrei no escritório, fui primeiramente recebido pelo batalhão segurança, com um ar incrivelmente esnobe e indiferente. Parecia que ninguém sabia que eu era esperado ou o que eu estava fazendo lá, mesmo que eles tivessem encomendado o sintetizador, enviado a passagem e providenciado minha estadia em um dos melhores hotéis da cidade. Finalmente, depois de cerca de uma hora, alguém me disse que Harrison teve suas amígdalas removidas na sexta-feira anterior (dia que eu liguei para confirmar a viagem), e que ele estaria de recesso por cerca de uma semana. Eu tinha que me conformar, me disseram. Eles me chamariam quando George estivesse pronto.

Com muito trabalho programado na Califórnia, eu não tinha planejado ficar em Londres com Harrison por mais de uma semana e tive a sensação de que isso iria se transformar em uma grande provação para mim. Tendo finalmente localizado a assistente de Harrison, eu disse a ela que gostaria de ir para Paris, onde a adoentada madrasta da minha esposa estava vivendo e que eu poderia ser encontrado em um hotel particular. Dei-lhe o número de hotel em Paris e disse-lhe para me ligar quando Harrison estivesse pronto e capaz de me encontrar. Eu também deu o número para os gerente de negócio do Beatle, para um casal de secretários e para o recepcionista do Dorchester. Ciente de que eu tinha deixados todos a par de onde estaria, Denise e eu voamos para Paris.

Vários dias se passaram, eu nem me lembro quantos. Parecia que era muito tempo. As sessões programadas na Califórnia foram adiadas ou canceladas. A cada dois dias eu ligava pro escritório da Apple, para ver se havia alguma notícia. As respostas, curtas e grossas, eram sempre as mesmas: "Ele vai chamar quando ele estiver pronto." Finalmente, numa manhã depois de cerca de uma semana, alguém da Apple ligou: "Onde diabos você estava!?", uma voz de uma mulher muito desagradável e arrogante gritou do outro lado da linha. "George está sentado, esperando por você, durante dias", ela gritou no telefone. "Por que você não está onde deveria estar? E além disso, não estamos conseguindo retirar o sintetizador na alfândega e precisamos de ajuda porque eles não conseguem definir o que é aquela maldita coisa e certamente não pagaremos os impostos que eles querem nos cobrar!". Antes de desligar o telefone, eu disse à mulher do outro lado da linha que enfiasse a sua atitude onde o sol não brilha e me ligar de volta quando ela estivesse mais calma. Quando ela finalmente ligou de volta pedindo desculpas, eu deixei claro os termos necessários se eles quisessem minha ajuda com qualquer coisa e disse à assistente que eu estaria de volta em Londres dentro de dois dias.

Encontrando-nos no aeroporto de Heathrow, o pessoal da Apple nos levou diretamente à alfândega inglesesa, onde o instrumento ainda estava aguardando liberação. Fiz questão de pedir ao escritório da Apple para enviar um amplificador para o aeroporto, com o motorista, para que pudéssemos tocar o sintetizador ali mesmo, se fosse necessário. A sugestão salvou o dia. O problema, na perspectiva da alândega, era que o sintetizador ainda não estava categorizado ou entraria como componentes eletrônicos. A taxa de importação seria, portanto, uma soma exorbitante de cerca de 60 ou 70 por cento do valor. No entanto, se fosse um órgão eletrônico, o imposto cairia para algo abaixo de 10 por cento - uma economia enorme em um instrumento de 15.000 dólares. Eu perguntei ao agente da alfândega se eu poderia desembrulhar o sintetizador e demonstrar para ele. Com a sua aprovação, eu liguei o sintetizador no amplificador, pluguei alguns osciladores, rapidamente sintetizei um som de um órgão Hammond B-3 e começei a tocar algumas melodias. Ciente de que era apenas um órgão eletrônico, ele permitiu que a Apple pagasse o imposto exigido e liberou o instrumento para a entrada na Grã-Bretanha.

Mais tarde, naquele mesmo dia, dois carros chegaram ao hotel para levar minha esposa e eu, separadamente, à casa de George Harrison em Esher, um subúrbio nos arredores de Londres. Tão obscura era sua localização que o motorista foi estava com um rádio para que o nosso comboio pudesse "receber instruções" de como se locomover pelo labirinto de pequenas ruas, até chegar na casa. Na luz dos faróis, a fachada parecia com a de uma residência com pé direito baixo e no estilo campestre que combinaria melhor com locais nos arredores de Huston. Eu só ví de relance, mas a marca distintiva da casa era apenas a porta da garagem escandalosamente decorada com algum tipo de pintura psicodélica, parcialmente obscurecida pelas enormes Mercedes estacionados em frente - um pouco chamativo para alguém que supostamente desejada privacidade. A esposa de Harrison, Patty, mais conhecida então como uma modelo da revista Vogue inglêsa, abriu a porta e perguntou a mim e à Denise, que tinhamos chegado juntos, se gostaria de algo para comer.

Nós fomos levados à cozinha, onde George e Patty estavam fazendo uma grande salada. "Nós somos vegetarianos, você sabe. Nós não comemos carne e não gostamos de usar produtos de animais mortos." Depois de um curto descanso, George ofereceu a ponta obrigatória e nos levou por um corredor até a sala, imediatamente nos dirigindo para sentarmos no sofá central de couro, com 15 metros de comprimento, que dominava todo o espaço. Eu não me preocupei em perguntar de qual animal tinha vindo o couro para fabricar aquele o sofá. A sala era decorada sem nenhuma coesão, sem objetos pessoais óbvios e vários lixos desconexos estavam por todo o lado. Uma cadeira de couro com encosto aqui. Um pufe desconexo, lá. Algumas lâmpadas de assoalho iluminando tudo, com uma luz muito forte. Nada nas coisas que nós vimos na casa parecia confortável ou relacionadas dentro de um estilo, embora seja difícil de explicar com o que exatamente as pessoas se sentem confortáveis. Era tudo tão impermanente e me fez sentir um pouco deslocado. Havia um gravador multi-track desmontado em um canto da sala de estar (com partes da caixa de transporte ainda evidentes), e um gravador de duas pistas, ja ligado e com uma fita pronta para ser tocada. After a few more minutes I realized that the recording was taken from the Lomax demo session I had played for Harrison only a few months earlier O sintetizador Moog estava montado em uma parede, na frente do sofá de couro, as duas únicas coisas na sala que pareciam se relacionar. Qualquer tentativa de começar uma conversa era interrompida continua e constantemente por telefonemas e pessoas passando pela casa, distraíndo a estrela já sem foco para perguntar se ele queria comprar coisas como uma Mercedes ou uma Ferrari. Harrison parecia muito impressionado em ser o centro de toda a comoção. Finalmente, as coisas se acalmaram um pouco e ele voltou sua atenção para o sintetizador. "Antes de começarmos", ele disse, "Eu quero tocar algo para você que eu fiz no sintetizador. A Apple vai lançar nos próximos meses. É a primeira peça eletrônica que eu compus, com uma pequena ajuda de meus gatos". Ele apertou o botão "play" no gravador. No começo eu não reconheci o material. No entanto, pouco a pouco, a sensação foi se tornando cada vez mais desconfortável, fui percebendo que eu tinha ouvido isto antes. Depois de mais alguns minutos, percebi que a gravação tinha sido feita na a sessão de demonstração com o Lomax, na quel eu tinha tocado apenas alguns meses antes.

Um pouco confuso, finalmente encontrei a coragem para dizer "George, esta é a minha música - a mesma coisa que toquei, demonstrando o Moog na sessão com o Lomax em Los Angeles. Por que é que iesto está nesta fita e por que você está me mostrando isto como seu?""Não se preocupe", ele respondeu com segurança: "Eu editei isto e, se vender, vou enviar-lhe algumas libras." "Espere um minuto, George, você nunca me perguntou se você poderia usar este material. Ele pertence a mim e a Paul Beaver. E nós precisamos conversar sobre isso." Neste instante ele ficou com o rosto vermelho, as veias começaram a saltar ao longo de seu pescoço, e ele ficou furioso. Mesmo os Beatles não gostam de serem pegos. Beatles não estão acostumados a ouvirem "Não."

"Você está agindo como se fosse o Jimi Hendrix," ele respondeu, levantando a voz em tom e volume. "Quando Ravi Shankar vem à minha casa, ele é humilde". Então, para terminar a conversa e vendo que eu não estava impressionado com sua defesa, ele gritou a sua frase mais famosa: "Confie em mim, eu sou um Beatle!" Sem hesitar, eu calmamente me levantei, coloquei em meu casaco e pediu-lhe para chamar um carro para mim, porque eu tinha visto o suficiente e estava indo para casa. Enquanto esperava minha viagem de volta se materializar, ele teve a audácia de me perguntar se eu poderia mostrar-lhe como configurar um som de uma gaita de foles. Sem dizer uma palavra, eu configurei um para ele e pensei comigo mesmo que tudo o que ele tinha a fazer era ficar o cano da gaita no rabo - e assoprar.

O álbum, "Electronic Music", de George Harrison, foi lançado alguns meses depois. Mas não antes de eu entrar em contato com ele novamente e pedir para que meu nome fosse retirado da capa. Eu não tinha dinheiro para processá-lo. A retribuição adequada seria esperar por alguém mais corajoso e menos intimidado pelas tendências de Harrison para a cópia - como a pessoa que escreveu "My Sweet Lord" e perseguiu George até que o assunto fosse resolvido em tribunal, favorecendo o reclamante e penalizando Harrison com uma multa enorme por violação de direitos autorais. Em vez de reimprimir a capa do álbum, a Apple simplesmente pintou, com tinha prateada, sobre meu nome. Se você pode encontrar alguma das velhas edições do álbum, segure-a com a luz e você ainda poderá ver o meu nome - escrito incorretamente, claro. Apesar de eu ter crédito no interior do encarte - juntamente com seus gatos - eu nunca recebeu uma única ''libra". Além disso, o filho-da-puta nunca mais me convidou para ir a sua casa, para que eu pudesse mostrar-lhe o meu modo "sou-tão-humilde-como-Ravi-Shankar" que eu tenho praticado desde então.

Quando eu tentei contar a história para um repórter na revista Rolling Stone, o editor recusou porque Harrison era o seu herói da mídia no momento. Em vez disso, publicou uma história sobre George comprando calçados. Eles até se recusou a publicar o texto integral da minha carta para o editor, descrevendo o que havia acontecido, embora, depois de alguma pressão, eles finalmente a publicaram - de um forma muito editada - muitos meses mais tarde. Principalmente, na época, fiquei surpreso e confuso com a diferença entre a imagem de Harrison na mídia e a que eu presenciei no estúdio e na casa dele. Sua recusa em reconhecer a fonte de onde ele conseguiu o material expropriado me deixou frustrado e irritado, mas também com um sentimento de impotência, um pouco mais cínico e fez com que eu desse mais valor aos meus esforços. Eu tento entender a ganância e a necessidade sem fim pelo poder mas até hoje não tenho como aceitar que algumas pessoas sintam a necessidade de agir de forma oportunista em relação ao outro. Alguns membros da minha família não são exceção.

Meu intercâmbio com Harrison foi especialmente decepcionante, porque eu tinha expectativas diferentes do que nossa relação poderia ter sido. Nesta época, eu era um sintetista confiante, um excelente programador e poderia ter sido útil caso o ambiente tivesse sido mais favorável. Os arrependimentos não duraram mais do que o tempo que levou para voltarmos ao nosso hotel. Eu tinha muito mais em minha mente - como o novo projeto com Paul, que incluia imortais do jazz e do blues como Gerry Mulligan, Howard Roberts, Mike Bloomfield, Leroy Vinnegar e Bud Shank - e de todos nós no mesmo grupo! Nós sonhávamos há muito tempo com a criação de canções que surgissem do ruído no ambiente nossa volta, começando explosiva e gradualmente e transformando a música em algo mais calmo e pacificamente, acabado em logos ecos, que iriam desaparecendo até que a última nota fosse ouvida.

*****

ASTRONAUTA - Onde você e Paul Beaver gravaram os cinco álbuns lançados por vocês (incluindo o "The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music")? Como era e como funcionava o estúdio Beaver & Krause, em Los Angeles?

BERNIE - Os dois primeiros álbuns, The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music e Ragnarok foram gravados basicamente no nosso estúdio Los Angeles. In A Wild Sanctuary, Gandharva e All Good Men são álbuns de estúdio, gravados em vários outros locais em Los Angeles e San Francisco.

Nosso estúdio de Los Angeles era equipado somente com um gravador de 8 pistas 3-M (com Dolby A) e, claro, um sintetizador Moog III. Era mais um armazém do que um estúdio de verdade, à prova de som. Então não era muito prático para gravação acústica ou gravação de orquestra. É por isso que, quando passamos a combinar os instrumentos tradicionais com o sintetizador, acabamos precisando de um estabelecimento melhor equipado. Isto explica o fato de gravarmos nossos álbuns posteriores em instalações maiores e mais acessíveis.

ASTRONAUTA - Desde o final dos anos 60 você gravar os sons da natureza, tanto para seus álbuns, para trilhas sonoras de filmes e para seus arquivos. Eu li em algum lugar que você tem mais de 4.500 horas de sons da natureza e mais de 50 álbuns para download, com mais de 15.000 espécies registradas. Como é este processo de gravação? Que tipo de equipamento você usa para gravar? E você já veio (ou planeja vir) para o Brasil algum dia, para gravar algumas espécies?

Basically, my idea was to record whole natural soundscapes -- what I refer to as biophonies. These biophonies represent all of the living wild organisms that vocalize in any given natural habitat. So the equipment I use has always been some form of stereo. From the late 1960s to the mid-1980s the equipment was analog tape recorders -- technology that was typically very heavy and required lots of battery power to operate. In addition, audio tape was very heavy and weighed nearly .5kg per reel and lasted only 20 minutes. So you had to carry lots of heavy items into the field to record. In the mid-1980s the technologies began to change and became a bit lighter. It was a transition time from analog to digital with the DAT (digital audio tape) machines and of which we had the first versions to experiment with. Also, mic techniques were improving so that the systems were not so badly affected by humidity and wind. Just around that time Sennheiser introduced MS (Mid-Side) technologies that were great for the field and a vast improvement on earlier XY stereo versions. They are still used, today. Now I use a Sound Devices 722 or 744 digital audio recorder which records both to hard drive and compact disk (as a backup) at the same time.

BERNIE - Basicamente, a minha idéia era gravar todos os sons da natureza - o que eu chamo de biophonies. Estes biophonies representam todos os organismos vivos selvagens, que vocalizam em qualquer habitat natural. Assim, o equipamento que uso sempre foi estéreo, de alguma forma. A partir dos anos 1960 até meados dos anos 1980, o equipamento que eu usava eram gravadores analógicos - tecnologia que era tipicamente muito pesada e eram necessários várias baterias de energia para funcionar. Além disso, a fita de áudio era muito pesada, com cerca de 0,5 kg por bobina, e durava apenas 20 minutos. Então você tinha que carregar muito equipamento pesado para gravar no campo. Em meados dos anos 1980 as tecnologias começaram a mudar e se as coisas se tornaram um pouco mais leves. Era um tempo de transição do analógico para o digital com os gravadores de fita DAT (digital audio tape), os quais tinhamos as primeiras versões para experimentar. Além disso, as especificações técnicas dos microfone estavam melhorando para que os sistemas não fossem tão gravemente afetados pela umidade e vento. Mais ou menos neste período, a Sennheiser introduziu as tecnologias MS (Mid-Side), que trouxeram um grande avanço para a área e uma grande melhoria em relação às versões anteriores de estéreo XY. Eles ainda são utilizados, hoje em dia. Agora eu uso um gravador de áudio digital Sound Devices 722 ou 744, que registra tanto para o disco rígido quanto para o Compact Disk (como backup) ao mesmo tempo.

Meus microfones são uma combinação de Sennheiser MKH30 e MKH40, montados um em cima do outro e alojados em uma armação à prova de choque e em uma unidade de proteção contra o vento. Meus microfones de backup são DPA 4060 de lapela, que às vezes eu amarro em uma árvore, de modo que posso ter os microfones montados em 180°, um na frente do outro.

Estive no Brasil várias vezes, principalmente para gravar na região da Amazônia, em torno de Manaus. Eu tenho muitos amigos queridos aí (no Rio, em São Paulo e em Brasília), de modo que seria ótimo voltar algum dia. Eu amo o país.

ASTRONAUTA - Bem, obrigado, Bernie! É um prazer entrar em contato com você e uma honra para entrevistá-lo! Melhores desejos!

BERNIE - Obrigado, Astronauta. Por favor, saiba que o meu novo livro, The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places, está sendo traduzido para o Português e deve ser editado no Brasil no ano que vem. E por favor, perdoe o atraso na minha resposta e contate-me se houver alguma dúvida.

Ciao,

Bernie.

Novo livro do Bernie:

"The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places", por Bernie Krause (Little/Brown, Spring 2012)

http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9780316192392_WhereToBuy.htm

Website:

http://www.wildsanctuary.com

Facebook:

http://wwwfacebook.com/TheGreatAnimalOrchestra

http://www.facebook.com/BernieKrauseAuthor

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/berniekrause

YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/BernieKrauseTV

Email:

info@wildsanctuary.com

NOTA: Esta entrevista pode conter material (texto, áudio e/ou vídeo), que é propriedade da Wild Sanctuary, e protegido por direitos autorais. Qualquer cópia, mudança e distribuição comercial é proibida sem a devida autorização do escritório.

↧

Five questions to Bernie Krause

December 7, 2012, 8:07 pm

≫ Next: Cinco perguntas para Paddy Kingsland

≪ Previous: Cinco perguntas para Bernie Krause

The musician, composer, synthesist, author and soundscape ecologist Bernard L. Krause was born in Detriot (Michigan/USA), on December 8th, 1938. His first steps in music dates back to his early childhood days: when he was only 3 he began to study the violin and when he was aged 4 he began to study classical composition! In the following years he learnt to play several other stringed instruments (viola, violoncello, bass, harp) but it was during his teenage days that he found out the instrument that he most loved to play in that time, the guitar, and it was playing the guitar that he began his career as a professional musician, playing as a studio jazz guitarist and also on early Motown (yes, the legendary soul music label!) sessions. When he was 25 years old, in 1963, he joined the folk band The Weavers, playing with them until the group disbanded in early 1964.

Later that year Bernie Krause moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, mainly to study electronic music in the Mills College, during the time that composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pauline Oliveros lectured and performed there. It was also at the same time that electronic engineers like Robert Moog and Don Buchla were beginning to show the world their first creations: the Moog and the Buchla synthesizers. Of course Bernie was interested in the new instrument and his interest led him to meet another great name in the synthesizers history: Paul Beaver. Beaver & Krause worked together in their studio in L.A. in many records from another artists and bands, provided music and soundscapes to many films and recorded 5 great and important albums: The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music (1968), Ragnarök (1969), In a Wild Sanctuary (1970), Gandharva (1971) and All The Good Men (1972).

After Beaver's death (in 1975), Bernie found himself more interested in keep working with soundscapes than in playing and programming the synthesizers. He began to record the sounds of the nature in the '60s, both to use in his albums, to provide soundtracks for movies and for The Krause Natural Soundscape Archive, a huge collection that consists of more than 4.500 hours of recorded sounds from more than 15.000 species, marine and terrestrial! In the late seventies Bernie completed his Ph. D. in bioacoustics, at the Union Institute and University, in Cincinatti. He is author of 4 books and many articles, mainly focused in his recording natural sounds work and has more than 50 downloadable records with sounds of the nature!

My first contact with Bernie was via facebook, when I asked him to do this interview. He was very gentle and kindly accepted my invitation asking me to write an email to Katherine Krause (his wife) so she could forward him the message and he could send me the answers. And here it is, I'm proud to post this interview with the great Dr. Bernie Krause exactly in his 74th birthday! Happy birthday Dr. Bernie and thanks for giving me the opportunity to have you interviewed here on my blog!

Bernie and the Moog synthesizer (photo by Jon Sievert)

ASTRONAUTA - Bernie, how were your first steps into the musical world and how did you become interested in playing the electric guitar and, after that, in synthesizers and electronic music?

BERNIE - Since I do not see too well, my world is mostly informed by sound. So naturally, as a young child I gravitated to music studying violin and composition. When I became a teenager, I switched to guitar (when the hormones kicked in) because… well, you know. When I was in my 25th year I joined a very famous American folk group called The Weavers. After they broke up in early 1964, I moved to California from New York, and began to study electronic music at Mills College in Oakland, which was the leading institution for experimental techniques at the time. While there, I met Paul Beaver, who became my music partner, and together we helped introduce the Moog synthesizer to pop music and film on the West Coast and in the UK.

ASTRONAUTA - You've met Robert Moog and Don Buchla in the first days of the invention of the synthesizer. How was to be part of that emerging scene that changed so much the music and the way people compose and create music? And how about your partner Paul Beaver, how did you meet him and how the idea of recording "The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music" (1968) came to you and Paul?

BERNIE - Those early analogue (synthesizer) days were pretty exciting because the instrument became a magnet for many of the great artists of the time and they all filtered through our Los Angeles or San Francisco studios to work and engage. (as for the second part of your question, see #1, above).

Bernie, Beaver and their Moog III synthesizer (1967)

ASTRONAUTA - You and Paul Beaver are credited as the synthesizers players (mainly the Moog synthesizer, I think) in some of the most important pop albums from all time and also to present the Moog synthesizer to some of the most well known artists in the pop music world, including Sir George Martin and George Harrison, from The Beatles. In your opinion, what was the most important, the most funny, the most grateful and the most hateful/unfunny thing (if you have one) about of the songs your recorded on other artists albums? And what about the movie soundtracks you provided with synthesizers sounds and/or natural soundscapes? What were the ones you most enjoyed to be part of?

BERNIE - For the most part, after we introduced the synthesizer to the LA and UK studio scene, we were constantly busy -- each of us often working 80 hours a week and just shuffling, zombie-like, from studio to studio in those towns to work. We got hardly any sleep and although we played on the sessions of many artists and for many film soundtracks, only a few stand out as memorable. The following is an excerpt from my 1998 book titled, Into a Wild Sanctuary: A Life in Music and Natural Sound" and an atypical but notable experience with the late George Harrison:

San Francisco, November, 1969. Late one night I picked up the phone only to hear George Harrison’s voice on the other end of the line. He called to ask if I would come to London and bring a Moog synthesizer with me and teach him to play. Paul Beaver and I had already sold one to George Martin and to Mick Jagger. Harrison, who a month earlier had asked me to play synthesizer on his Jackie Lomax album production at Armin Steiner's Sound Recorders in Hollywood, had to have one, he said, and he wanted it right away. He didn’t want to be scooped by his buddies.

After the Lomax session wrapped up, Harrison asked me to stay behind and demonstrate the Moog set-ups I had used on the session and other possible sounds. It was already quite late, around 3:00 AM, and I had flown in from San Francisco early the previous day. I told him I was tired and that I needed to return in the morning for a scheduled session but would stay for an hour. In my exhausted state, I didn't notice that he had ordered the engineer to keep a tape machine rolling and everything I was demonstrating was being recorded. Had I been aware that this was happening, I would have never shown examples of what Paul and I were considering for the Warner Brothers album we were planning (Gandharva). As I showed him the settings and gave performance examples, Harrison obviously seemed awed with the possibilities. I had no idea at the time exactly how impressed he was.

At the end of the demonstration George asked me when he could get a Moog III delivered to London. I told him that he could have it thirty days after we got a fifty percent deposit. He reminded me for the first of several times that he was, after all, a Beatle, and the Apple Music Organization generally didn't give deposits. Trying to remain calm, I responded that as soon as I received a deposit check from Apple and it cleared the bank, a synthesizer would be on its way within a month. He asked us if we could move up the schedule for him – again, because he was a Beatle. I told him that there were no exceptions – even for the Queen.

After months of silence, there was another late night call from Harrison asking where his synthesizer was. Feeling that I was speaking with an idiot, once again, I repeated the terms. Finally ready to spring for the instrument, George asked if I would personally travel to London when the instrument was shipped to help it clear customs and to teach him how to operate the machine. I agreed, as long as he paid for my expenses and time, thinking that it would be wonderful to meet the other members of the group. I had heard news of their split and wanted to experience the inner circle before the final strophe of the ruin.

Early in January, another call came from Harrison telling me that a deposit had been sent and that I should arrange to come over to London to work with him the moment the instrument was ready. Speaking as if he were addressing a servant, he never asked if it was convenient or possible or if the timing was right, he just ordered, "arrange to come." He reiterated that he would pay expenses but nothing for my time. "You're selling the bloody things!" he reminded me. "Now show me how to play it!" After all, he was a Beatle.

A first class ticket arrived in the mail, which I immediately cashed in for two coach tickets so that my wife, Denise, could accompany me. Even though we were childless, she never held a job or offered to help with certain practical aspects of our lives although making ends meet was often an incredible burden for me to carry alone and added strain to our already-troubled marriage. Unconcerned about how the practical issues of our lives would be addressed, when it came to travel, particularly when it was close to Paris where she grew up, she was always ready to cash in on the perks. The Friday before we left, I checked with Harrison’s secretary to confirm the trip. The Apple office verified all the arrangements and said I was expected. The first Tuesday in February of 1970 we were on the noon TWA flight from LA.

Seated in the aisle and middle seats in the first row just behind the first class bulkhead of an old 707, we had a clear view of the first class cabin. As the plane pulled away from the gate, a female passenger in first class jumped up and began to rip off her clothes screaming "The plane's going to crash! Everyone get off 'cause the plane's going to crash!" Robert Mitchum, who was apparently sitting a row behind her, calmly got up and wrapped a blanket around the woman as the plane returned to the gate so that the personnel could eject her from the flight. Dory Previn, in the throes of her breakup with her conductor-husband, André, endured a mental collapse that subsequently led to a period she would later write so eloquently about. The trip began dramatically and never varied.

London, February, 1970. Apple booked us into the Dorchester Hotel. It was within walking distance of the office and so, after settling in, I walked alone to the Apple shrine to find out what was happening. The approach from the street looked more like a circus with lots of kids milling about in different costumes gawking at whomever entered the hallowed gates. When I went into the office, I was greeted inside by the first security battalion with an air of incredible snottiness and indifference. No one seemed to know that I was expected or what I was doing there even though they had ordered the synthesizer, sent me a ticket, and arranged for my stay in one of the better hotels in town. Finally, after about an hour, someone volunteered that Harrison had had his tonsils removed the previous Friday (the day I called to confirm the trip), and that he would be out of commission for about a week. I'd have to cool it, they told me. They would call when George was ready.

With lots of work scheduled in California, I hadn't planned to stay in London for more than a week to work with Harrison and felt in my gut that this was going to turn into a major ordeal. Having finally located Harrison's assistant, I told him that I would go to Paris, where my wife's ailing stepmother was living and that I could be reached at a particular hotel. I gave him the hotel number in Paris and told him to call me when Harrison was ready and able to meet. I also gave the forwarding number to the Beatle's business manager, a couple of the secretaries, and to the concierge of the Dorchester. Satisfied that I had covered my bases, Denise and I flew to Paris.

Several days passed; I don't remember how many. It just seemed like a very long time. Scheduled sessions in California were postponed or cancelled. Every couple of days I would call the Apple office to see if there was any news. Curt answers were always the same, "He'll call when he's bloody ready." Finally, one morning after about a week, Apple called. "Where the fuck have you been!?" a very nasty and imperious female voice screamed from the other end. "George has been sitting around waiting for you for days," she screamed into the receiver. "Why aren't you where you're supposed to be? And furthermore, we haven't been able to get the synthesizer out of customs, and we need help because they can't define what the bloody thing is and we sure as bloody hell don't want to pay the tax they want to charge us!" Before slamming the receiver on the cradle, I told the woman on the end to shove her attitude where the sun don't shine and to call me back when she got it straightened out. When she finally called back apologetically, I outlined in clear terms what I required if they wanted my help with anything and told the assistant that I would return to London in a couple of days.

Meeting our flight at Heathrow, the Apple folks drove us directly to British customs where the instrument was still held hostage. I made a point of asking the Apple office to send an amplifier to the airport with the driver so that we could play the synthesizer live, if need be. The suggestion saved the day. The problem from custom's perspective was that the synthesizer was still an uncategorized or miscellaneous electronic device. The import duty would therefore be some outrageous sum of around 60 or 70 percent. However, if it was an electronic organ, the duty fell to something below 10 percent – an enormous savings on a $15,000 instrument. I asked the agent if I could unpack the synthesizer and demonstrate it to him. With his approval, I plugged it into the amplifier, patched a few oscillators, quickly synthesized a Hammond B-3 organ sound, and proceeded to play a couple of musical lines. Satisfied that it was only an electronic organ, he allowed Apple to pay the requisite tax and cleared the instrument for entrance into Great Britain.

Late that afternoon, two cars came to the hotel to take my wife and I, separately, to Harrison's house in Esher, a suburb outside of London. So obscure was its location that the driver was provided with a radio telephone so that our convoy could be "talked" through the maze of small streets to get to the house. In the beam of the headlights, the façade appeared as a low-lying one-story suburban ranch style residence that would tend to look more in place somewhere around Houston suburbs. I only caught a glimpse but its only distinguishing mark was the garage door outrageously decorated with some kind of psychedelic graphic partly obscured by the huge Mercedes parked in front – a little obvious for one who supposedly desired privacy. Harrison's wife, Patty, better known then as an English Vogue model, answered the door and asked Denise and I, who had arrived together, if we would like something to eat. We were ushered into the kitchen where George and Patty were making a large salad. "We're vegetarians, you know. We don't eat meat and don't like to use products from dead animals." After a short respite, George offered the compulsory joint and escorted us down a short hall into the living room, promptly directing us to sit on the fifteen foot long leather couch centerpiece which overwhelmed the space. I didn't bother to ask which animal the leather for the couch came from. The room was starkly furnished with no cohesive plan, no obvious personal objects, and lots of unconnected detritus lying about. A leather wing-backed chair, here. An unconnected ottoman, there. A few unrelated floor lamps giving off stark, bright light. Nothing in the sections of house that we saw looked particularly comfortable or related in style, although it's hard to explain the bits and pieces people feel comfortable with. It was all so impermanent and made me feel a bit unsettled. There was an uncrated multi-track tape recorder in one corner of the living room (parts of the shipping crate still evident), and a two-track machine all lit up with a tape cued and ready to play. The Moog synthesizer had been lined up against the wall across from the leather couch, the only two things in the room that related. Any attempt to engage in an exchange with continuity was constantly interrupted by phone calls and people dropping by the house, distracting the already unfocused star to ask if he wanted to score things like a Mercedes or a Ferrari. Harrison seemed greatly impressed being the center of all the commotion. Finally, things calmed down for a while and he returned his attention to the synthesizer. "Before we get started," he said, "I want to play something for you that I did on synthesizer. Apple will release it in the next few months. It's the first electronic piece that I did with a little help from my cats." He hit the "play" button on the tape recorder. At first I didn't recognize the material. However, little by little I became increasingly uncomfortable, knowing that I had heard this performance before. After a few more minutes I realized that the recording was taken from the Lomax demo session I had played for Harrison only a few months earlier.

A bit flustered, I finally rallied the courage to say "George, this is my music – the same stuff I played while demonstrating the Moog at the Lomax session in LA. Why is it on this tape and why are you representing it as yours?" "Don't worry," he responded with assurance, "I've edited it and if it sells, I'll send you a couple of quid." "Wait a minute, George, you never asked me if you could use this material. It belongs to Paul Beaver and me and we need to talk about it." At which point he got red in the face, veins began to stand out along his neck, and he got pissed. Even Beatles don’t like to get caught. Beatles are not used to being told “No.”

"You're coming on like you're Jimi Hendrix," he responded, his voice rising in pitch and volume. "When Ravi Shankar comes to my house, he's humble." Then, as if not to be undone and seeing that I wasn’t impressed with his defense, he screamed his most famous line, "Trust me, I'm a Beatle!" Without hesitation, I quietly got up, put on my coat, and asked him to order me a car because I had had enough and was going home. While waiting for my ride to materialize, he had the audacity to ask me if I would show him how to set up a bagpipe sound. Without saying a word, I patched one for him, and left thinking that all he had to do was to stick the chanter up his butt – and blow.

The album, "Electronic Music," by George Harrison, was released some months later. But not before I had it recalled and ordered my name taken off the cover. I didn't have the money or juice to sue him. The proper retribution would have to wait for someone more courageous and less intimidated by Harrison's tendencies to copy – like the person who wrote "My Sweet Lord" and chased George down until the matter was settled in court favoring the claimant and penalizing Harrison with a hefty copyright infringement fine. Rather then reprinting the album cover, Apple simply had my name silvered over. If you can find one of the old issues of the album, hold it in the right light and you can still faintly see my name – spelled incorrectly, of course. Although I did get credit on the inside jacket, along with his cats, I never did receive a single 'quid.' Also, the son-of-a-bitch never did invite me back to his house so I could show him my "I'm-as-humble-as-Ravi-Shankar" routine that I've been practicing ever since.

When I tried to tell the story to a reporter at Rolling Stone Magazine, his editor declined because Harrison was their media hero of the moment. Instead, they ran a story about George shopping for shoes. They even refused to publish the full text of my letter to the editor describing what had transpired although, with some pressure, they finally printed a heavily edited form many months later. Mostly, at the time, I was astonished and confused by the difference between Harrison's hip media image and what I experienced in the studio and at his home. His refusal to acknowledge the source where he acquired the expropriated material left me frustrated and angry, but also with a feeling of powerlessness, a little more cynical and with an increased sense of value for my efforts. I try to understand greed and the endless need for power, but to this day, I cannot accept that some people feel the need to act so opportunistically toward one another. Certain members of my family were no exception.

My exchange with Harrison was especially disappointing because I had different expectations of what our relationship could have been. By that time, I was a confident synthesist, an excellent programmer, and could have been helpful had the environment been more amenable. The regrets didn’t last more than the time it took to get back to our hotel. I had much more on my mind – like the new project with Paul that would include jazz and blues immortals like Gerry Mulligan, Howard Roberts, Mike Bloomfield, Leroy Vinnegar, and Bud Shank – and all of us in the same group! We had long dreamt of creating a song-cycle that spoke to noise in our environment beginning explosively and gradually transforming the music to a quieter and more peaceful ending in the long, fading echoes of last note heard.

*************************

ASTRONAUTA - Where did you record the five Beaver & Krause albums (including the "Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music")? How was/worked the Beaver & Krause studio in L.A.?

BERNIE - The first two albums, The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music, and Ragnarok, were recorded in our LA studio mostly. In A Wild Sanctuary, Gandharva, and All Good Men, were studio albums recorded at various other locations in LA and San Francisco.

Our L.A. studio was only equipped with an 8-track 3-M recorder (and Dolby A), and, of course, a Moog III synth, and was more of a warehouse than an actual sound-proofed studio. So it wasn't very practical for orchestral or acoustic recording. That's why, when we advanced to combining traditional instruments with the synthesizer, we needed a better-equipped facility. Hence, our recording in larger and more accessible facilities on our later albums.

ASTRONAUTA - Since the late '60s you record the sound of nature, both for your albums, for films and for your archives. I read somewhere that you have more than 4.500 hours of sounds of nature and more than 50 downloadable album with more than 15.000 species recorded. How is the process of recording it? What equipment you use to record it? And have you ever came (or are you planning to come) to Brazil, to record some species someday?

BERNIE - Basically, my idea was to record whole natural soundscapes -- what I refer to as biophonies. These biophonies represent all of the living wild organisms that vocalize in any given natural habitat. So the equipment I use has always been some form of stereo. From the late 1960s to the mid-1980s the equipment was analog tape recorders -- technology that was typically very heavy and required lots of battery power to operate. In addition, audio tape was very heavy and weighed nearly .5kg per reel and lasted only 20 minutes. So you had to carry lots of heavy items into the field to record. In the mid-1980s the technologies began to change and became a bit lighter. It was a transition time from analog to digital with the DAT (digital audio tape) machines and of which we had the first versions to experiment with. Also, mic techniques were improving so that the systems were not so badly affected by humidity and wind. Just around that time Sennheiser introduced MS (Mid-Side) technologies that were great for the field and a vast improvement on earlier XY stereo versions. They are still used, today. Now I use a Sound Devices 722 or 744 digital audio recorder which records both to hard drive and compact disk (as a backup) at the same time.

My microphones are a combination of Sennheiser MKH30 and MKH40, mounted one on top of another and housed in a shock mount and wind protection unit. My backup microphones are DPA 4060 lavalieres which I sometimes tie to a tree so that the mics are mounted 180° opposite one another.

I've been to Brazil several times, mostly to record in the Amazon region around Manaus. I have many good friends there (Rio, São Paulo, and Brazilia) so it would be great to return at some point. I love the country.

ASTRONAUTA - Well, thank you, Bernie! It's a pleasure to contact you and an honor to interview you! Best wishes!!!

BERNIE - Thank you, Astronauta. Please note that my new book, The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places, is now being translated into Portuguese and should be issued in Brazil in the coming year. And please forgive the delay in my response and contact me if there are any questions.

Ciao,

Bernie.

New Book:

"The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places" by Bernie Krause (Little/Brown, Spring 2012)

http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9780316192392_WhereToBuy.htm

Website:

http://www.wildsanctuary.com

Facebook:

http://wwwfacebook.com/TheGreatAnimalOrchestra

http://www.facebook.com/BernieKrauseAuthor

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/berniekrause

YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/BernieKrauseTV

Email:

info@wildsanctuary.com

NOTE: This interview may contain material (text, audio, and/or video) that is the property of Wild Sanctuary, and protected by copyright. Any unauthorized copying, changing, commercial distribution of this message elements, is prohibited without permission of this office.

↧

Cinco perguntas para Paddy Kingsland

January 29, 2013, 6:00 pm

≫ Next: Five questions to Paddy Kingsland

≪ Previous: Five questions to Bernie Krause

Paddy Kingsland e o EMS Synthi 100 (o Delaware)

Patrick "Paddy" Kingsland nasceu no dia 30 de janeiro de 1947 em Hampshire, Inglaterra. Na adolescência ele teve aulas de piano e ganhou sua primeira guitarra aos 15 anos de idade. Nesta mesma época ele construiu seu próprio amplificador valvulado e começou a tocar com a banda do colégio onde estudava. Paddy frequentou a Eggars Grammar School, na cidade de Alton (Hampshire) e, terminados seus estudos, ele passou a trabalhar na BBC, primeiramente como técnico em eletrônica até que, em 1970, ele teve a oportunidade de juntar-se ao BBC Radiophonic Workshop, o famoso departamento responsável por produzir as trilhas e efeitos sonoros para programas de rádio e TV da BBC. Paddy trabalhou lá por 11 anos e criou músicas para vários programas, incluindo os seriados "The Changes", "The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" e vários episódios de "Doctor Who"!

Mesmo depois de deixar o BBC Radiophonic Workshop em 1981, Paddy continuou a produzir música para alguns programas da BBC, inclusive para os documentários "Around the World in 80 Days" e "Pole to Pole" (ambos estrelados pelo ator Michael Palin, um dos fundadores do grupo Monty Python). Em 1982, Paddy decidiu montar seu próprio estúdio - PK Studios - que ele mantém até hoje.

Em 1973, a BBC Records lançou o álbum "Forth Dimension". Embora creditado ao BBC Radiophonic Workshop, o disco é o primeiro álbum solo lançado por Paddy Kingsland e inclui faixas gravadas por ele entre 1970 e 1973, utilizando proncipalmente os sintetizadores VCS3 e Synthi 100 (o Delaware), ambos fabricados pela EMS. Paddy lançou mais dois discos nos anos setenta, "Supercharged" e "Moogerama", e muitos outros álbuns de library music nos anos oitenta e noventa, principalmente pelo selo KPM. Muitas faixas gravadas por Paddy podem ser encontradas em coletâneas lançadas pela BBC Records!

Eu conheci e ouvi a música de Paddy Kingsland pela primeira vez durante minhas pesquisas sobre a Delia Derbyshire, a Daphne Oram e o BBC Radiophonic Workshop. No início de janeiro deste ano eu contatei ele (via o website do PK Studios) e prontamente tive meus emails respondidos por Paddy! Ele é um sujeito muito gentil e simpático e a música que ele cria, desde o tempo em que trabalhava na BBC, é supreendente! Hoje é aniversário de 66 anos de idade do Paddy, o que faz com que o fato de eu poder publicar esta entrevista nesta data seja muito especial! Feliz aniversário, Paddy, e muito obrigado pela entrevista!

ASTRONAUTA - Paddy, quais foram seus primeiros passos na música e quando você decidiu se tornar músico e compositor? Quando e como você passou a se interessar pela música eletrônica especificamente?

PADDY - Eu comecei tocando harmônica no ônibus, a caminho da escola, causando as mais variadas reações em quem escutava. Também tive as usuais aulas de piano até que eu ganhei uma guitarra usada, quando eu tinha 15 anos. Eu construí um amplificador valvulado e logo em seguida entrei numa banda da escola, onde tocavamos temas instrumentais como "Walk don't run" e, na sequência, mudamos para músicas do Chuck Berry. Quando eu trabalhava na BBC como técnico de estúdio eu costumava fazer experiências com tape loops e efeitos de éco. Eu tive a oportunidade de trabalhar no Radiophonic Workshop por uma semana - achei fabuloso e logo passei a trabalhar lá em tempo integral.

ASTRONAUTA - Você trabalhou no BBC Radiophonic Workshop por 11 anos (de 1970 a 1981). Quais eram os equipamentos e instrumentos que você tinha para criar suas músicas e efeitos sonoros naquela época?

Paddy com o Arp Odyssey

PADDY - Na época o Workshop tinha 4 estúdios, cada qual com um mixer mono e 4 gravadores de rolo. Existiam equipamentos que facilitavam o trabalho de lidar com os tapes loops e também algumas máquinas que permitiam variar a velocidade, mudando a afinação em semitons, para termos maior precisão. Haviam osciladores, daqueles tipo de laboratório, e uma bela caixa de acrílico, contendo um dispositivo que permitia selecionar, mecânica e sequencialmente, entre os sinais de entrada de áudio. Então existia um equipamento que tinha sido originalmente feito para prevenir ruidos no sistema de PA. Este equipamento fazia isso mudando a afinação em uns poucos ciclos. Nós usavamos isto para criar efeitos de fase e sons mais esquisitos ainda, mudando drásticamente a afinação. Existia também um gravador de fitas com cabeças rotatórias, que permitia mudar a afinação mantendo a velocidade da fita ou mesmo mudar a velocidade da fita mantendo a afinação - muito antes dos digital harmonizers, etc... O primeiro sintetizador chegou em 1970 - um EMS VCS3. Ele era bacana para aprender sobre controle de voltagem e gerar sons, mas não era legal para tocar músicas. O Arp Odyssey, que surgiu algum tempo depois, era bem melhor para isso.

ASTRONAUTA - Você chegou a ter a oportunidade de trabalhar com a Delia Derbyshire durate seu período no BBC Radiophonic Workshop? E você manteve contato com a Delia depois que ela deixou o BBC Radiophonic Workshop?

PADDY - Delia estava lá naquela época, ela era uma menina adorável e eu trabalhei bastante com ela e com Brian Hodgson. Delia era uma presença etérea no workshop, fazendo mágicas de todo o tipo para as produções de rádio e TV.
Os sintetizadores fizeram com que o processo de fazer música eletrônica ficasse muito mais rárpido, então tinha a pressão para produzirmos cada vez mais rápido, mesmo que não ficasse necessariamente bom. Delia ficava muito infeliz em ter que finalizar rápido toneladas de material, depois de tantos anos de liberdade para levar o tempo que precisasse para criar suas peças.
Some isso a alguns problemas pessoais e, como acontece com todos nós, pessoas jovens e bastante entusiasmadas chegando ao Workshop com novas idéias. Deve ter sido difícil para ela.
É uma pena que ela não tenha vivido para desfrutar do grande respeito pelo seu trabalho que existe hoje em dia.
Eu a vi uma ou outra vez depois que ela saiu do Workshop - ela era uma daquelas pessoas que você podia encontrar depois de anos e continuar exatamente de onde parou. A última ocasião foi no meu estúdio. Ela veio com um amigo da Daphne Oram, que queria transferir um disco com algumas músicas da Daphne para CD. Ela estava do mesmo jeito de sempre mas, infelizmente, não a vi mais depois disto.

ASTRONAUTA - Você poderia falar um pouco sobre o processo de gravação dos seus álbuns "Fourth Dimension" (1973), "Supercharged" (1974), "Moogerama" (1978) e sobre os discos que você gravou para a KPM Music Ltd.? Você pensa em relançar estes discos algum dia?

John Baker e Paddy Kingsland
com o EMS Synthi 100 (o Delaware)

PADDY - A intenção inicial era que "Fourth Dimension" tivesse um lado gravado por mim e outro lado por John Baker. John estava doente, então acabei gravando ambos os lados, refazendo temas que originalmente tinham apenas 30 segundos, como "Colour Radio", "Fourth Dimension", "Scene & Heard" e "Take Another Look". Eu gravei várias guitarras e contra-baixos, e tinha um baterista e um contra-baixista em algumas faixas. Eu usei um gravador de 8 pistas e 1/4 de polegada para fazer os overdubs. Eu utilizei o VCS3, o Synthi 100, o Arp Odyssey e também minha velha guitarra Telecaster. Tiveram mais 2 discos para a EMI, "Supercharged" e "Swag". Antes disso teve um single chamado "Spinball", que também foi gravado pelo flautista de jazz Herbie Mann. Ambos foram gravados nos estúdios Abbey Road, com músicos contratados. Eu gravei posteriormente as partes de sintetizador e as cordas e metais também foram adicionadas mais adiante. Nós colocamos alguns sintetizadores Arp e usamos alguns tape loops e efeitos de VCS3 na faixa "Wobbulator Rock". O falecido Richard de Sylva e eu trabalhamos juntos para fazer estas gravações.

"Moogerama" era um disco de library music, produzido por Syd Dale para a Amphonic Music, sua empresa que ainda está na ativa hoje em dia. Novamente gravamos com músicos contratados, nos estúdios Lansdowne e eu escrevi as partituras para eles, incluindo as partes de sintetizadores. Foi mais um disco de library music convencional do que um projeto de música eletrônica propriamente dito.

Os discos pela KPM ainda são utilizados hoje em dia, fico feliz em dizer, e a maioria deles foi gravado com músicos convencionais, tanto no meu estúdio quanto em outros locais.

ASTRONAUTA - Você fundou seu próprio estúdio - PK Studios - em 1982, certo? Você ainda utiliza sintetizadores e/ou efeitos analógicos em algumas de suas produções no PK Studios? Quais foram as mudanças nos equipamentos que você utiliza no PK Studios durantes todos estes anos?

PADDY - Fundei o PK Studios em 1982. Eu achei que estava na hora de sair e trabalhar com uma variedade maior de clientes. Eu acabei gravando comerciais, library music e projetos corporativos, enquanto ainda trabalhava para a BBC. Nos primeiros anos eu também acabei pegando trabalhos de gravação para ajudar a pagar o aluguel e estabelecer o local.
Eu queria mais espaço do que o que eu tinha no Workshop, e consegui isto montando uma sala de controle e um estúdio grandes o bastante para comportar 12 músicos.
Meu primeiro setup era um gravador Soundcraft de 24 pistas, com um mixer Soundcraft. Um cliente derramou suco de laranja sobre os faders na primeira sessão de gravação. Eu utilizava um sintetizador Arp e depois passei para um Roland Jupiter 8. Depois vieram o delays e o reverber da AMS e também o vocoder, o chorus, o phaser e o flanger da Roland. Uma bateria eletrônica Linn Drum chegou na sequência. Eu consegui um sincronizador Q lock logo em seguida, que me permitiu gravar direto em filmes com um gravador Umatic. Este equipamento era muito caro na época e muito complicado de utilizar. Mas era bacana demais poder gravar direto no filme e não ter que gravar posteriormente, quando já podia ser tarde demais. Eu costumava utilizar um Emulator I para o "Doctor Who". Logo depois eu consegui um dos primeiros gravadores Otari 90 MTR90 de 24 pistas. Isto agilizou bastate as coisas no que diz respeito á sincronia - o velho gravador Soundcraft demorava muito para sincronizar com o filme. Os Emulators II e III vieram a seguir, permitindo samplear e sequenciar com as filmagens. O próximo grande passo foi adquirir um Mac da Apple, com o software Performer e o Professional Composer, para registrar as partituras. Um dos primeiros gravadores de dois canais da Digidesign era divertido, mas o Radar de 24 pistas foi meu primeiro gravador em disco rígido propriamente dito. Então veio o Protools e adeus equipamentos externos e também o Mac 5, com todos os sons no disco rígido. Mas ainda não existe a música sem existirem as idéias antes.

BBC Radiophonic Workshop Live
at the Roundhouse, London (May, 2009)

↧