september theme ... GOSSIP

[Scoops]

Scoops: The Telephone Call
What a fantastically different and inventive track. Me likes a lot.

Thank you very much. I'm glad you appreciated it.
Now I just have to find the time to write up my reviews.

Scoops

[Hovmod]

Hovmod: In A Blue Moog
I really like this track as well, but the guitar sounds a bit out of place to my ears sometimes almost like it shouldn't really be there. Still a great track though in every other aspect.

Thanks.
I don't know why I thought it would belong, but to me it does. Maybe because I've heard it so many times.

Glad you liked it.

[Glassback]

Moog In Brogues - Glassback:
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Wow, this reminds me of Jarre... great, wonderful track! Top notch sounds. The voice samples are great even if I think that the first part (before the voice samples start) is definetely my favourite part as it builds very nicely. Great track!

Jarre? No way! erm, I mean Thanks Man.

Glassback – Dark stuff (I don’t mean Guinness) and I like the drums. I seem to be more in a pop mood at the moment.

Mackeson then? Or Dandelion and Burdock?

27. Glassback - Moog In Brogues (3:14)
Hey, why not move the party to another planet? Boooh! All robots are a bit lazy, though they still dance. Not enough energy to transcend or to beam over. Deep deep night in space. Still on drugs but no hi energy ones.

No idea what you just said, but I don't think you like it too much. That's cool.

Glassback -- Moog In Brogues: Your little ditty. Nice little ditty. Great sounds and production. Love the groove here and the incidental sounds are wonderful. That flanged hi-hat is so Trans-Europe Express, I adore it! Sweeeeeet.

Yay! You coulda said any of that era/ilk of bands and I'd be chuffed. Thanks.

glassback from his aluminium vestibule the space pope of ultra-dub imparts messages and accords that come coded in vibration, his wand fizzing as it zaps out each decree.

The Space Pope Of Ultra-Dub! I love it! It's my new sig!



Thanks everybody.

[Beardedone]

Beardedone Ambient Synthesist: Mood For Bob Moog
Reminds me a bit of Cluster. Nice, spacy and dreamy.

Thanks Glassback!

[nuisance sonore]

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[nuisance sonore]

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[Jongleur]

Glassback said

mchlwlsn: Allegro Assai
Excellent 'Switched On' stuff. Clever - is this self penned? Forgive my ignorance and sorry if it's already been asked. (I don't read reviews of other peoples tunes until I've done mine cos I don't wanna be swayed or influenced ) Really sounds like something off Switched On Bach. Nicely done. Oh, and by the way. How the hell do you say your name? Please don't say you open your mouth and the words just come out.

Thanks! This is Bach sequenced by me from the score. I'm glad to be representing this particular genre this month. Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Brandenburgs album was a favorite of mine. I was depressed for a year when I finally realized it was a passing fad

About my name: This was created the very first time I found KVR. I was surfing the net for patches and had to register a screen name to download them. I just entered my name with no vowels and never expected to visit the site again!

It's time to change it; from now on I'll be Jongleur, named after my most successful KVR contest entry to date.

[Max el Belga]

No prices, no voting... But nothing seems to stop creativity on KvR ! I heard already some very GREAT songs !

BTW what about making a "piece unique" CD of the songs as a gift to Bob´s widow ?

[emdot_ambient]

...BTW what about making a "piece unique" CD of the songs as a gift to Bob´s widow ?

Wonderful idea!

[emdot_ambient]

...This is Bach sequenced by me from the score.

Wow, then my hat's off to you even more! I thought you had grabbed a MIDI file from off the net, there are tons of Bach MIDI files available. This raises my appreciation of the piece up a few notches. It's really a wonderful Switched On track.

...Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Brandenburgs album was a favorite of mine. I was depressed for a year when I finally realized it was a passing fad.

To everything, turn, turn.

I've always enjoyed these Switched On pieces but have thought of them kind of like using a vocoder to do robot voices, or taking a vocal sample and playing it rhythmically . . . in other words, it was the most obvious first thing to do with a synthesizer. Especially the Moog synths, which were conceptualized with immitative synthesis in mind: being able to mimic acoustic instruments. Granted, they were very imperfect at that job, but the initial intention was to take a stab at that with the technology available at the time. But just because doing classical pieces on synths was an obvious direction to take, it doesn't keep this type of work from being interesting, and the other-than-immitative possibilities of Moog's synths were widely exploited, even while using them to perform classical works: Wendy Carlos, Tomita, Patrick Gleeson and others regularly used decidedly synthetic voices in place of conventional instrument sounds.

Still, when Switched On Bach was first introduced, I think it was marketed as a novelty. I don't think they had any idea the album would take off commercially and so effectively bring synthesizers to the front of public awareness. That it did so stands as testiment to the importance of those early works. It was probably inevitable, though, that this use of synths would quickly become cliché and would quickly replaced by explorations in other directions.

That's why I decided not to do the Switched On thing, but chose instead to cover Tonto's Expanding Head Band, a group that bridged the gap between classical synthesis and the all-original electronic explorations that soon followed: Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Jarre, Vangelis, Tim Blake, et. al.

Class dismissed.

[emdot_ambient]

Emdot Ambient - Cybernaut
Again slightly repetitive yet still addictive. Laid back and relaxing.

A couple people pointed out that this song is based on a standard blues progression. I never really noticed that until those comments, not being much of a blues fan. So, I suppose this is repetitive in the same sense that a lot of blues is . . . and blues, again like you find this song, can still addictive.

Thanks for the review!

[Wopelka]

for my return, let me play the pedantic bastard, saying that Albinoni's Adagio hasn't been written by Albinoni. Mr. Remo Giazotto wrote it more than 2 centuries after Tomaso's death, in 1945, basing his work on a fragment of some Albinoni's sonate.

Like if a synth borrowing some Moog's innovative features, ADSR filters for example, was marketed as a Moog's synth.

Nonetheless, it's still a beautiful piece of music, one of the few works that led me to love "classical" composers...

so let's download all these entries now.

[Jongleur]

emdot_ambient

Wendy Carlos, Tomita, Patrick Gleeson and others regularly used decidedly synthetic voices in place of conventional instrument sounds.

If I recall correctly, I never cared for Patrick Gleeson, I thought his Vivaldi was dry and emotionless, like most of the midi files you mentioned.

Tomita, on the other hand, was another one of my favorites. When I auditioned for music school, I played a selection from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The prof was impressed that an incoming freshman was familiar with that piece. I didn't mention that I had learned it by ear from Tomita's electronic version, and had no idea who wrote it!

I'm glad you decided to do the Tonto piece. I wasn't familiar with the group and you did an awesome job with this song.

[aldred]

About Tomita .... I agree. A lot of people seem to put him in the same bracket as Wendy Carlos, Patrick Gleeson, even that bloody Hooked On Classics shite from the seventies. He did do a few duds, but 'Snowflakes Are Dancing' and 'Pictures At An Exhibition' are absolute classics, full of the emotion of the originals. I reckon even the composers themselves would have been thrilled.

My tune's up at last. I went the theremin route. I wanted to do a Tomita-like piece, but it turned out too complex. The word Moog for me always brought up an image more classical than synthy, and that's why the tune is the way it is.

Off to listen to the rest of the entries now ....


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[emdot_ambient]

emdot_ambient

Wendy Carlos, Tomita, Patrick Gleeson and others regularly used decidedly synthetic voices in place of conventional instrument sounds.

If I recall correctly, I never cared for Patrick Gleeson, I thought his Vivaldi was dry and emotionless, like most of the midi files you mentioned.

I've only heard one album by Gleeson that was half classical and half his own work. I liked both of them but hearing his own work in context with the classical, you got a feel for his style. Haven't heard his vivaldi . . . but you're right about a lot of the MIDI files on the net. There are some exceptions, though, and I've found some pretty good Bach files. Haven't actually carried them through to production, though.

I'm glad you decided to do the Tonto piece. I wasn't familiar with the group and you did an awesome job with this song.

Thanks! That song has kind of been in the subconscious of my musical tastes for years. I rarely would play Tonto's album, but when I did, I always went, "Wow! So THAT'S where that song I keep remembering was from!" I originally thought the rest of the album was just okay, but I revisited the album recently and it's all great work.

Thanks for the compliment.