This blew my mind away ! Partly cause it's from 1982 :D

[xoxos]

c. 1990 i heard a collection of indian electronic music produced by david byrne..

iirc the cover featured byrne with a turban and fake moustache. have't seen it since (or the remake of pauls' boutique with all the rapping in finnish).

[srv-musikmaker]

Charanjit Singh is classically trained so i wouldn't expect anything else but perfectly executed soloing. In fact, calling this an 'achievement' shows how far removed we are from music performance skills nowadays.



The 'one take' claim is also not surprising.

Sequenced 303 bass
Sequenced 808 drums
an arpeggiated line (what synth?)

that leaves the chords and the lead line performed live (on the Jupiter 8 I guess).

That second track is equally as sweet but it's also very beautiful, with a very nice 'mood'. That 303 bass is so nice here...Vocoded mantra lines...

Yes. I am a guitarist who likes playing heavy metal. When I was 18 I thought I was gonna be focused and improve my soloing skills and get into a top band and tour all over. But then college happened(along with all its excesses ) and I even stopped practising my instrument. So when I come across a bunch of 17 yr old kids in a guitar class, trying to focus on improving their musical skills; I always encourage them. So yeah, it's an achievement if they can stay focused, become proficient players and maybe make a name for themselves.

[camsr]

It was suprising to hear the repetition of the bass throughout the track, didn't the 303 have multiple sequeneces?

[Ch00rD]

It was suprising to hear the repetition of the bass throughout the track, didn't the 303 have multiple sequeneces?

Repeating only a single bass line pattern throughout an entire track is *very* typical for acid tracks, imho - what is a bit untypical though, is that there is hardly any knob tweaking on the 303; it is used strictly 'by the book' to accompany another instrument used for performance. And what is completely untypical: the first two tracks ("Raga Bhairav" and "Raga Lalit") use the *exact* same bass line patterns.

Fwiw, on all tracks of the '10 Ragas' album, the bass line is using either 2 or 4 chained patterns of 16 steps each. The TB-303 can store 64 such patterns in total, and in Pattern Mode you can chain up to 4 adjacent patterns; in Track Mode you can chain (and transpose) up to 64, and you can link up to four Tracks for a total of 256. On this album, it seems that only Pattern Mode is used.

Btw, I wouldn't be surprised if some of these tracks were recorded using two takes per track: one for recording the 'backing tracks', another for the lead/solo tracks. I say this because I think it is quite possible that the arpeggios and the lead are *both* played on the same JP-8, but not simultaneously; and because in some parts the solo is obviously using the JP-8 arpeggiator, but at some points the timing is (way) off. The timing on the accompanying arpeggios is always solid, though. So I assume DIN sync was used for the backing tracks (from the TR-808 to both the JP-8 and TB-303), and the JP-8 solo parts were played on top of that. Recording the solo/lead parts for all tracks in single takes is *still* very impressive, of course. (Note that you can also hear the synth patch suddenly being switched on the lead part at some points, which is entirely consistent with using single takes - that is exactly the sort of thing you'd typically get rid off by using multiple takes and editing out the 'bad' parts.)

[himalaya]

That's exactly what I thought about the 'one take' approach after I posted my break down previously. If all he had was the 303, 808 and the Jupe, then there is one synth missing for the arpeggio bit. The second track has the bass (303), drums (808), chords (Jupiter8), solo (jupiter8) and then the arpeggio. One synth is missing. So it's at least two takes.

[Ch00rD]

That's exactly what I thought about the 'one take' approach after I posted my break down previously. If all he had was the 303, 808 and the Jupe, then there is one synth missing for the arpeggio bit. The second track has the bass (303), drums (808), chords (Jupiter8), solo (jupiter8) and then the arpeggio. One synth is missing. So it's at least two takes.

Indeed. Perhaps a better description would be something like "nothing has been edited, simply overdubbing while performing everything live". If I get a chance, I'll try to ask mr. Singh for more details in a few weeks; perhaps Edo Bouman (who re-discovered and re-released the 10 Ragas album) or Johanz Westerman (who is accompanying him on the current tour) know more details as well. I also would like to find out which effect(s) he used; apart from a Korg VC-10 vocoder (on the intro of Raga Bhairav), I think I hear a bit of delay / reverb in some places - a Roland RE-201 Space Echo, perhaps?

A bit of footage from Charanjit Singh on tour last year; performing at La Cheetah Club, Glasgow, 03.11.12:



And at Occii, Amsterdam, 09.11.2012:

[mztk]

as someone getting really pissed off with (music?) indian
and pakistani music, along with moroccan, has been making
sense for a while. indian is very sophisticated, and
pakistani lithurgies have incredible chanting. really
dynamic and uplifting, banging music! makes a lot of
european classical seem trivial (there ya go, flame riots
on that one...)