141–150 of 159 posts
They made electronic music across multiple synths before MIDI! Must have been fun.
Ditto Jean Michel Jarre, Kitaro, Vangelis, Wendy Carlos, Johan Timman, Tomita, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Anderson and many, many others.
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Except they didn't write down a "specification." They simply asked Matten & Wiechers to come up with something that could automate their tape loops for Trans Europe Express. Dirk Matten & Hans-Joachim Wiechers both designed and created the Synthorma to handle that task. This is well-documented. So no it was not the same a writing a technical specification any more than I'm writing a "specification" when I call my loc…
What are the chances that Matten & Wiechers would have designed the Synthorma without Kraftwerk commissioning it? Large pepperonis can be ordered from any pizzeria, this is hardly the same kind of engagement.
Probably pretty high given that the Roland MC-8, another 16 step analog sequencer was also available in 1977 when Trans Europe Express was released. Both Yellow Magic Orchestra and Tangerine Dream used them. Both bands would have been very much on Kraftwerk's radar at that time. Tangerine Dream aside from being another influential German electronics band was also a customer of Matten & Wiecher.
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KW specifically asked for (actually were persuaded to commission) two step sequencers - not "something to automate their tape loops." It was the same process Tangerine Dream went through with Projekt Elektronik, PPG, Steinberg, and other collaborators. The band had an idea or some product feedback, and the designers implemented it. KW's sequencers were unique in that they had rotary switches instead of pots for the s…
>"KW specifically asked for (actually were persuaded to commission) two step sequencers - not "something to automate their tape loops."" A tape loop is nothing more than a primitive form of sequencer. By definition they loop a sequence. They do the exact same thing. So not having to physically change the tapes and speeds on a tape machine by programming it into a sequencer is most definitely "automating" that process…
A sequencer is definitely not used for anything similar to "automating tape loops". For Kraftwerk they were used mainly in the studio to created drum sequences and melodies that were much more precise than those played by the band. The whole point of the sequencer was to replace Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flür, and maybe some bass lines or melodies played by Ralf with a robotic sound.
Programming a sequence in an analog sequencer like a Synthanorma is way harder than changing a tape. Have you ever programmed one? Back then you didn't have presets or pitch quantization, so for melodies for example you'd have to tune each step by ear. Drum loops were easier but not as easy as changing a tape.
Using them on the road was much harder than using tapes. In fact, even several years later, bands like Depeche Mode were still taking tapes to the road because sequencers were still clunky and difficult to program live. It was only after the advent of preset programming this started to change.
Before Autobahn, Kraftwerk indeed experimented with tape loops, but for very different kinds of sounds, more of the Stockhausen variety.
The things that led to this experiment with synthesizers and sequencers were the primitive rhythm machines of the time (they were already going in this direction with songs like Tanzmusik, but they wanted with custom drum sounds and custom drum rhythms, not the Samba and Cha-Cha-Cha of the Maestro) and their use of echo in "Ralf und Florian", where the echo was used to get a perfect repetition of something played (not a loop though, since it's not something that is "left alone" like a sequencer or a tape).
And by "two step sequencers" the parent poster clearly means "two units".
Also, it's called Synthanorma, not Synthorama.
My first purchased CD as a teenager, back in 1991, when music actually cost a lot of money: Kraftwerk - The Mix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mix_(Kraftwerk_album) There is so much genius on this particular album. Critics weren't happy, but to me it was just perfection.
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I seem to have "an axe to grind" because I'm a fan and interested in discussing facts about the group? I've shared numerous links in this post that would be of interest to any Kraftwerk fan. It should be very clear that I am quite the super fan. And this is distasteful and bad form? Wow. Kraftwerk in many ways was the ultimate nerd band. I believe that Florian Schneider would be tickled to know his fans were painfull…
Maybe, but if they were screwing around with the inside of the equipment, that kinda is circuit bending tho.
It was simple, but it required creativity and some electronics skill (or at least a lot of trial and error and soldering).
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You can outline a synthesizer in the same way people that couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag outline software: by writing a specification of what it should be able to do. Implementing that specification is then the job of the electrical engineers. If we're willing to give Steve Jobs credit for the iPhone I think we should be equally willing to give Schneider & company credit for their ideas that were i…
Kraftwerk were great. But their greatness wasn't primarily in making novel sounds. Where they really stomped on the terra was in making good music using ideas that various useless and unlistenable academic electronic music "composers" had been screwing up for at least a couple of decades. Relatively few people celebrate forerunners like Morton Subotnik, Karlheinz Stockhausen, or Iannis Xenakis as innovators, and that…
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Kraftwerk were great. But their greatness wasn't primarily in making novel sounds. Where they really stomped on the terra was in making good music using ideas that various useless and unlistenable academic electronic music "composers" had been screwing up for at least a couple of decades. Relatively few people celebrate forerunners like Morton Subotnik, Karlheinz Stockhausen, or Iannis Xenakis as innovators, and that…
Those “academic“ composers had a huge influence on many musicians. They literally invented the techniques that groups like Kraftwerk could built upon. You might not like their music, but please don't underestimate their importance for music history! In fact, artists like Aphex Twin know very well how much they owe to people like Stockhausen.
Everybody in electronic music was influenced by Stockhausen. But Stockhausen never got a whole lot of air play. If you listen to his stuff I think it's obvious why.
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I can recommend this book to understand how you can essentially design a synthesizer without actually knowing any electronics. It shows a notation for expressing how to wire together various parts of a synthesizer. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1795693416/patch-and-tw... Another interesting source is the Deadmau5 masterclass. What is striking is that Joel Zimmer has neither vocabulary, nor technical understand…
Still, using a modular synth well, which seems to be an extremely demanding art in its own right, is really not the same art as designing a synthesizer.
- Understanding how to combine various elements making up a synthesizer in a musically relevant way is necessary but not sufficient to design synthesizers.
I think an experienced modular synth sound designer is closer to the needed skillset than someone who is able to design circuitry. Not least because an experienced sound designer will know how the thing is used and what artists want from it.
The mid to late 80s is kind of a good illustration of what happens when engineers geek out (and product managers are tempted to skimp on user interfaces) and artists are not properly part of the process. Compare the many FM synths (and synths using FM combined with various technologies) to subtractive analog synths from 5-6 years earlier.
Then look at the prevalence of presets recordings (Jean Michel Jarre's "Revolutions" is essentially a parade of Roland D-50 presets). This is very telling of how the design and technology changed how artists used synthesizers.
Designing a synthesizer requires a combination of the two, but to me it seems that the latter is a more rare skillset than the former. There are a lot of synthesizers on the market, but relatively few that are seen as particularly good. If you dive into the universe that is Eurorack modules you will quickly realize just how much stuff there is. And not nearly all of it is very good.
(There is, of course, some fetishising over famous originals that fetch a pretty penny today. For instance a 45+ year old ARP 2600 will easily set you back $10,000 - and the re-issue costs about $4,000).
A good example is the Moog ladder filter. A mistake was made in the design so the circuit didn't work as intended. However, Robert Moog decided that the mistake was really a happy accident that made the filter more musically relevant and unique. This requires understanding both the electronics and what is musically important.
It is also important to remember that there was no abundance of synthesizers at the time, so there were few expectations as to how a synth should sound or how the artist would use it.
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Still, using a modular synth well, which seems to be an extremely demanding art in its own right, is really not the same art as designing a synthesizer.
- Understanding how to design electronic circuits is necessary but not sufficient to design synthesizers. - Understanding how to combine various elements making up a synthesizer in a musically relevant way is necessary but not sufficient to design synthesizers. I think an experienced modular synth sound designer is closer to the needed skillset than someone who is able to design circuitry. Not least because an experi…
In your Deadmau5 example ... I think we might be saying roughly the same thing. Once you buy all those modules, who needs an EE? The circuit problems should hopefully be hidden at that point.
What others got wrong in this thread is that they never actually built something themselves but they had the ideas and the people surrounding them that could make those ideas reality (those guys in Bonn). They were students of Karlheinz Stockhausen and you could absolutely hear that. If you listen to some of their first recordings[2], imagine this would be played on a synth instead of traditional instruments... and now you got KW like you know it.
If you are interested in some of the history about the scene in Düsseldorf you should def. watch "Keine Atempause – Düsseldorf, der Ratinger Hof und die neue Musik"[3]. Ratinger Hof was a mixture of artists, musicians and all kinds of crazy people. Funny (private) side note: When i was drinking wine with the dad of an old friend of mine, he told me that during his studies he was the driver for some of the now most famous artists (Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, etc.) and musicians back then. This guy had some crazy stories and since i know my friend for 20 years it was mind blowing that his dad drove some of my favorite artists/musicians and he never talked about it. ahhh.. so much memories.. Ralf and Florian are/were very kind persons and it always was nice to talk to them. They modeled much of the sound as we know it today.
This whole area (Cologne/Bonn/Düsseldorf) is very rich when it comes to modern music. There once was a "Studio für elektronische Musik" (Studio for Electronic Music)[4] by the WDR (german radio/television). In the later years there were only "private" tours (thanks to Volker Müller - the sound engineer of Stockhausen!) and it saddens me that it's not open to the public anymore. They moved all of it outside of Cologne and now it's rotting in some basement. Real history that's just abandoned...[5]
[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_bhcpE91A [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_field_synthesis [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNoFHdlMrtI [3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lrdFOHRxuE [4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_for_Electronic_Music_(W... [5] - https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/eingemottet-in-kellerra...