We already know these musicians as being supremely gifted performers and composers but it really blows my mind when I see an article like this that discusses artists like these who also develop their own instruments! Amazing! Take a look through the attached link to get the scoop on some of the incredible rigs the likes of Laurie Anderson, Stevie Wonder, Pat Metheney, Leon Theremin, and others have created to accentuate their music. Wonderous Stories, indeed!
These are two well composed documentaries regarding the time scale of which electronic music appeared and who the musical artists were who used synthesizers and composed with them. "The Evolution of Electronic Music (1929-2019)" sketches out very early applications considered electronic music and plays a small sampling of the works being represented. Although popular recordings which dabbled with synthesized tones in this documentary are skipped over in this work (No Beatles, Monkees, Byrds, Beach Boys mentions!).
Our second documentary clearly focuses on this pop music synth implementation:
The surprise is that The Beatles were far from the first popular band to use a synthesizer in their arrangements. Our host travels back quite a bit further in the past to find his answer. Amazing!
World renowned Pop Art maven, Andy Warhol, was very busy pursuing all forms of artistic expression in the 1960's. He was in charge of a creative space called the Factory where he dabbled in painting, filmmaking, and the expressive possibilities of music. Warhol decided to invite the New York based art rock group, The Velvet Underground to engage in providing the soundtrack for a mixed media spectacle called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. As seen in the accompanying video, films and a light show are projected off the hosting theatre's walls and the gyrating participants to produce a rather psychedelic tapestry. You see a lot of Warhol's fellow participating "players" who appeared in his movies and other various happenings in action but scant views of The Velvets themselves. The audio is very clipped and overdriven. Too bad. It would have been a rare, treasured document indeed if the seminal underground group had been adequately recorded. That being said, The Velvets were more than capable of feeding back and serenading an attendant audience with their innovative noise baths. This is just a bit too much!
Mike Pinder was a founding member, and once the keyboardist, of the band The Moody Blues. Pinder passed recently. Mr. Pinder was an acolyte of the weird instrument, The Mellotron.
What was The Mellotron? I asked ChatGPT to provide some illumination. Here is what they said:
A Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in the early 1960s. It works by triggering prerecorded sounds stored on magnetic tape when a musician presses the keys on its keyboard. Each key on the Mellotron is connected to a tape playing a recording of an instrument, such as strings, flutes, or choirs, allowing musicians to produce orchestral sounds and effects that were difficult or impossible to recreate in live performances at the time. The Mellotron became famous for its distinctive sound and was prominently used by bands like The Beatles, The Moody Blues, and King Crimson, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, adding a unique, ethereal quality to rock and progressive music.
Mike Pinder adopted the instrument to create some unique and memorable passages for the Mellotron. Witness his use of the instrument on "Nights in White Satin", "Tuesday Afternoon", and "Legend of a Mind". Symphonic, atmospheric, haunting. Awesome work! RIP, Mr. Pinder.
View the very interesting documentary on The Mellotron by clicking on the link below.
A youthful remembrance....
Music played
in the background at the party. A
soundtrack playing half noticed and casually acknowledged with the occasional
lyric sung and some part danced to by some of those gathered at the event. The
music creates an atmosphere that is familiar and welcoming to the group
gathered. Sounds become louder or
dampened depending on one’s proximity to the sound source.
I remember a
party that we tagged along to once. My
friend knew some people who were having the get together at a house and we were
allowed to attend. The major attraction
was that there would be live music from a rock band.
The band
members didn’t all show up so the band never played. There was a novice guitar playing kid who
played “Ain’t Talking Bout Love” by Van Halen on an electric guitar as the
organizers tried to decide how to salvage the evening. The kid was learning the part so he started and stopped often and would start repeating the opening riff again.
My buddy and
I looked at each other.
“Why does he
keep playing that riff?”
“Probably
doesn’t know anything else.”
We had
gotten semi wasted before entering the place and decided we would go back out
to the car we arrived in a sip on our beers.
We were a little tired, bored and drunk.
We went to a safe haven away from the strangers, our car.
The party
people started playing CDs to fill the silence which appeared after the kid
with the guitar stopped his noodling.
The music swirled skyward.
We only
stayed about another hour but the memory stuck with me over the years as it was
another adventure during my teenage life.
We would never
visit that particular place in time again.
This is a VideoGPT video loosely based on that event. lol.
. Also used the Magic program to get some sound activated graphic response.
Here is a VideoGPT AI retelling of the situation in its own analysis! Enjoy.
I was in a weird frame of mind recently and wanted to try out the VideoGPT app to see what outlandish results I could get from using a text to video generating application. What better topic than the conspiracy theory regarding a hidden race of cave dwelling lizards? People have been reporting disturbing sightings of bipedal lizards, equal in size or taller than the average man's height. There also is speculation that these odd beasts inhabit remote caves and otherwise lightly travelled areas.
Going with this knowledge in hand, I hallucinated a scenario where a cave explorer happens upon a race of underground cavern dwelling lizard men that embody a lute playing orchestra. Very random story kernel, I know, but watch the results and see. The thing is that these appear to be lizards that are more in favor of strumming mandolins and guitars. Go figure....AI!
Check out this craziness. According to recent Internet story, a half inch long fish can generate some amazingly loud racket.
Quoting here a few lines from the story:
"Danionella cerebrum, a species of fish discovered only about three years ago, are tiny translucent fish that live in shallow streams in Myanmar. They are no more than 12 millimeters long and have a "unique sound-generating" organ that can make noises of more than 140 decibels, an international research team said in a news release Tuesday.
"To make noise, the fish hits the drumming cartilage against its swim bladder, a gas-filled cavity or organ that is predominantly used to control buoyancy, the study says. The movement produces a rapid pulse in high and low frequencies.
"This apparatus accelerates the drumming cartilage with a force of over 2,000g and shoots it against the swim bladder to produce a rapid, loud pulse," Britz said. "These pulses are strung together to produce calls with either bilaterally alternating or unilateral muscle contractions.
“We assume that the competition between the males in this visually restrictive environment contributed to the development of the special mechanism for acoustic communication,” Britz said."
Wow! That is crazy. The incredible things that Science is discovering on a daily basis. Amazing.
Get a sample of the noisy fish at the link below.
The planetary sounds we hear, are wavelike vibrations of air molecules occurring within the range of frequencies to which our ears are sensitive, according to the BBC. However, it's possible to process any other kind of wave or oscillation electronically, scaling it to audible frequencies and then converting it into a sound wave.
So, venture to the link below to access these "other worldly" sounds, now!
In this episode, I look at and play some of my musical devices including Bleep Labs' Pico Paso pocket noise synth, the Realistic Electronic Reverb unit made way back in the day, the PAIA Gnome Analog Synth box, and the Yamaha RY9 "Big Jam" and its guitar synthesizer emulation. The Electronic Reverb and the Big Jam were recently sold through ebay. I hope that these effects are heavily utilized and get a proper second life!
Thanks!
