It’s a rare thing indeed these days to see someone actually play a piece live on a synthesizer (other than in rock and electronica). Here is a live performance of a Bach Invention showing off some of the presets of the Roland SH-1000 synthesizer. The playing is a tad awkward (and its a little weird hearing the left hand come from the right speaker, and vice-versa), but it’s energetic and fun!
From BTPRO’s YouTube page: The Joy of the Preset-Synthesizer. First battle is Roland SH-1000 vs SH-2000!
I like Preset-Synthesizer. An engineer made sound with analog technology at the time without the sampling technology. It was often that I heard a sound different from the displayed name in them. I often thought “Is this the sound of the piano?”. But I can imagine a desperate face of the engineers who are going to make a genuine sound with an analog circuit. It is very exciting/humorous for me. Roland SH-1000 is Japanese first synthesizer and SH-2000 is Preset-synthesizer for organist.
Get the low-down on the SH-1000 at Vintage Synth Explorer:
Thomas Grillo has the makings of becoming the next Clara Rockmore. The Theremin is a notoriously difficult instrument to learn. Not only do you play the instrument without even touching it, but they are so sensitive that you need extraordinary hand control and listening skills to nail the pitch of each note you are playing. Clara Rockmore used to play with a speaker directly behind her head, so as to be able to hear the sound the instant it was generated, and would not allow people to come with 5-10 feet of her, lest their presence interfere with the instrument.
Thomas Grillo has also developed considerable skill with the instrument. Here he is performing “The Swan” by Camille Saint-Saëns.
In a nutshell, here’s how the Theremin works (from WikiPedia):
The theremin is unique among musical instruments in that it is played without physical contact. The musician stands in front of the instrument and moves his or her hands in the proximity of two metal antennas. The distance from one antenna determines frequency (pitch), and the distance from the other controls amplitude (volume). Most frequently, the right hand controls the pitch and the left controls the volume, although some performers reverse this arrangement. Some low-cost theremins use a conventional, knob operated volume control and have only the pitch antenna.
The theremin uses the heterodyne principle to generate an audio signal. The instrument’s pitch circuitry includes two radio frequency oscillators. One oscillator operates at a fixed frequency. The frequency of the other oscillator is controlled by the performer’s distance from the pitch control antenna. The performer’s hand acts as the grounded plate (the performer’s body being the connection to ground) of a variable capacitor in an L-C (inductance-capacitance) circuit. The difference between the frequencies of the two oscillators at each moment allows the creation of a difference tone in the audio frequency range, resulting in audio signals that are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker.
To control volume, the performer’s other hand acts as the grounded plate of another variable capacitor. In this case, the capacitor detunes another oscillator, which affects the amplifier circuit. The distance between the performer’s hand and the volume control antenna determines the capacitor’s value, which regulates the theremin’s volume.[9]
Modern circuit designs often simplify this circuit and avoid the complexity of two heterodyne oscillators by having a single pitch oscillator, akin to the original theremin’s volume circuit. This approach is usually less stable and cannot generate the low frequencies that a heterodyne oscillator can. Better designs (e.g. Moog, Theremax) may use two pairs of heterodyne oscillators, for both pitch and volume.
Today, Theremins are widely available, and are fairly reasonably priced.
I can’t get enough of the YM2151 chip (from a Commodore 64) music. This is a pretty good example of the YM2151 power to create great sounds. Here’s a bit of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony on a YM2151 chip.
From the YouTube page:
A Yamaha YM2151 FM Synthesiser IC playing the Second Movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. The CPU of the synth is a MOS 6510 CPU from a Commodore 64. The music was played over a MIDI interface. If you notice any synchronization glitches with the different instruments it’s because they weren’t recorded at the same time, but separately and mixed later.
Here’s some more SID music (and sound effects) for you:
If you are unfamiliar with what classical synthesizer music sounds like, listen to this before taking the survey. It’s a pure synthesizer performance of Fetes by Debussy.
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Text from their YouTube page:
Just like modular synthesizers, people connect with each other in order to achieve diverse objectives. In Voltage, robots, half-human and half-synthesizer, powered by a huge amount of energy, connect to each other in an electric and chaotic trance.
Directed by:
Filippe Lyra e William Paiva
Produced by:
Barros Melo Animation Studio
Director of photography:
Filippe Lyra e William Paiva
Animation:
Filippe Lyra
William Paiva
Marcio Vieira
Felipe Soares
Leo D.
Tony Farias
Design:
Filippe Lyra
Marcio Vieira
Felipe Soares
William Paiva
Natalia Franca
Illustration:
Filippe Lyra
Marcio Vieira
Felipe Soares
William Paiva
Natalia Franca
I’ve added some new synthesizer performances to the Listening Room:
Bachianas Brasileiras by Heitor Villa-Lobos
From Wikipedia:
Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887 – November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, described as “the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music”.[1] Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer of all time.[2] He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his Bachianas brasileiras (“Brazilian Bach-pieces”).
Bach/Handel Concerto
From Wikipedia:
Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March 1685 [O.S. 21 March] – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and organist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity.[1] Although he introduced no new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, an unrivalled control of harmonic and motivic organisation in composition for diverse instrumentation, and the adaptation of rhythms and textures from abroad, particularly Italy and France.
Et Misericordia from Bach’s Magnificat is one of the first pieces of music I truly fell in love with (after Siegfried, of course). I first heard it when I was about 10 (1981), and over the years have sought out outstanding recordings of this magnificent (!) piece.
Since I now run a synthesizer blog, and just acquired Prosoniq’s Orange Vocoder, I decided to perform this piece myself. The following is version 1.0 of Et Misericordia recorded in Logic with MiniMoog Vs, FM8s, Massives, ES2s and the Orange Vocoder.
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I’m still fine-tuning the vocal qualities of the vocoder (it can take quite a bit of tweaking to get it to sound good), and will post the updates when they become available.
What’s a Vocoder?
From Wikipedia:
A vocoder (pronounced /ˈvoʊkoʊdər/, a combination of the words voice and encoder) is an analysis / synthesis system, mostly used for speech in which the input is passed through a multiband filter, each filter is passed through an envelope follower, the control signals from the envelope followers are communicated, and the decoder applies these (amplitude) control signals to corresponding filters in the (re)synthesizer.
In English, that simply means ‘a singing synthesizer’. Great fun!
I know the domain itself is not very SEO-friendly, but who cares? I love it! Tell all your friends, your hundreds of friends who listen to electronic classical music to visit www.somanycolours.com (don’t forget to say “colours with-a-u”).
What does the domain and site name mean, you ask? Well, if you listen to “Secrets of Synthesis” by Wendy Carlos, you hear her quote Bob Moog. After litening to the opening of the 3rd Brandenburg, Bob said, “Wow, there are so many colors!”, which surprised Wendy, since at that point she was well aware of how limited were the number of different sounding synthesizer voices. Why did I spell it with a ‘u’? Well, for one the domain without a ‘u’ was taken, and more importantly, I am a confessed anglophile, and that’s how the British spell it! Cheers!
I’ve opened up the listening room for you all. This is a page I will post all (or most) of the best of my classical synthesizer recordings. At the time of this posting, there are 12 pieces, listed below:
Classical/Romantic/Impressionistic
Fetes from Nocturnes by Dubussy
Mars, the Bringer of War from The Planets by Holst
Holst/deCosta – Mercury, the Winged Messenger from The Planets
Holst – Neptune, the Mystic from The Planets
Eine Kleine Nachtmusique Mvt. 4 by Mozart
Organ Music transcribed for Synthesizers
Marcel Dupré – Prelude No. 3
Prelude, Choral et Fugue by Franck
Baroque/Renaissance
Claude la Coucou by Daquin
Noel-X by Daquin
Misc. (TV Themes, Experiments, etc.)
Danny Elfman – Beetle Juice Main Titles
Keeping Up Appearances Theme Music
Fawlty Towers Theme Music
I will post an update whenever I add a new piece.
Feel free to
SEND ME A REQUEST
(by adding a comment to this post)
for a piece you’ve always wanted to hear performed on synthesizers. I will do my best to accommodate.
For those of you looking to start a collection of classical synthesizer music, or simply want to fill the gaps in your existing one, I have put together a list of essential CDs- ones that no collection should be without. Artists include Wendy Carlos, Isao Tomita, Clara Rockmore, Amin Bhatia, Messiaen, Pierre Schaeffer, Otto Luening and more.
Et Misericordia from Bach’s Magnificat is one of the first pieces of music I truly fell in love with (after Siegfried, of course). I first heard it when I was about 10 (1981), and over the years have sought out outstanding recordings of this magnificent (!) piece.
