How Wendy Carlos Changed Music
wfmt.com
wfmt.com
Lots of other synth albums are technology demos, collections of cool sounds. Switched On Bach stands out because Carlos adapted Bach for the medium of the Moog synth, clearly understanding the compositions' underlying gestures, and ensured that those gestures all come through. In some cases, they come through more clearly than on the original instrumentation, especially bass lines where the synth speaks more clearly than acoustic instruments can.
Such details in another performer's hands could be distracting, messing up the relationship between foreground and background elements and drawing attention to the wrong things -- but Carlos's arrangement and performance are exquisitely balanced. This could only have been achieved by someone with a deep and sophisticated understanding of the source material, combined with incredible patience to wrestle with difficult and immature technology until the recordings were perfected.
You can use an editor like Audacity to halve the pitch and you’ll hear the sounds become much more like the usual Moog timbres on later records from that era. (And yes, Carlos has admitted this herself.)
The records were a team effort. The arrangements were shaped by producer Rachel Elkind, and Baroque specialist Benjamin Folkman.
I’m just as impressed by the fact that Carlos built her own mixer (difficult, but not entirely exceptional) and multitrack recorder (extremely difficult, and definitely exceptional) for the recordings.
Creatively I prefer some of the other work, especially Beauty in the Beast, which is still far ahead of its time now, and By Request, which has some outrageously clever and fun arrangements of other music. (The Elgar pastiche is genius-level and just plain hilarious.)
I think Tomita is another great example of a musician who took material and adapted it for a new medium in really interesting, innovative ways.
I have no idea how to copy some the sounds Tomita got from his Moogs, and I’m fairly sure no one else does either. Some are easy, some are “That’s really clever.” But there are more than a few that I have absolutely no clue about.
The fact that he patched up and recorded these huge flamboyant orchestral-sounding pieces note by note and line by line with such a creative range of unique and original sounds is just astounding.
On the other hand Pictures at an Exhibition is a piano solo piece. If it has a fancy "synthesized orchestration" Tomita, like others before him, developed a fairly arbitrary adaptation.
That’s the point about Tomita - there’s nothing “arbitrary” about the orchestrations. They’re an updated and exotic take created by someone who is rooted in that lush late tonal school of orchestration, but is using a completely new instrument to make original sounds.
Snowflakes Are Dancing sounds a lot more pianistic. The later Tomita albums sound more like attempts to reinvent symphonic music, with some quirky additions. He’s very consciously shaping the music like a conductor would, while painting with evocative sounds - very much not arbitrary at all.
It also has a odd and memorable theme that moves around using augmented triads yet isn't octatonic nor based on a whole-tone scale.
There's also a nice moment at the beginning of the credits-- where the theme previously wandered through harmonies quite rapidly, here it gets anchored to a single key with a fairly lush orchestral accompaniment. Then that leads in to a massive pipe organ solo doing the chromatic version of the theme for a final time, then to more fitting electro-orchestral credits music that cycles chromatically through augmented triads. (I think there's a reference to this music in the NES metroid game somewhere, I think it's Ridley's lair)
Anyhow-- the strange orchestral changes and lyrical melodies are the kind of thing that make you stick around for the credits. It's all very simple in a way, but extremely effective, too.
Contrasting that-- I almost laughed in the new Star Wars movie when at the climax the brass just loudly ascends up root position minor triad. It's like being served a steak with a side of a stick of butter.
Edit: I guess I should have written "spoiler" about the loud arpeggiation of a minor triad in the Star Wars movie.
I heard as an aside that the London Philharmonic parts of the soundtrack were commissioned and recorded because Disney didn't have confidence that Carlos would finish her work on time (or at all, the relationship was a little strained), and using both was a decision made only afterwards.
I love the whole score, especially the pipe organ solo. It's interesting that the theme was in 7/8 right from the start -- you'd have thought a power of two would be more appropriate for computers! But somehow it works. The rhythm and harmony both feel like they're pushing towards the future.
The tracks are almost unreal: as different from 'modern' subtractive 'fat' analog-style synths as can be. She champions complex timbres and original tunings, and it makes a tremendous difference to the music. I compared a classical organ recording of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor to her version, and what a difference! Her tuning makes the music so much richer, and she surrounds the listener with a dizzying web of sound - the surround sound is incredible!
Her articles in Keyboard magazine, about the making of SoB2000, were a huge influence on how I came to perceive music.
BTW, Wendy Carlos is also a brilliant eclipse photographer: http://www.wendycarlos.com/eclipse.html
BTW, archive.org has the best quality recordings I've found of Switched on Bach. It's not got a very full sound, but there are less pops and crackles than other sources online such as soundcloud. I wish Wendy Carlos would reissue this as a re-mastered CD
My fave track being 'Theme from A Clockwork Orange (Beethoviana)'.
(IIRC there are at least two versions of the soundtrack, with various tracks added or missing. Caveat emptor . . . but I cannot find any of Wendy's music online to purchase or stream now anyway).
I've seldom heard anything using scales with dozens of notes in an octave that was particularly musical. JI is very musical ... and yet with enough mastery of timbres and rhythms to keep it just edgy enough. Wow.
Tomita's "Snowflakes Are Dancing" is the other classic synth album as far as I'm concerned :-)