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Comment by craig_livpl | Hacker News Reader

I just had another listen to Stevie Wonder's Superstition to hear TONTO. It's interesting to see the bulk of equipment back then, compared to what would be needed now to create the same sounds. It's like looking back at those huge computers that had far less processing power than the phone in your pocket. But in the right hands, wonderful things could be achieved.

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"I just had another listen to Stevie Wonder's Superstition to hear TONTO."

I'd be interested in hints where you hear the TONTO in Superstition. I know the CBC video "Meet TONTO, the machine behind Stevie Wonder's Superstition" claims right in the title that the Tonto was used in Superstition. Also Bob Margouleff once said in an interview: "We had the drums, Tonto, the Clavinets and the Rhodes keyboards set up in the control room, and there was always an open mic. Stevie could easily move from one instrument to another as he saw fit." So Stevie Wonder had easy access to it during the production of Superstition.

On the other hand: The Superstition multi tracks have been available for a long time and it seems to be established wisdom that the 16 tracks are 3 drum tracks, 1 (Moog) bass track, 2 vocal tracks, 2 horn tracks and 8 Clavinet tracks. The sound of the iconic riff, which could easily be mistaken for a synth, is definitely a Clavinet - a Hohner Clavinet C according to the legend (the bass could easily be mistaken as an electric bass guitar, but it is a synth). So, no room for a Tonto. Maybe they used it as an effect on the Clav or Moog tracks? Maybe the multi track is not authentic and I missed it in the mix of the released song?

Tonto is partly an old Moog modular, and partly other modulars, including ARP, etc.

So it's reasonable to guess the Moog bass is from Tonto.

That's a good point, especially since Margouleff didn't talk about a Moog in the sentence I quoted above, so it makes sense that the bass would have been played on the Tonto.

> it seems to be established wisdom that the 16 tracks are 3 drum tracks, 1 (Moog) bass track, 2 vocal tracks, 2 horn tracks and 8 Clavinet tracks.

There's just no way. The drums themselves need at least 4 tracks at a bare minimum (stereo pair overhead, snare and kick), but far more likely the drums used and preserved 8 tracks for final mixing (which is relatively standard). An engineer simply would not waste 8 of 16 tracks on Clavinet. What is more likely is the 8 tracks of Clavinet were indeed actually recorded but then bounced down to two tracks (panned for stereo), freeing up the remaining 6 tracks for isolation of other instruments during mixing.

Scratch 1 track (everything channelled here initially, replaced later, so 0 track)

Clavinet 2 track (initially 8, bounced down to 2)

Drums 8 tracks (overhead pair, snare, kick, HH, tom toms, floor tom, last for one of bottom of HH or snare or outside kick)

Bass (Moog) 1 track

Trumpet 1 track

Sax 1 track

Vocals 2 track

Replacing the scratch leaves 1 track for Tonto, (but it sounds to me like the trumpet is doubled, 2 separate tracks performed the same, oppositely panned wide).

I simply don't know what to listen for to hear the Tonto.

While drums often have stereo overheads, having a mono drum overhead is completely normal for a recording. Even on today's records. Not every recording needs a stereo drum kit. Especially if it's a big mix with lots of parts competing for space.

While drums today can often be mixed with upwards of 16 microphones, a skilled recording engineer with an excellent player (Stevie) on a well tuned-kit in a good room can capture a fantastic drum sound with a single overhead microphone and a spot mic for the kick. You'd be astounded how minimal it can be when the ingredients in the room are correct.

That said, there's a third possibility. That they tracked the drum kit with a full compliment of 8+ mics and then recorded the blend of these mics to the three channels of tape that ended up on the final 16-track reel of tape. I have a copy of these exact stems and it's very clear to my record-engineer ears that these were indeed, just one mic per tape channel. No summing was done.

Frankly, it's not even a good drum recording by the standards of that era, but Stevie's writing and performance are so brilliant that the record is great anyway.

Also, to chime-in on whether or not Tonto is featured on this track; The only possible candidate is the Moog synth bass. But the performance is no different than what you'd get with a Minimoog. So even if they performed it using one of the Moog modules on Tonto I'd say it's not a usage that highlights anything extraordinary about what Tonto was capable of.

Thanks, that was a very insightful write-up. What is your take on the eight Clavinet parts? From what I understand there were only two takes each playing a different riffs: Clav 1 is the well-known main riff, Clav 2 complements it with a different pattern. All the other Clav tracks are one of these two either run through a (hi, mid or low) filter or through a delay.

Why did they use so many tracks to record the same performance with different effects when they could have easily applied only the effects they liked in the final mix afterwards?

I think that something is actually lost when we go fully digital. Consider, with a real analog synth, one can reach out and change pitch, speed, sustain, attack, release, tone, heck, the actual waveform, amplitude and frequency, ON THE FLY, with more than one pattern. It is not too easy to do that inside a computer (e.g with a GUI). It is not the same feel and is limiting in nature (I can not click on more than one at a time, but I have two hands).

Also, they had quirks that made them more interesting. Your digital counterpart will never have a spurious noise or that thing that makes your album magical compared to others because your Arp Odessy or DMX or 808 had a "problem".

Or how the sound from the noise generators would slightly change depending on the ambient temperature affecting the analog circuitry.

Or the pitch. Using an analog synth on stage without a consistent power supply could be a nightmare.

Yup. As someone who has gigged an (original) ARP Odyssey, I can attest that this is indeed the case, even with a consistent power supply!

You can get a hardware MIDI controller for super cheap: an array of button, knobs, and faders that you can map to whatever software functions you want: https://www.korg.com/us/products/computergear/nanokontrol2/

But of course those have their downsides too: a panel of identical, nondescript, unlabeled knobs can be confusing during a live performance; some software doesn't react well to changing synth parameters mid-note; and I have found that, for whatever reason, my MIDI controller tends to have just enough latency to be annoying.

> Your digital counterpart will never have a spurious noise

Well, I've definitely had spurious noises with digital equipment...but software malfunctions don't exactly tend to sound magical.

Also, 7-bit precision can lead to audible stepping artifacts. (I think there's a way to do 14-bit CCs, but not all synths and controllers support it.)

Pitchbend in the MIDI protocol is a 14bit word by default.

The MIDI 2.0 protocol has finally been designed and is just now beginning to be implemented in new hardware and software, so this shortcoming is about to be a thing of the past.

That's true, pitch bend was 14 bits from the beginning, but that's a special case.

I'm not terribly optimistic about MIDI 2.0; it has a lot of things to like, but I'm expecting the major synth manufacturers to be pretty slow about actually making MIDI 2.0 products, and even then they may just implement the parts they care about, leaving us with an incompatible mess.

Maybe I'm wrong and we'll have a new era of expressive electronic instruments-that-aren't-piano-like. We'll see.

You can plug in a USB MIDI controller and assign physical controls to any parameter of any plugin in your project. I've done it a lot with my BCR-2000, quite the beast with its 32 encoders, but lots of fun and notoriously used by Daft Punk in concerts. I'm actually on the lookout for something more portable now, I find I usually end up focusing on fewer than 10 controls.

There is no reason that we can’t program digital synthesizers so that they have problems or degrade over time like their analog counterparts.

People prefer things to work perfectly, though.

I also agree with your point about the hands on control of analog synthesizers but it has to do with the user interface, not the method of sound creation.

An analog synth controlled through digital GUI would suck to use just as much as a VST does.

There's no reason these parameters can't be changed on the fly with a digital instrument. They can have knobs too.

Also, many synths today will allow you to dial in a degree of noise, interference, pitch drift, or other artifacts if you want. People still inject those qualities deliberately into their recordings. Even when the original recording was crystal clear.

Synthesizers are not computers and they haven't shrunk much https://www.moogmusic.com/products/moog-modular-systems

They aren’t digital (at least, they don’t have to be) but I would argue that an analog synth is an example of an analog computer.

That's a poor example for your point that synthesizers haven't shrunk much. That Moog Modular is a recreation of the modules from Moog's early days. As a company, Moog is mostly banking on it's heritage as an innovator from that area, so their product lines and aesthetic tend to follow the form factor of their early instruments.

Contemporary synth modules can be about as small as anyone would want these days. Especially if they're digital. I suspect the most prominent limiting factor for modular synthesizers these days is having an interface that's large enough to comfortably fit all of the knobs.

Also, I won't contest your point that synthesizers are not computers, but you seem to have missed the Parent comment's point entirely. It's not that synthesizers ARE computers. They're simply making a comparison that like the early computers, synthesizers were large instruments that often took up massive amounts of space, but have since shrunk considerably in form factor.

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