 2001
Interview
with Carol Wright
(originally
appeared in shorter version on the SynthMuseum
web site.)
|
 The
Digital Phases of
Wendy
Carlos
Interview
with Carol
Wright
(Note:
This interview led to an additional one in Spring of 2001
about inspiration, spirituality and creativity, which you
can
READ
HERE.
If you missed their1999 interview on earlier works, like
Moog and Switched-On music,
it
can be found HERE.)
Carol Wright's
phone interview with Wendy Carlos took place on Saturday,
December 2, 2000, shortly after the rerelease of her
newly remastered Digital
Moonscapes
(1984) and Beauty
in the Beast
(1986), two albums as firmly entrenched in digital
synthesis as her Switched-on albums were in the Moog's
analog world. Wendy settled into her Village loft
recording studio for a long interview, and they discussed
Thai food and the ongoing follies of the presidential
election as Carol, a continent away on Orcas Island,
Washington, tested her phone transcriber.
Carol Wright: Just a
minute. Let me make sure it's recording.
[Stops recording and plays back test.]
Okay, I heard voices so--
Wendy Carlos: Are you
hearing voices? I know a good shrink if you're hearing
voices. She has a special salon every Monday evening for
Joan of Arc wannabes.
Carol:
[Laughs] You can do that all you
want. I'm immune to your teasing.
Wendy: I'm sorry, just
being silly. My Mysticometer kicked in.
Carol: I sensed
that.
Wendy: Well, we could
joke all night, but why don't you ask me the questions
you had lined up for the Synthmuseum.
Carol: So, first the
usual disclaimer that I don't have the expertise of
someone who is a keyboard artist, composer, or tech head.
However, I've survived two interviews with you, so that
should qualify me.
Wendy: You bet!
But your questions instinctively look into other areas
instead of the same old retreads, both people
bored with each other. No, I don't think that will
happen. Guess we're set. Why don't you ask me the
questions you had lined up for the Synthmuseum?
Carol: Okay, here we
go.
The
Digital Transition
Carol: You spent a good
ten years or more building and improving your
state-of-the-art analog Moog studio, with assorted vocoders,
and what not. When did you first get wind of the digital
future? Did you look at your studio and think "gotta start
all over"? Or were you anxiously waiting, the first in
line?
Wendy: I wish I could give
you a sound bite answer on this. For most of my years, I was
aware of using digital as a music tool. My first experience
was at the Columbia/Princeton Center, where they had a
tie-in to university's computer facility. I had messed with
that with another composer-techhead, but computers were so
primitive I realized that digital was not the way to go for
the time. Even the Center's big legendary RCA Synthesizer
was an analog machine. So the answer for me was to go with
Bob Moog's analog devices.
Finally, the middle '70s,
Rachel Elkind (my producer then) and I went to Dartmouth to
see a computer music installation that lead to the
Synclavier, a very expensive system that was popular in the
'80s. It was kind of thin, then, not very much meat on the
bones. In 1977, we decided that since no one seemed to be
doing anything digital -- and we had just a little money in
the bank -- we hired an engineer to build a digital
synthesizer prototype. (I still have part of it in the loft
here). It was an amusing device, but we didn't have the
money or the staff to develop it further, or market it. It's
foolish for a composer to try to do that on his or her
own.
We saw the Bell
Laboratories setup in New Jersey, and looked at another
digital device like the Fairlight, which was sample-oriented
-- quite limited -- but popular with rock and roll musicians
whose needs were not seriously involved with synthesis. If
they could get drum samples, it served their purpose. I'm
not putting it down, but from the point of view of a
synthesis, and of a serious composer, it was slim pickings.
The one that caught my eye, however, was the Crumar GDS,
which stands for General Development System. This was the
prototype for a simpler machine called the Synergy, by
coincidence the same name Larry
Fast's was using
for his recorded studio performances.
The GDS/Synergy was a
machine I got very deeply involved with in 1981, my first
significant involvement with a digital machine. I think it
is still superior in certain areas to the machines that have
come out since. Sorry, but in certain areas, it remains
superior. No one else has bothered to do some of the things
the Synergy could do. Yes, others have done it quieter, with
greater fidelity, better high frequencies, and less hiss.
But they have not developed the real difficult tasks, like
full additive synthesis with complex modulation. So out of
that came Tron, Digital Moonscapes, and
Beauty in the Beast.
Any other units you
throw into the mix in those days?
Yamaha came up with the
early '80s DX model (not quite as good as the Synergy), and
in 1990, they manufactured the fine SY77, which I still use.
It's somewhat cleaner sounding than the old Synergy. Finally
Kurzweil came out with some excellent hybrid models that
involved both samples and synthesizer technology.
My involvement with digital
is not a single event that led me down a single path. It
spread throughout my work in this field and has many cul de
sacs of participation and interest I've gone through the
last forty years. I've probably forgotten more than I know
now on the topic. So, what do you want from me, already?
It's a big, bulky, disorganized subject. I haven't thought
it through, nor have I spoken with any one about this until
you asked the question.
And eventually you
incorporated MIDI controllers and samples.
I started with MIDI in the
mid-'80s. Dave Smith -- a charming, bright guy -- invented
it in '83, and got the Japanese companies interested in it
when the Americans were going "NIH! NIH!" -- not invented
here. There is some use of MIDI on Beauty
in the Beast:
combinations of sounds are very often tied together with
MIDI, but not using the advanced features. Then the
Peter
and the Wolf
project was entirely MIDI, using the computer as a recording
device for the individually performed parts, the first time
I did that. So my Macintosh was where I polished all of the
performances, then it cranked out the notes, and I recorded
them all on tape, one note at a time, just like I did with
Switched-On
Bach, but I
drove the sounds with the computer. And that's the slowest
and most difficult way I've ever had to work, a tedious
project.
Then my most recent album,
Tales
of Heaven and Hell,
has a lot of MIDI, and music concrete--live singers, some
percussion, sound effects--recorded on hard disk using
Digital Performer. All of my newer stuff that I'm
tinkering with uses the computer as a tape machine, as a
MIDI machine, and to tinker with the individual sounds. So,
the computer becomes a Swiss Army knife.
In the 1970s, Rachel Elkind
and I used to dread going down into our basement studio,
because nothing changed. It was frustrating to keep using
the Moog synthesizer; it's not good to keep the same static
stuff going. If you write for an ensemble, you will try
different groupings: string quartet, quintet, orchestra,
chorus, or piano solo. You have to keep it interesting -- I
feel you do, anyway.
But in the '80s, I had lots
of options: I used some of the Moog, some of the Synergy,
the Yamaha, the Kurzweil. Now, in the '90s, progress has
been a little static again. I mostly use the Kurzweil K2000,
a modest, inexpensive, excellent instrument, very clean. And
I've gotten involved with the Korg Z1, which is fascinating
in a different way. You can model acoustic sounds with it,
very flexible and expressive to play.
I've always had a variety
of technologies here, and I don't much care which tool I
use. If it cuts the wood and drills a nice clean hole, I use
it. I just wish that the job that began with the Synergy
would be picked up again and would move in the direction of
real, profound synthesis. But no one seems to care about
that any more. Just whatever is obvious and easy. So it's a
shame, although hope does spring eternal. I'm hoping that
someone will take the bait and move ahead, but I think I'll
die before the next step is taken.
So is what has happened
is that the music world has settled for samples?
Wendy: Yes, and prerecorded
rhythm samples. That's just like an artist using clip art.
It's fast, and sadly, too tempting, too easy to hide behind.
A lot of the newer people involved in the field don't posses
the background or any of the skills of composition, really.
Not paid the dues yet, to say it like it is. They think MIDI
loops and samples and groove boxes are it. I like to ask if
you would go to a doctor or surgeon who was similarly
untutored, only quickly self-taught, in the medical arts and
sciences. Why expect less from those who make our music for
us than, say, our dentist? I think somewhere we've run amok,
jumped the track, in contemporary music -- and lost an art
form.
Just curious: Isn't it
somewhat annoying to learn one system and then have to
master another whole technology?
Wendy: Changing equipment
and approaches is always somewhat of a struggle and a
nuisance. The composers before us didn't have to reinvent
themselves all the time. I've had to work horizontally with
different instruments, but also vertically to change the
whole way to control them. It's like having to master the
violin well, then deciding to be a mezzo-soprano or next
play the oboe. You can waste your whole life trying to move
into too many directions. Just getting the breadth of the
instruments you are proficient in ought to be enough.
However, most of the folks
using electronic instruments don't seem to me to move much
at all. I find most of it so limited in range and vision,
alas. We are given a range of technologies, but so many are
standing on the one square foot, and few are moving off of
it. And few seem to know or care: ignorance and apathy. The
king is naked -- that's the bottom line.
Where are the curious? Do
you notice if people are curious these days? Much simpler to
be omni-cynical. I don't see many curious people among the
composers and musicians. For example, why be satisfied with
just the same old Equal Tempered scale? Why not fool with
alternative tunings? It's such a simple thing -- much of it
is very worthwhile -- you don't even have to do very much. I
rant on this one all the time. I guess I am just an old
opinionated curmudgeon, but I don't understand such
conservative values in an artist. You don't want to lose
your curiosity. It defines you as a person in some
way.
Well, this has nothing to
do with your questions, but is a philosophic question of a
Life Quest. I'd like to see a little more interest in these
topics than "inquiring minds want to know," which is exactly
180 degrees from what that really means. People just seem to
wallow in what they already know. Jeepers.
Inquiring mind wants to
know: Where were we?
Wendy: You asked me about
when I became involved in digital, was it a big revelation
and did it shake up my ability to work? Actually, it was
annoying to have to learn a lot about it, but what is more
annoying now is when new instruments come out that are
effectively the same thing, but you need to learn new
techniques to do them. Software is often like that, too. But
with a new computer graphics or animation program, you will
have to learn something new, but you'll get something new
back. That's a fair trade.
Do any consulting or
beta testing?
Wendy: I used to consult
and beta test for quite a few music and synth companies. But
a lot of my friends there have left now, and many of the
companies just haven't moved on. A notable exception is Mark
of the Unicorn, which created a Mac music audio software
program, Digital Performer. I respect what they have
done, and have worked with them off and on for over 15
years.
Your two re-releases
feature digitally synthesized instruments--the LSI
Philharmonic for Moonscapes and the exotic
instruments of Beauty in the Beast--that you crafted
yourself. For those new to electronic music, what exactly
does it mean to have digital sound versus analog
sound?
Wendy: Digital, of course,
is essentially computer data which accurately describes an
audio signal. It's easily manipulated and can be copied
exactly -- all those ones and zeros, you know. Analog is how
we usually describe sound waves, a continuous change of
pressure or an electrical signal, what a microphone
produces, what we used to record on tape. It's a much
riskier way to handle audio, but historically was the method
we first discovered.
Between the two, don't look
for deeper meaning or arbitrary differences. There is a cult
of near-religious dogma that proclaims analog sound on LPs
("vinyl") to be perfection (what a hoot that is for those of
us who used to cut LPs for a living!). They think you have
to use special wires and elaborate techniques they don't
even understand, and they claim that digital is in cahoots
with Lucifer. It's kind of pathetic, based on ignorance and
flamboyant cheek. The simple answer for synthesizers or
reproduction is: To the listener, it shouldn't matter at
all, as long as it sounds fine. If you're a performer, it
shouldn't matter at all. If you have a very advanced analog
synthesizer and then you have another that is all
digital--and you get a lot out of both--fine, use
them.
On the other hand, digital
can, in principle, let you be more precise, with finer
finesse and control. Analog runs out at five significant
digits of accuracy (it doesn't have infinite resolution),
something like that, and there's tape hiss to contend with.
If you want to put the money and time into it, you can
obsess with digital until you're dead. It's a potential that
hasn't often been tapped, but usually you reach a practical
limit, there's life for you. Microtonal tunings are a breeze
with digital synthesizers, but very hard to do with
analog.
With digital, can you
take the finished mix, and where you've recorded a cello,
perform a global search-and-replace to substitute
refinements, to just that digital instrument? Or change the
cello to a trumpet? Does the digitally created instrument
offer that kind of possibility after you've composed and
mixed?
Wendy: Once recorded, no
matter what kind of machine, the signal is pretty hard to
change, except in broader ways. A real synth may combine
just sawtooths and pulses and sines (like a Moog), or may
use recorded waves (like the Kurzweil's), not unlike a
sampler. But the big point is that you can then build
instrumental timbres with attack and decay and filter
controls, wave shapers and manipulators, a whole mess of
others. But once a performance is recorded using such
"flexible" instruments, you're back to having a mere
recording, a signal that no longer has the control that the
instrument provided.
Not even with Digital
Performer, when all the parts are recorded separately on the
computer?
Wendy: They have a lot of
cool tools, but you're still best off making those changes
before you record the performance.
Since a sound sample is
a digital signal, can you have the same degree of control as
a digital sound you've built from scratch?
Wendy: No, not in general.
Samples use digital for recording and playback -- but not
for the potential power of digital synthesis. Samplers
hearken back to the days of the Mellotron and Chamberlain.
The reason I use the Kurzweil 2000/2600 is that they give
you synthesizer manipulation on top of samples, and they
sound wonderful. You can make your sounds working with the
samples' waveform instead of a raw sine wave or sawtooth.
The Kurzweils don't have the breadth and depth that the
Synergy was exploring, while the Synergy couldn't do
samples. If you put all those things together, you'd have
something pretty remarkable. So far nobody's done it.
Again, from the audience
point of view, it shouldn't matter at all. If you are
hearing something very subtle, sophisticated and beautifully
shaped, it's probably more likely to be coming from the
newest digital stuff. But not necessarily. In the end, I
listen, and if something sounds good, I use it.
|
(Top
of the Page)
|
Crafting
Digital Replications
Carol Wright: When
making a digital replication of a sound--the LSI
Philharmonic instruments in the case of Moonscapes
and exotic instruments for Beauty in the Beast--did
you use recordings of real instruments for
reference?
Wendy: I did. I have a few
LP collections of "this-is-the-orchestra" kinds of things.
But when I went into this, I had a lot of other musical
experience, too--twenty years with real instruments, a lot
of study, and all the learning that went on with the Moog. I
had an idea on how to go about trying to build a digital
replica, and I stumbled around until my ear was satisfied.
Hearing Digital Moonscapes recently, I'm aware that
the replications are not perfect. It's like computer
graphics, like a depiction of a forest with computer animals
running in it. It's not exactly not like the real thing, and
ironically, the closer you get, the more you're aware of any
remaining differences. I think the early Moog replications
of the orchestra that I did were very far off, but people
accepted them. Now, some people really hated the LSI
Philharmonic digital replications. I don't think they are
actually bad--they are much closer than what I did with the
earlier Moog records--but they come close enough that you
are aware of the differences. Ironic, isn't it?
Now the Kurzweil, though
based on samples, doesn't sound like an orchestra either.
You must tinker with the samples too, if "reality" is what
you're after. But then after you've learned all that, what
you should be doing is to extend it, extrapolating it to
other directions, based on the good orchestra sounds that
exist. That's what I try to do, anyway.
If your digital replicas
are so versatile, why are you now using samples rather than
your own digital sounds?
Wendy: I don't have a
synthesizer that does all that I want it to do. I can go
back to the Synergy, and probably will some on the next
album, but it's also kind of clunky and dated in some ways.
You can play only a few notes at a time, the specs on range
and noise are not outstanding, and you can't mix anything
like a sample in with the oscillator tones. The Yamaha SY77
has its own features, and can use both of those domains, so
I frequently work with it. The Kurzweil series, 2000, 2500,
2600, contains a good synthesizer plus outstanding sound
specs and flexible sampling possibilities, so I work with
that, too. But to answer your question: I do what I can do
with the best tools available at the moment. I may want to
saw a square hole, but I have only a round drill. So, you
approximate or approach it.
Anything cool on the
horizon?
Wendy: I no longer kid
myself. I don't think that we'll make any significant
progress soon -- we certainly haven't in the last decade. I
suspect the progress phase of our field is temporarily over.
It got that way with earlier instruments, too. I was born
into a moment of history that I could pioneer a few things,
but at the other end of my life I'm probably going to reach
my cutoff before the meaty, powerful "anything you can
imagine" processors become available. And that's sad. I wish
it had all been squeezed into a fifty-year life span of
productive work. But it didn't happen that way, and probably
won't happen soon enough. Right now, we don't have a paved
freeway to the next batch of really new sounds. You have to
make do with the best covered wagons you can find. It's a
time consuming method, I've usually had to do things the
hard way, but now I admit to becoming impatient.
So, using your 1982
Synergy digital processor--and not samples, not MIDI--for
Tron and Digital Moonscapes, you created
orchestral instruments. A real violin section has a variety
of instruments, bows, rosins, different tonal qualities for
each player. Did you make more than one violin replica to
help create richness within the section?
Wendy: Yes. Bunches of
them, many variations.
To what lengths did you
go to get as much variety as possible in each instrument
group?
Wendy: When you're creating
these sounds, you're likely to sense something missing, so
you try a variation on it. Then you come back the next day
you discover it wasn't so much better, just different. Each
replication has its strength and weakness, so I combine all
my variations. I do that with all the sounds I
create.
How do you decide when to
cut loose and say "the hell with it, that's as good as I can
get it"? From the point of view of "sounds," I have never
been satisfied with sounds--anyone's--of any kind--ever!
It's too easy to notice the holes. If the goal is to create
Art, then it doesn't matter one whit. If you were painter
like Picasso in your "early blue period," you painted two
musicians sitting under a tree with moonlight shining on
them. And it really didn't look exactly like moonlight and
the shadows were not exactly the color of real life. So
what? But from a music instrument builder's point of view, I
always want to get it better, reach the peaks of the best
acoustic instruments. So there's a duality.
Did you create your
violin section from massing individual instruments or did
you create a "whole section" sound?
Wendy: Both ways in
combination. I made some that sounded like solo violin,
others that sounded like four or five playing together, and
varieties of those. So I'd mix violin A with violin group D
and so forth and the same for the other instruments--cellos,
varieties of French horns--all through the orchestra. I
discovered that some replicas were better playing staccato
passages, others better at long, single tones. You end up
saving a lot of variations. I don't see that as a problem.
When you write an orchestral score, you instruct musicians
to play in different ways. A bow can play normally or col
legno, which means with the wood, or sul
ponticello, bowing near the bridge. There are lots of
little bits synthesized performance business that are
similar variations . You just don't have an Italian word to
hang on it.
However, I don't find any
electronic sound to be as rich as I can get with acoustic
instruments. All of the digital replications of the LSI are
to me approximations of the ideal values. Like computer
graphics, we're getting closer, and it's amazing what's been
accomplished.
At age 25, I took up the
cello and the violin--and really know what it sounds like to
start a bow against the string. I thought I heard on
Moonscapes that each bow stroke had a bite to start
off the note.
Wendy: I worked very hard
for that. Thank you for noticing! That was difficult.
Nowadays you might hear it from a sample with mike placed
within one inch of the string so you record this gristly
sound--a terrible caricature, like a portrait where all you
see is the nose. It's unflattering.
Bows, bowing. My favorite
means of making sounds is a bow. I have several bows and
stringed instruments around here. Good stuff! Perhaps it's
something visceral within me. The initial bowing sound on
any instrument is wonderful, special; it has to be there, or
it doesn't sound like a stringed instrument. When Kurzweil
made their piano sound on the 150, they couldn't just use
additive synthesis sound (additive is the most powerful way
to build sounds). They had to add a hammer noise, a recorded
thump, at the beginning of each note that they mixed with
the rest of the partials. It's subtle, but without it, the
note sounds wholly electronic.
So a violin is vibrating
with a note of A, but the instrument also has resonant
overtones, other strings vibrating sympathetically. Did you
try to create those as well?
Wendy: To some extent,
strings behave fairly harmonically, which is not that big a
challenge. The way the harmonics vary during the course of
the note--and just don't sit statically--produces a feeling
of life that I like. You find clever ways of keeping
something always moving, and when you go from note to note,
you give each note a slightly different trajectory of the
various overtones. Otherwise, it can sound dead, quite
pathetic. You have to work carefully with the overtones on
some of the percussion instruments, where the overtones
might last only a half second. The timpani, especially,
requires precise tuning of all those overtones.
On Digital
Moonscapes, did you place the instruments to replicate a
concert hall layout?
Wendy: Yes. It's all part
of a later step, mixing and adding ambience, though when I'm
building sounds, I always double-check to make sure the
placements are approximately correct anyway. I like to have
a bit of unique reverb be part of each timbre, but most of
it is assigned during final mixes. You can work very dry
initially, but you get different sound impressions later on,
when hall acoustics are added. When you look at an object
from a different placement, you get a different parallax,
depending on where you view from. It's the same with making
sounds. Yeah, I'm always aware of tricks like that.
It takes discipline: you
are really tweaking molecules when you get deeply into this.
Sometimes you hit the edge of what one synth can do, and you
become frustrated, trying to do the best with what it can
do. I wish manufacturers would take the next steps to make
an all-inclusive powerful, machine because in the current
technology we have enough speed and power to be able to do
almost anything at not too great a cost (if mass produced).
But the question is, would there be anyone out there, except
for the cranks and crackpots like me, who would buy such a
device? Would it be commercially viable? The manufacturers
tell me the answer is no. They are economics driven, and I'm
art driven, or scientific-curiosity driven, or
creative-intuitively driven. And it's frustrating when
you've chosen to go search the field of new sounds, yet not
have the tools and means to get there.
Although you could have,
you didn't electronically soup-up the orchestral sounds on
Digital Moonscapes. Your LSI Philharmonic pretty much
stands on its own. Any reason?
Wendy: Digital
Moonscapes was meant to be an orchestra piece that
didn't use any real orchestral instruments or samples. It
was a benchmark: How close could I get? During a live
performance of most of the selections in 1985 I was quite
surprised. The live orchestra could not play with sufficient
care, finesse and feeling to match what I had done with the
LSI Philharmonic, although the sounds of live instruments
were lovely. It was a disappointment, showing the compromise
with everything in life, I guess. Perhaps a good ensemble of
good players, well practiced, could have done a closer job.
So maybe I'm just tilting at a windmill here.
Nevertheless, when I hear
Digital Moonscapes today, I realize it's a special
little world of sound that isn't quite like an acoustic
performance. It's more like looking at good computer
animation, you have to view it with an eye of: "I'm in the
computer graphics world, let's see what this is about."
Enjoy the special things that an LSI Philharmonic can
produce, not play the game of: "this doesn't sound exactly
like a real violin at all." Like Pixar, I wanted to get
really close, but never expected an exact match. The new
Kurzweil orchestral samples that I've recently built are a
better timbral match, but they are missing some of that
wiry, plastic integrated behavior that a fine acoustic
instrument well-played has. After all, the samples are
really only recordings of acoustic sounds that you try to
knit together inside of a synthesizer patch.
For these two recordings, I
didn't use samples: the LSI instruments were generated from
scratch. Every overtone, every scratch or key tap on the
attacks was done deliberately, just like Disney animation of
drops of water in a pond create expanding ripples Those
effects have to be studied and drawn intentionally. Snapping
a picture of it is easy do to in contrast with trying to
animate it yourself. So, Digital Moonscapes can be
compared with Disney animation better than it can be
compared with a camera or real orchestra, even while the
drama or the music could be expressed either way. Does that
answer your question?
Interesting, but no
cigar yet. For Digital Moonscapes, because it was a
space theme, you could have done any number of electronic
sound effects like space winds and rocket engines. But you
didn't.
Wendy: I had already spread
my wings in those directions when I was a student, so I got
it out of my system. This is a snobby thing to say, but such
trickery is a little bit corny. I know the audience might
love the corn, and I might be a little more successful doing
it. But I was trying to go for subtlety. I may just too
concerned about sophistication and subtlety. There are
"gestures" in DM that cannot be done by an orchestra:
the most open departure from reality was that instrument in
Luna which changes from being a violin to a clarinet
to trumpet to a cello. That simply doesn't exist in real
life (hmm... what would a "Strumpet" or "Clarolin" look
like?). It wasn't until the next album, Beauty in the
Beast, that I went the whole way and started designing
instrumental timbres that can't exist at all, based on the
ones that do exist.
On Digital
Moonscapes, I almost heard or saw the "hand" of the
conductor. It's like you were grabbing sound out and really
conducting it. Was it really that fluid to produce? What
program did you use to get that extra human quality to the
flow and phrasing?
Wendy: Thank you, Carol, I
did enjoy the conducting role with the LSI performances. Of
course it was much easier and more fluid in Tales of
Heaven and Hell, where I had the ability to change the
tempo and make a ritard after-the-fact using MotU's
Performer. The Digital Moonscapes tempos were
determined beforehand, thinking it through, figuring it in
my head, charting where the tempos should change, and making
this extremely elaborate click track. The tempos were varied
all over the place, and that is what I played to. And so it
was not free and liquid; it was straight jacketed and
controlled. I tried not to let it sound that way. Once more
I faked an illusion of life. Of course most art uses a lot
of artifice and artistry, there are tricks hiding everywhere
in the best stuff.
Beauty in the Beast
was close to that same limitation, except the improvised
passages are quite free. But a lot of it was performed
against a click track as well. It wasn't until Peter and
the Wolf that I could change tempos after the fact and
could very nearly "conduct" my music.
My last new album, Tales
of Heaven and Hell, was the first album I can say I
don't hear any weak phrases or residual performance
glitches. With Digital Performer, I could fix everything; if
it was a little too loud or a little too bright in places, I
could fix it. I could change and change and change, like an
oil painting that hasn't dried. Before, it was more like
drawing in India ink: once the ink is on the Bristol board,
you can't change it. I no longer have unchangeable lines in
my music. That's a wonderful step forward.
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Capital
"C" Composer
Carol Wright: This might
sound like an obvious statement, but "you're a composer."
Others nowadays might improvise chords and tunes, layer
soundscapes, lay down grooves, relying on a sequencer to
process the music and the rhythms.
Wendy: Most recorded music
now makes use of sequencing and synths. The name no longer
has the limited connotation of the old analog modules which
could trigger or process a few notes of different
pitches--blip blip blip blop, blip blip blip
bloop--all evenly spaced and dull. I have such a
sequencer in my old Moog synth, it was nearly of no use for
me over the years. (But the flashing lights impressed some
folks!)
The term sequencer
generally means computer software used to store a
performance of notes and gestures, allowing editing and
duplicating, transposition, tempo change, a lot of such
musical essentials. These sequencers are actually quite
wonderful, as they act like a virtual tape recorder, but in
the MIDI world. The latest sequencers have added support for
audio files, too. So the notes can be individually tweaked,
and the other obvious things you need for a good
performance. Then it can be "played" out to the audio world,
given voice by the many synths connected to it.
The self-generated and
evolving sounds of the '60s and '70s sequencers were
responsible for some very dull music. The newest computer
packages aren't limited to crank out sausages by the yard.
But all the bells and whistles on today's new sequencers can
be a smokescreen, produce an illusion that real music is
being made, when all it may be is a string of sounds,
usually very much cliche-driven. Modern sequencers can be
used as a crutch, or they can be a wonderfully powerful
music creation tool.
I was confused about the
term, you're right. But what I meant was that "you
compose."
Wendy: Seems to me that
music is a human endeavor. Consider mechanical pumps, a
piston engine, a pendulum swinging: These are not human, and
have not a whiff of musical expression about them. They
represent regular repetition, not the subtle changes a good
composer will make to the repetitions within a composition,
the way a good performer will reinterpret a passage that
repeats several times.
It's our great misfortune
that these distinctions have been lost, and a couple of
generations of listeners have been raised with nothing
better than mechanical grooves and thoughtless looping. My
distinction about the human element of music has been
forgotten, lost, to the present. A dulled-down ear no longer
is "put off" by quick cheap and dirty loops, TOO regular
rhythmic patterns, or the elimination of real performance
values.
Lately I've heard
complaints by younger audiences that when they hear a real
performance, it's not "enough" for them. They have lost the
taste for this dimension of expression and are content in a
lifeless musical environment. Those of us who were not
initiated into this "society of the numb and dumb" are
forced to suffer through the thin gruel of musical
possibilities that get served like fast food, the minimum
effort to get a task done, the task of making music in this
case. Wonderful new tools are applied not to Art, but to
Commerce. (See, I told you I'm becoming an old
curmudgeon!)
But YOU Compose! Capital
"C." Forget the tools you use. You know what you're going
for, compose along a theme, set your own parameters. You
control everything and don't depend on sequencers repeat
phrases. Compose: You'd have total, ongoing control over
every note, every sound, every parameter, right?
Wendy: Oops! I see.
The answer is YES, that's absolutely true. If I can control
it, I must control it. Some very famous electronic composers
brag about how untutored they are, how cool they think it is
to be musically illiterate. I just get very uncomfortable
about such misplaced pride. You wouldn't seek surgery from
an untrained doctor, so why would want your music done by
someone who doesn't know what he's doing? Composing is a
balance between knowledge and intuition. Bright, good,
talented people don't have to fear that that knowing too
much that might inhibit their creativity. There are those
who know what they are doing, but then don't spread their
creative wings. Good musicians are somewhere in between. You
think Mozart didn't know harmony or counterpoint? Of course
he did, and he also knew what also sounded good inside his
head. Joining of the intuitive with the cerebral. I guess
that's my philosophy on Life and Art. I've lifted a lot of
it from good artists in the past.
On composing in general,
the old dreams of composers would have included world
premieres by major orchestras, the excitement of opening
night, the bows at the end, dodging tomatoes and hecklers,
reading the reviews at sunup from the erudite music critics.
Does that "live" vibe appeal to you? What were your dreams
of yourself and music, growing up?
Wendy: I would have loved
to have written lots of orchestral and chamber music pieces,
been part of that world, attempting to come up with music
that is stimulating, invigorating, and alive! Music with
rich, deep orchestrations, like the flavors of Thai food --
Stravinsky, Ravel, Prokofiev. That's are where my adrenaline
flows, even more than Beethoven, Mozart, or Bach. I
frequently listen to Bartok, Brahms, Malcom Arnold,
Respighi, and less well-known unfashionable music. Also some
old big bands, like the outrageous Sauter-Finegan romps,
some Miles, late Beatles, some Bill Evans, a filmscore or
two. Eclectic stuff that fits my "mood of the day," makes me
grin, and feel good to be alive.
A few forgotten classical
gems especially create a subtlely intricate (especially the
understated quiet sections) sumptuous musical pallet, yum. I
think I'd have been good at creating such compositions.
Still could. But I've never been able even to get arrested
in the "serious music" world, like I'd become invisible.
Don't know the secret password. Not their favorite flavor.
Who cares what the excuses are for some of the rudeness and
opacity I've experienced? Even passive prejudice is nothing
unusual in our hopefully more correct times. I'm certainly
not the only one to feel the sting of these things. But you
have to find a way get on with your life and accept that it
often is mindlessly unfair, but that's just the way it
is.
If you had your
druthers, would you rather compose for film or longer
original works?
Wendy: Druthers would be
for longer, self-standing works, of course. My albums are my
attempt to satisfy that goal in part. However, I do love
film, and I wish I could work with great film makers. I
loved working with Stanley Kubrick, but we never had a
chance to mature together. He also tended to be more
comfortable using pre-existing "needle drops" instead of
original music composed for the actual scenes. I did get to
compose for film in Disney's Tron , as for the small
British film Woundings, but those were isolated
cases.
Can you define what your
aesthetic is?
Wendy: Not very well. But
if I had to throw words at you, I'd like to think it
includes: sophisticated, quirky, humane, witty, many
layered, open ended, expansive, and inclusive. It's also
both intuitive and based on rational musical and acoustical
sense. Something like that. I don't take myself too
seriously or think of such ideas when I'm working. Then it's
just an emotional crusade, gunning for what you're hearing
inside your head, hoping you come close before you have to
cut off. I seldom achieve what I'm looking for. But there
are moments of getting close. Does any of this make
sense?
[A loud yowling is
heard.] I hear the old cat. Subi!! The poor blind
dear. Let me see if I can scoop him up on my lap. Hello,
baby. He's still so sweet and lovable, and he immediately
started purring.
Poor old guy.
Wendy: It's like an old
geezer's purr. He's settled in now.
How do you like to
compose?
Wendy: Composing takes up
every waking moment. When I'm not sitting down doing it, my
mind is still doing it. And the best compositional ideas
come when I've really spent a lot of time on it, then leave
it. I distance myself from my workspace, but the mind has
not gotten too far away. And suddenly the right hemisphere
kicks in with something creative. I'm always sketching
things. If you were here, you'd laugh. I have Post-it Notes
all over the studio written with a few notes or phrases, an
orchestral suggestion, a texture, a harmonic progression. I
just write things down--all in the key of C (but chromatic
with lots of sharps and flats) at first, to be transposed
later. I don't know if I'll ever use them all, but they're
interesting, so I save them.
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Finding
Beauty in the Beast
Carol Wright: On
Beauty in the Beast, you included exotic
international scales, like those from Bali, and also created
entirely new scales. These days world music is mainstream;
many foreign scales are familiar to us, even if we can't
name what they are. So to give the twelve tones another day
in the sun, aren't these notes built around the harmonic
overtones of each other? So there would be a natural,
organic reason for sticking with them...? or not?
Wendy: That's where the new
tunings are most interesting, exploring those which
are derived from pure acoustics. Our common
twelve-tone Equal Tempered scale, alas, is not one of those.
Why not? Because it is a holdover of technology from the
1800s, from the old piano builders. They did the best they
could, and Equal Temperament was their final compromise. It
served us well, but we don't have to compromise any longer.
For me the door to other scales opened when our favorite
digital engineer, Stoney Stockell, found a way to give me
access to the frequency tables in our custom Synergy synths
(which he had largely been responsible for developing over
the years). Then through trial and error I began to write
several computer programs, which allow one to retune these
instruments to literally anything.
What are your criteria
for selecting a scale to work with?
Wendy: There are several
things to explore. One is to have the notes blend
euphoniously, which favors a Just Intonation, one with
simply related intervals that blend evenly with one another.
That's the best sounding way to tune a large number of
instruments like the winds and strings. For more complex
instruments, like the percussion instruments of Bali, or to
modulate into strange keys, that is not the best way to
tune. The overtones can require other schemes, and
modulation takes up even more basic pitches, leading to
another way to choose a scale. Or another scale might have a
spicy quality to the harmonies, a tasty and novel set of
sounds. It's rather like adding some hot sauce to your
cooking.
There are other reasons to
leave the best known tempered scale. There's been such a
vast repertoire written in our so-called the twelve-tone
scale, that we've kind of written it out. It's like making
paintings using only four certain colors: blue, yellow,
black and white. After we'd done that for three hundred
years, wouldn't you want to try adding green or red, just
because you might come up with a different painting? These
new scales give you a simple way to sound in your own voice,
not a copy of everyone else. So that's probably the most
powerful reason for alternative tunings. These are reasons
that should be important to a curious person.
Once you establish a
scale, can you hear and compose it in your head?
Wendy: With many, yes of
course; but there are some scales with hard-to-hear
intervals. You can internalize with just a little experience
what justly tuned triads sound like. Some of those spicy
chords have a distinctive sound, and you can recognize them
when you hear them again. There are a lot of useful scales
on Beauty in the Beast. You tell me, Carol: can you
recognize some of them?
Yes. I can hum the piece
and predict where it is going.
Wendy: Excellent. The
tuning that you use should be one that you can explore and
prove to yourself that you're hearing it. Test-drive it.
Invite a few friends over and see if they can sing it back
to you. In the end, it's just a question of these four
values I just stated. I hope that more people get involved
with it. Many musicians now are becoming interested, but
they are often younger composers who have only begun to
compose. So we have no masterpieces yet, but we might get
some as these composers mature.
The Greeks used different
tunings, but little of their music has survived. The Indians
of Asia have wonderful scales, but Westerners are not
interested in learning ragas. The Indonesians also have
interesting scales, but now they copy our scales instead of
us copying theirs. More and more of the ethnic world is
using the twelve-tone scale instead of the other way around.
Sad, really.
When you do your
microtunings like on Beauty in the Beast, and you
have perhaps 34 notes in an octave (when you do have an
octave) what kind of keyboard would you use for
that?
Wendy: I've tried to build
a fancy keyboard for that. Several times. You can see a
perspective drawing of one if you look in Beauty in the
Beast's enhanced CD files. Open up the article I wrote
for Computer Music Journal called "Tuning at the
Crossroads." I've tried to build one of these keyboards
three times in my life. And I've never had the money and
assistance to complete it. There are other versions, but
they look unwieldy to me, like typewriter keys. I can't
imagine using typewriter keys to perform music. Anyway, a
generalized multiphonic keyboard is the way it should be
done. Lacking that, I have to use the keyboards I have here,
which means you use two or three of them, and tune them in
various ways, mark them with stickers and try to remember
what key will make what pitch. Perhaps middle C will be the
only right-on pitch. All other keys on the various keyboards
will be redefined. It might take three octaves of keyboard
to make what you'd expect to be one octave.
If you are playing
Chopin, your fingers have been trained to land on thirds or
octaves. But how do you train...?
Wendy: You have to fight
your impulses and instincts. It's often difficult because
you are jumping big spaces and all. You invent some way to
perform what you need. The technique is still the same, of
course. It's a pain in the ass, but it's a way you get these
various things, and they can sound fabulous! You can't just
enter them in by number on a computer: That sounds deadly
dull, mechanical--no performance value.
We still have not reached
the phase where microtonality is more than an iconoclastic
subset of music. In spite all the people who have written
about it in books and journals over the years--even with
pioneer Harry Partch and amazing Johnny Reinhard who
organized the American Festival of Microtonal Music.
There are lots of people involved with this around the
world, it's just that we don't just have much communication
or help from the rest of the music world, who pretend we
don't exist. But you don't have to approach it from dry
academic theory. Approach it from what sounds good.
Many of the replicas on
Beauty in the Beast sound real, to the extent that
the instruments sound crude and handmade. How far did you go
to get this realism?
Wendy: The Tibetan cymbals
on Incantation were extremely hard to make, again
tuning overtones. I put a whole bunch cymbal sounds in the
middle of the Synergy keyboard, and rolled my fingers around
to get that krrrisshh sound. It was like doing weird
gestures no pianist would use, doing whatever I had to
control whatever I had to play. And most of the sounds on
that album are bopped out that way. Listen to the C'est
Afrique last cue, to the harmonica. I had heard a couple
of charming pieces recorded in Africa, and there were some
kids playing a reedy thing, a charming, homely instrument. I
had already built a good harmonica patch. So I roughened it
up, microtoned, moved the volume control while hitting the
notes with bit of pitch bend.
The Tibetan horn
brwwaannhh beginning of Incantation was done
by using a glissando, by tuning the instrument flat.
And while it was starting it up, bringing it back into tune
by rotating a pitch knob. At the same time I used the Moog
low pass filter so the start of that sound began filtered
with a wow, and as it began sounding, I opened it up. I had
the old Moog filter next to me on a stool. I twirled its
knob manually, held the note down with the sustain pedal on
the keyboard, and the other hand is turning the pitch bend
on the keyboard. It's a foul way to play an instrument, but
it worked. That's how you do these things. It was clumsy,
hard to do, and I couldn't do it predictably on stage to
save my life! I'd embarrass myself. But I didn't care cause
I did it over until I got it right. And I saved it on the
16-track. I didn't have a hard disk audio then. If it was
wrong on the tape, it was wrong. So I had to make sure I did
it right. And I punched in and punched in and punched in
until I got it right.
Hold on. This just sunk
in: You say recorded Digital Moonscapes and Beauty
in the Beast to TAPE, not to computer. Man!!!
Wendy: That's how those
records were done. All on multitrack, just like the
Switched-On albums. The tape recorder was my trusty
old 3-M 56 16-track, a big 2-inch machine. Sounded real good
when I made the master now, because it got recorded right
from digital. And to my masters there is only that one
generation of analog tape.
What was it like
recording just to tape?
Wendy: As I mentioned, on
both albums, I worked to a click track, just like on the
Switched-On albums. First, take my best guesses on
tempo changes, and then collect tracks. In old days, I'd do
premixes as I went along. But most of the time, there was
only the final mix, aside from the need to make a very
simple monitoring flat mix while adding tracks, to be sure
everything fit. And if it didn't, I'd have to go back and
change some of them so it would, redos of single notes at
times.
Gee, is this where the
tape splicing comes in?!
Wendy: Gotta admit, this is
a unique interview. You've scored another first by asking me
about tape splicing.
I see the craftsmanship
of it. So?
Wendy: Oh, jeepers.
I'm blown away that you
did this, actually.
Wendy: It's not that big a
deal, Carol. Sometimes I wouldn't trust a very tight
punch-in for redoing one note or other brief spot. If I
missed, it would waste hours to repair.
That's what I'd
imagine.
Wendy: And I would edit in
blank leader tape lengths either side of bad spot, to
protect the notes that were fine, and carefully avoid
recording over the sections before and after these leaders.
This is still the recording and performing phase. After a
good retake these blank strips were edited out. The more
usual splices, however, were made to connect sections that
were recorded separately or to fix a stumble or remove a
glitch. (There's a myriad of reasons one splices audio
tape.) Then the spliced tape would get mixed down, and
reverb, echo, and so forth added. Often the master stereo or
4-track (quad) tape that was thereby made would get edited
again for other reasons, at least just to ensure a clean
start and stop. No simple answer. You had to be very
organized, and couldn't just jump in and go ahead, as you
can pretty well these days. It took more discipline to get
anything done, good or bad.
What was the most
complicated piece.
Wendy: Poem for
Bali. You not only have all the individual instruments;
you are forever rolling from one magic carpet to another
magic carpet. The feeling is that you go from one set of
instruments in one small room, say, then different
instruments in a medium size room, then other instruments at
a distance, then a solo. All these individual cues that had
to be synchronized. It would have been much easier to do it
on Digital Performer. Tales of Heaven and Hell had
all sorts of scenarios like that, but in 1985 I didn't have
that tool. I was synchronizing one tape on a video deck with
something coming live off a synthesizer. Clumsy as all hell.
You put crayon marks down and try to push the start buttons
at the same time and hope for the best. But in the '90s,
everything broke loose with the big steps of computer
recording and editing. But since then, nothing so major has
happened.
So, your digital
synthesis work was ahead of the digital composing work you
could alter and store on the computer.
Wendy: Yes. But it's funny
that the computer composing people used the metaphor from
all the years we worked with tape. So I could use the same
skills and have the expectations. Where you wanted to edit,
you slowed down the tape; the pitch and volume went down.
That's what it feels like to use a tape recorder. They
software designers didn't have to, but they stayed with this
model. That's the way Pro Tools works.
Which is your favorite
piece of each album, and why?
Wendy: No strong likes or
dislikes on either of these albums. They were fairly mature
projects I'm still comfortable with. Let me think because
I've just heard both albums again. My favorite on Digital
Moonscapes is Genesis on The Cosmological
Impressions suite. Then again, on I.C., I love
the subtle 13/8 meter. On the Digital Moonscapes
suite, I still quite like the saxophone jazz solo on
Ganymede. At least on alternate thursdays...
The title track, the last
piece I wrote, is my favorite on Beauty in the Beast.
It uses a couple of synthetic scales, very intricate
rhythms, and a central crescendo that sounds like a huge
carousel. I could have easily continued in that manner for a
few more movements. I'm still annoyed that my life did not
permit that then, and only now I am hoping to get back in
that vein, but being a different person now, can I pick up
those strands?
The Beauty in the
Beast album book quotes Van Gogh: "I am always doing
what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it." Is
pioneering and innovation--or tinkering--more exciting to
you than music itself?
Wendy: Not really. I have
periodically pushed myself into a corner to see if I am
going to sink or swim, to mix metaphors. Fortunately, I
don't have to release the music if it's not any good. I can
get away with that. I'm used to living modestly, and the
tradeoff is that I am allowed, as an artist to pursue my
dream. However even this gets detoured by other tasks, as
the ESD remasterings have taken good chunk of life that I
should have been putting in on new music. At the same time,
I realize that if I do a good job preserving my older music,
people won't forget it as readily as if only scratchy old
LPs existed. That would have been unfair to the earlier
work. So I thought, "No if you raise a child and the child
has problems, you go and give your help." So that's what
I've done. So that means that you can't raise any other new
children at that moment. But I'm going to try now to get
back to it. Where were we?
Van Gogh.
Wendy: Right. For me, the
challenge element is hoping that I will not fall into habits
so that my music will not merely repeat what I'm glib at
doing. I can easily crank out the improvised stuff in
Beauty in the Beast. Float a little chord in, let a
high string drone, or float a tune over it. In so much music
I hear these days, the composer almost always loses the
ball: s/he makes far too many repetitions, or noodles around
looking for a real tune. Such composers don't know where to
go for gristle and contrast: the music won't have the bite
and surprise you need after a mellow section. A living body
contains muscle and soft tissue and bones, not only
one thing. That's the way music should be, too.
Diddling with a theme is
not as highly demanding as the real challenge of coming up
with a piece exactly right for those themes, only for that
number of measures, and only right for that dramatic
purpose, followed by a contrasting theme which has to move
at least so many seconds before you return to the first one
again in a recapitulation. . . otherwise it feels like it's
a throwaway instead of a counter line. These are the
important characteristics of large western musical
masterpieces--and that's what we ought be trying to do
always, make masterpieces.
But once again,
Composer, capital C?
Wendy: Yes, sure, why not?
I may be a failure, but that's the goal. To do it well, you
can't just sit down and let your fingers steer you.
Beauty in the Beast has a tad too much diddling here and
there of that kind. Much of it was created ad hoc, on the
spot -- and to me, it shows, although I did later edit it
into tighter shape whenever I could. Same with Land of
the Midnight Sun. I was a bit horrified recently on
remastering them to realize that sections meandered in the
way I have no patience with in most New Age music, yikes!
But I had to play it that way because I couldn't notate most
of these tunings, couldn't figure out a way to play it back
off the page again.
Which may be another
reason microtonal music has yet to catch on.
You're right. It had to be
done on the keyboard while I was working with it, or
twirling dial knobs. It makes a kind of music that is a
little loose and rambling, although it occasionally reaches
wonderful heights of improvisational freedom -- a soaring
quality that's hard to reach when you are writing it out the
usual way. Somewhere a blend of the two methods is probably
the best way of all.
So, when I saw Van Gogh's
quote, I recognized something about myself, which is: I know
I'm a lazy human being. If I have to repeat something for
the forth or fifth time, by then the "fun" is over for me.
That's when I'm tempted to take shortcuts. That's where you
can lose the Art. That's where you can stop trying, and
become a talented hack, or just a plain hack. You end up
with: "great inspiration -- shows promise -- but...!"
You should work your chops
up, part of the job. You then get the melody line just
right, even if you rewrite it a hundred twenty times. You do
it once more to get the melody to sound inevitable, change a
single note and there is diminishment. [Sings several
melodic variations of Ode to Joy.Beethoven used his
sketchbook for this. You run it over and over again to find
where the heart of that theme is. The same with the harmony,
the chords. Same with the rhythms. Same with the
performance. You get it right.
So I am always pushing
myself out of the nest, even though I already know how to
fly. I push myself out of a different nest. Make myself do
it in a different way. And that's how you get to be more
honest with yourself. This applies to writing, painting,
sculpture, poetry, it's all the same creative process. So I
took Van Gogh's line and applied it to my music. It fits.
"All art is one." I happen to believe that, different
aspects of the same beast inside us. It's our humanity, our
creative human mind looking back on itself somehow. That's
what creating Art is all about, don't you think?
Carol
Wright
has written about New Age music for fifteen years. Her
articles, interviews, and reviews have appeared in Napra
ReView, New Age Voice, New Age Retailer,
All Music Guide, and the barnesandnoble.com website. This
interview is her second interview with Wendy Carlos. Much of
her writing is posted at her website at
http://www.rockisland.com/~cwright.
©
2001-2007 Carol Wright & Serendip LLC. No images, text,
graphics
or design may be reproduced without permission. All Rights
Reserved.
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