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(This part was begun November 2006, and continues through the present. Newest additions are near bottom. )
Here is Part Seven of the Open Letter, containing collected feedback from y'all site surfers. All the comments prior to August 1996 will be found in Part One. And those added up through November 1997 will be in Part Two, and through January 1999 in Part Three. Those from 1999 through 2000 are in Part Four. Part Five, began in mid-2002. Part Six began in October 2004, and continued through November 2006. This seventh part picks up in March 2007, and is the current document. The Gold Leaf Awards (for those who located the SOB 2000 album's single Moog sound) starts off the newest page, as usual. Other added-on new material follows the original date-based convention, so goes to the end (with the exceptions noted in place), so read from the top down for the original written order.
Let's
begin this page with a big nod towards the curious, sharper eared
folks who have gone looking for -- AND FOUND -- the single Moog synth
note in S-OB
2000! We've been regularly
mentioning them here with Gold Leaf Awards of acknowledgment
(originally Green Leafs, for those keeping track). I'll add the most
recent winners to this new section, to keep it clearer than the messy
way it's been thus far. ALL of the winner announcements (and some
misses, too) are copied right here. Most recent names are added at
the bottom, as most recent replies are in general. Thank you all for
searching, and for just caring enough to make an effort.
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More to follow, from your newest pages of mail... But as mentioned above, there's no cheating, and we won't reveal the answer ahead of time (let's have a sense of decorum -- no sweet words, purrs and wagging of tails, please). That quite a few of you have now hit it, while two of the submitted attempts have been in error, suggests it's a valid challenge, not absurdly hard, yet hard enough to provide a genuine listening challenge. Thanks to you all for taking the time to try our little aural/musical Sherlocking. |
2007-2009
Open Letter Additions:
Quite
a few times in the past year I've received messages about the quality
of recordings in general, and a comparison of analog and digital
sound in particular. Yikes, I'd thought that was rather old history
by now. Yes, when the CD first came out somewhere around 1983, there
were a shameful number of them which really DID sound pretty awful.
To make matters worse, much worse, the advertising campaigns of the
time were rife with a kind of arrogant swagger which pissed off a lot
of people. You remember the epithets: "Perfect Sound -- Forever!"
That kind of hype.
It lead to the inevitable,
predictable "backlash" of former audio pundits, mostly, complaining
loudly not to "throw any babies out with their bath water", that some
very decent stereo LP were still available, which turned out to sound
shabbier on their newer CD re-masterings. And a lot of print was
spent on taking care that we didn't end up worse than before. It soon
reached much worse standards of hype and urban legend, unfortunately.
CDs were branded as being "the work of the devil" (alas, I kid thee
not!), and of "causing migraines, nervous breakdowns, insomnia, loss
of appetite, and even diseases, like cancer." Did we mention hype?
But those were so over the top, it ended up ruining the desired
effect, and convincing many of us that these comments all came from
reactionary crazies, worshipping at a doomed, undeserving shrine. How
could you not recall the tales of the Luddites of times past? It's a
pretty common reaction to most new ideas, particularly those which
spell the end of one familiar comfy paradigm, and the replacement by
another strange one, even for replacements which hit far below actual
"revolutions." Modern commerce, society, even politics seem to be
fueled by omnipresent, unrelenting hype, don't they? What's an
honest, open-minded audiophile to do?
True confession, when digital
technology first was unveiled, I was also in the skeptical corner.
The initial demonstrations of the 3-M tape-based recorders were even
worse than the Soundstream machines that were shown a couple of years
earlier, usually at AES (audio engineering society) shows and
exhibitions. I think I've mentioned these disappointments in several
other essays and liner notes before. In short, the sound quality was
"edgy", and not transparent at all. Soft passages had a disagreeable
harshness to them, and much of the lowest level portions of
recordings seemed to be somehow attenuated, so that the room ambience
and reverb were not as audible as they had been in the original
microphone pick-up.
Such initial speculations turned
out to be largely true. And the gremlins were eventually discovered
and gradually fixed. A major one was the lack of something called
"dithering", or an inferior version of dithering had been used. I
won't go into that here (google it), but to say that it's a key
ingredient to fine quality digital recording and playback. Astute
people heard and reported on these realities and their solution.
Inasmuch as the subject was quite technical, many/most audio writers
and fans didn't actually understand what was going on, but still
insisted on "reporting" the issue in garbled forms, and in so doing
made a lot of dopey, false speculations and allegations. It's the
usual way urban legends are generated. Provide a motive for some
group to
desire to disbelieve
something they don't fully grasp, then give them a lot of
pseudo-tech/dogma "reasons" to "prove" that what they
want
to believe instead is
factually true, and off you go -- an unstoppable freight train of
baloney. Whoo -- WOO! (Sorry,
got carried away there, and I'm old enough to well remember the chugs
and whistles of steam engines, or as we onomatopoetically called them
as kids: "choo-choo trains"...! ;^)
Here I had thought until last
year that most of the steam in this train had been chilled out, and
that by now most undogmatic folks had heard some of the best sound in
their lives from those small metallic disks, seen some fabulous video
on the newer DVD versions (including some excellent surround sound
audio on some of them, too), and that the issue was resolved by now.
But I was wrong, it keeps coming up. It's a good way to start this
newest open letter section off. So in the next part, below, let me
copy some comments in reply to a few of your messages on this topic.
One
correspondent described his excellent audio system in detail. Okay, I
looked it over. I'm no audiophile per se, but can appreciate a nice
list of equipment, and can see that it ought sound very decent,
indeed. But then the message turned into a kind of oblique demeaning
of digital audio disks, saying that this audiophile finds the old LPs
to sound MUCH superior. And so on. So I asked Matthew Davidson to
send my comments to him, and saved them to post here:
Gosh, thanx for your
unusually thoughtful message, and the much-too generous comments,
too. Will make a big exception and reply. You have a good sound
system, vintage style. Agree about a lot of this, and it sounds like
you've been around the block a lot, too, and have a decent parallax
of audio in the home.
But please please don't
worship too much at the shrine of the plastic roller-coaster friction
ride of sound reproduction. I cut master stereo disks for several
years on very good equipment, and learned fast what a compromise it
was. Still is. A Dolby 15 ips or 7.5 ips tape dub will stand out
against any LP, in close AB comparison, in my experience. Early
digital was horrible, it's true, especially with no/bad dithering.
And special tape masters, preconditioned, limited, EQ's, etc., to
master into acceptable LPs, sound quite awful if transferred to a
clean CD, without the analog post-conditioning alterations to sorta
cancel out the tweaks. Yet it was done a lot. Hope by now the early
lessons have been learned.
On our ESD CDs all the
sound comes from earlier generation 1st-mix master tapes, and were
transferred with great care and accuracy. They "mop the floor" of ANY
of the prior versions, including CBS/Sony's Gold CDs. A careful AB
ought prove that. Note the missing veil of tape artifacts, disk
cutting artifacts. Much more honest. Thus glitches never heard before
became audible, alas, requiring weeks on each album to spot
fix/minimize. Still, we do get so used to what we've heard
repeatedly, that when something better comes along, it can be damn
hard to be objective, and hear what's actually there, not what we
expect to hear. To each his own, though.
To
demonstrate that this wasn't an isolated case, another writer begged
me to have some of my new remasterings pressed on vinyl. He ended
with a familiar comment, that while he knows CDs have become the
norm, he much prefers "the warmth of vinyl over digital -- which
enhances the sound experience", and that vinyl is actually making a
comeback currently. I've also saved my reply to post here below the
last one:
Please let me beg you to keep
an open mind on this topic. Some original CDs WERE hard and nasty,
for many extracurricular reasons. Eventually they became a lot more
transparent than any LP (which I used to cut for a living, and know
the old roller coaster medium too well). After decades of gradual
improvements and refinements to digital recording, the old arguments
have become "beliefs without proof", like the folks who claim we
never went to the moon, or that Roswell is the site of an alien
landing.
Since you do like the
warmth factor of older gear, why not buy a good used tube amp/preamp
on eBay, play your CDs through that? (It's called class-A harmonic
distortion, containing BOTH odd and even harmonics, and can sound
lovely and warm, although it's not actually "pure.") I've A/B tested
my masters against all the media, and LP and Cassette now are simply
inferior, dated, although not without a very honest nostalgia factor
(let's hear it for nostalgia!). Until I made the series of
double-blind, carefully calibrated tests (several times), I had no
grasp of the reality of audio reproduction (personal confession: for
several years I hated all the early digital sound I'd heard). Memory
and pure subjectivity play tricks on us all the time, and NOT just in
audio. We have to guard against reinforcing our current beliefs and
biases. That's why the scientific method was invented -- to guard
against the natural human ability to see/hear only what we expect to.
Would I lie to you about something this important?
It's
become rather special to me to learn that there are so many others
out here who share in a lot of common interests, talents, and points
of view. When I was growing up I thought I was the only one like me.
To have interests in both the scientific world, and the artistic,
creative side, was considered heresy, like you must suppress one or
the other -- good grief! A love and talent for music was also
supposed to be a signal that you didn't have much interest in graphic
or visual arts. You like astronomy? Then skip literature,
electronics, physics. You'd like to write poetry? Then jettison those
chemistry books...!
Yas, yas, I'm being silly here,
but honestly, that's what it was like, or at least what I
encountered: egg-compartment minds. Which is fine -- if you're an
egg! (But then the yoke's in you...) So when I received a letter last
year which was very touching, describing someone who had experienced
great difficulties coming to terms with a similar wide-ranging set of
interests and abilities, I had Matthew send this reply, knowing I'd
like to add it here as well eventually
Refreshing thoughts. By now I
know there are more than a few people out there like us, all of us
with multi talents and interests. Many seem to run in parallel, too.
So try not to feel too alone. It's what the net and web are
especially good at, connecting curious, bright nerds.
Lot we share. Of course.
And don't let the "cognoscenti" intimidate you about the bits of
baloney in microtonal world. Trust your own ears. Much too much dogma
with Just, IMHO, a near reelidjin at times. Some of it elsewhere,
too. You're able to see much better at times than they are. If it
takes absurdly slow playing of specific timbres of exactingly created
music examples with dead-on careful attention in listening, the
improvement/effort ratio isn't worth it, is it?
Must affect us as
intelligent, feeling humans, or "It don't mean a thing" (yes, "swing"
helps, too!). You're right, the dissonance to be discovered is more
interesting than the consonance. But a good composition needs to
balance those together, like great Thai food, hot, sour, sweet, salt,
and so on. Sadly, alt tunings are still neglected, even with new
technology that can achieve it easily. So a defensive attitude among
many microtuning mavens remains -- it's sad, if understandable.
The real meat of the
topic is hard to find. If you've read my article in CMJ (also on the
Enhanced-CD files of Beauty in the Beast), you have a list at the
end, of the sources I could find. Not many good books, sorry to say.
In the end you're best off trying it all yourself, taking care and
lots of time. What works remains, the rest is equivocal at best, toss
it.
Wish I also had another
lifetime for graphic creations, art and painting. Gershwin and
Schoenberg were decent amateur artists, after all, and many such
overlaps exist in history of both subjects, literature and poetry,
too. And math, for some reason, and physics, for more obvious
reasons. Love it, a big, messy stew, with lots of good parts!
Good luck on your travels
and adventures. And thank you for sharing some deep, even personal
thoughts. Hands across the country!
Here's
an important, frequently needed reply I had Matthew send off, and
then saved, like above, to post here. It concerns the many offers I
receive from musicians and composers who wish to send me copies of
their albums. My replies in such cases are short, honest and to the
point:
Thank you for the generous
comments.
Alas, I get far too many
people who wish to send me or have me listen to their music (to say
nothing of comment on) to be able to respond to any of them any
longer. But I do understand your sincerity, and thank you for the
offer. As one grows older you find yourself budgeting your time
differently, more selectively, avoiding the "been there -- done that"
parts. Just how it seems to be, older friends admit to the same
thing...
On the other hand, please
let me wish you good luck, and perseverance to find your own
"personal best." (Meanwhile, don't forget to enjoy the journey!)
Occasionally
I'm asked for my personal list of favorite music and artists. Say
someone enjoys several of my albums, and wishes to find something
like it, and they ask me what I might listen to that's similar. It
may come as a "come-downance" to learn that most of my private
listening is to classical music, a lot of it for orchestra, late 19th
and early 20th century often, although my collection is pretty dern
eclectic. (You know, it might make a nice new addition to the website
someday, a bit of a list -- I'll save that as a "note to self".) But
the point is, I don't often listen to electro-acoustic music, my own
or by other artists. So how to answer that question? Well, here's a
copy I saved of one sincere attempt at answering such a
question:
Thanx for kind message and
generous comments.
Good people in any field
are always one of a kind. When you can no longer expand your
listening vertically with more albums by the same artist (look how
few works a master like Ravel left, for ex.), you move horizontally
-- to other related people and styles. If you share an interest in
rock-based synthesis, a longtime friend, Larry Fast, does excellent
work. Looking back, there's Dick Hyman's Moog albums from decades
ago. And Gyl Trythall's Country Moog, also circa 1970. All different,
all worth a listen.
Other good friends who
are not so well known: Matthew Davidson (the same person often
mentioned here), has created some haunting, skillful electroacoustic
albums on his <stretta "dot-com"> site. And Laurie Spiegel at
<retiary "dot-org">, has composed fine, subtle, varied EAM over
many years. I sure wish those two artist-friends had the time and
opportunity to create even more frequent albums, not unlike what many
of you have said to me. Who knows for sure what may tickle your ears
and mind, you have to try for yourself, and play fair -- give each
new artist some repeated listenings. Or ask several good friends
whose taste you trust and who share some of your bkgd, age, other
interests... but even so...
Now
here's my reply to one particularly fine message which asked how it
might be possible to obtain scores to some of my music, particularly
film music. The writer in this case requested the sheet music for the
pipe organ version of my TRON
theme, called "Keyboard Anthem" (it was played by Martin Neary on the
huge organ in Royal Albert Hall in London for the final title music
to the film). The reply is self-explanatory, a candid comment on a
sad reality, and applies to any of you out there with similar
requests.
Yes, as with most film score
music, there never is a published sheet music version. I share that
frustration, have a LONG list of similar requests over the years.
Simple answer is that it represents an investment of time and effort
which is unjustified in a marketplace in which fewer and fewer
"musicians" even read music. We only have some faded original hand
drawn scores, and have read that this is the same thing for most
other soundtrack scores, alas. Sorry.
Best idea I can suggest
is to put up a note in a music dept. for a decent local school to
find a student with sharp ears who'd welcome the gig to transcribe
the music from the recording. Or try this yourself. It's what I do
very often, and is a wonderful musical exercise for one's ears.
Half-speed playback can help for faster parts (may have to dub to a
tape or computer for that). Even if inexact, you can get more than
you might imagine if you go back and improve each first attempt
several times. Well, it's an idea, one that I do myself, and can
recommend firsthand.
Since
the construction of the Wurly II setup, and posting a
fairly
extensive description on our
website, It's been an unexpected pleasure to hear from many of you in
the pipe organ community. Not so surprisingly, many of you share a
love of many of the same things I do, including sound quality,
polyphony and rich counterpoint, harmony, and timbres, a curiosity in
how sounds are made, synthesizers, and how the newest digital
implementations might benefit the preservation of both classical and
theatre organ traditions.
So I'd like to thank those of
you who have written in this connection, to share some often
astonishing stories with me, of instruments played or worked on in
the least likely spots for housing a big pipe organ, and the many
musical adventures involved. I have said on the Wurly II pages that
it was only as I assembled this elaborate Kurzweil rig that it dawned
on me what was right beneath my nose: that I owed a good deal of my
own path through music and timbral innovation to the pioneers within
the pipe organ world. Perhaps it was a kind of misplaced snobbery, as
I've always been aware of the debt I have to the rich culture of
western orchestral music. But really, even though I'd have liked to
work within the orchestral world more than I've been able to
(prejudices exist all over the place -- turn over a rock, and there's
another... ;^), the field of electroacoustic music has grown out of
other paradigms, too. And a natural precursor is the organ, which may
explain why so many of the roots of EAM can be found in various novel
electronic organ-like instruments, right from the very beginning.
We're sort of "joined at the
hip", as I've better come to understand more recently. Nice, that,
don't you agree? Come to think of it, there's another bit of
simpatico. For various reasons, the initial reception to my earliest
Switched-On albums was sometimes very hostile -- mainly from the
orchestral sphere. But seldom from the pipe organ world. It was
almost as if we all understood that there was a fundamental shared
connection there. So now, if I may be permitted a question back at
all of you in the organ world -- when
are we going to see some new developments with the newest technology
to add some real touch-sensitivity on the King of Instruments?
At least in the digital
domain, with many incredible electronic replicas of many kinds of
pipe organs (Allen and Walker instruments come to mind), when can we
expect this other shoe to drop? I've now been playing real pipe organ
sounds and registrations on the Wurly II for nearly five years, and
can attest to the benefits of touch sensitivity in expression and
musical balances. (Note:
tracker instruments already do allow some limited touch
variation, if only on the attacks.)
I suggest it's an idea who's time has come. So permit me to throw
down a challenge. Or look at it this way: "Come on in, the water's
fine!"
A
message from awhile ago asked us how the audio on the disks within
the "Switched-On
Boxed Set" relate to those
identical tracks on the unbundled versions of the same albums. Sorry
it's taken me so long to answer this, and I'll share it with all of
you. Actually I thought it was clear from the word, "unbundled." The
audio tracks ARE indeed identical. Check
out the ISRC code numbers, or the embedded watermarks -- yes, they
match, exactly the same. I'd
never penalize those of you who own only one version or the other.
Like many remastered classic films, there often appear two DVD
versions of the same titles, but one is with added bonus features,
perhaps narration tracks, too. And the other is the film itself
without the frills. That gives you a choice about what's important to
you. For my Switched-On collection I realized that some of you wanted
the whole schmear, the complete story, and everything in one unified,
deluxe presentation.
But others of you only wanted a
particular title or two, or were not that interesting in the
background story, details about the Moog synth and the studio. And of
course we all have to budget for our music purchases, so having the
two options just makes sense to me, as I expect it from the world of
DVDs of films, giving us a choice. And that's all there is to it: you
will get the best audio versions of my albums either way, in full
20-bit Hi-D sound, the best any of the tracks have ever sounded until
now!
Thanks
to those of you who share the passion for astronomy and eclipses with
me. I've enjoyed reading some of your exploits, particularly about
several recent eclipses I was unable to attend. I'm glad to see the
interest has caught on, which often brings about many more options
for totality observations and shadow-chasing options than existed
when I first began this pursuit. OTOH, it is sometimes frustrating to
discover all the available facilities have been filled up for over a
year, so that it becomes much harder for certain places to make your
own private travel plans as we once did. I assume that it's now
become a part of the travel industry, with both the up and downsides
of that.
But the important thing is that
many more people now have gotten to see, or will get to see, one of
the greatest experiences in nature. I believe it's the most
spectacular event available on the planet (few planets probably have
that similar coincidence of moon and sun size/distance to permit it).
We're very lucky to have these available. Even if by now most of the
science from studying eclipses and the corona can be done in other
less frenzied manners (like orbiting satellites), there are many more
human and personal reasons to attend at least one of these in your
life. And you can bet that the real reason so many serious
astronomers make the great efforts often involved to mount an
expedition, is for the intense kick or thrill just to see yet another
one. I consider myself blessed to have seen so many in my years, and
recommend the experience to all of you!
Every
now and then I receive a kind message about my album,
"Beauty
in the Beast." It cheers me
up to hear that many of you "get it", understand this often
ill-grasped collection of unusual musical explorations. It was my
first experience with alternative tunings, although I'd messed with
them for decades, but never done much seriously about it before. And
the confluence of the triple-interactions of: Tuning
- Timbre - and Timing, just
seemed to fall into place. Still feels more like magic to me today,
nearly twenty years later (goodness, I've been at this stuff for WAY
too long, people...!). Anyway, I just wanted to thank those of you
who took what must have seemed a risky step to buy a copy of what
must first seem a pretty strange musical adventure. Like eating your
first plate of sushi, or stuffed dolmas, or spicy Thai shrimp... you
might end up not liking it. But then, as with most acquired tastes,
when you see that many others DID take the first step, and came back
for more, you know it can't be all that risky-weird, but more
risky-different. So thank you for your curiosity (and courage?), and
thank you for writing me to tell me about the experience!
For
the many of you who've written to express your sadness at
losing
my longtime collaborator, Bob Moog,
I'm grateful for your empathy and thoughts. I've told his family
members about some of your comments, shared the often personal and
heartfelt reactions upon learning of his premature death. Yet he did
so much with his years, he won't be forgotten. I still recall how
sweetly he comforted me when in 1989 we had just lost Vladimir
Ussachevsky. I suggested that he still had so much he wanted to do,
and had never really achieved much public awareness for his long
career. Bob took another POV. He thought Vladimir was really very
happy in his life. That he had achieved all that he wanted, that he
loved playing farmer out on his property in southern RI (the state
where I was born, coincidentally). Bob said in his conversations with
Ussachevsky he had never felt any hint of bitterness or real
disappointments, that he'd had a very good life, and was loved by
many people. He certainly blazed a trail for many others to follow,
including me, for which I'll always be grateful.
It was just what I needed to
hear so soon after losing our mutual friend. And I find myself
thinking about Bob's savvy perceptions time and again. With
generation gaps being as they are, Bob was probably closer to
Vladimir than I ever could be. And he'd dealt with him in several
different ways, as a collaborator and tool designer. He'd even been
out on the Ussachevsky farm once, too (I'd not). And seen that side
of Vlad's personality savoring the outdoor rugged elements. It's a
happy picture, Bob's description of Vladimir in jeans and flannel
jacket on a beat-up tractor, hoeing some new space for seedlings and
crops. I'm lucky to have known and worked with both of them, truly.
They each helped me in ways I don't think either of them ever knew
(although I'd like to believe they suspected it...).
During
January I finally was able to take care of a two month-old promise
I'd made to Frank Oteri at New
Music Box (an excellent
music web magazine), to work with him on a major interview, including
some video of the proceedings (haven't done video Q&As in a long
time). And it all went very smoothly. I'll post a "behind the
scenes" story of it here shortly. (Update:
it's now on
our site right HERE,
as promised.) Anyway, the interview sailed along over several tapes,
so the transcript Frank worked on over many hours and two months,
took up 40 pages (at a medium font size). Yikes!
We covered a lot of territory,
though (and I'm a chronic chatterbox, and Frank is no slouch,
either). But he was very well organized, and had brought a printed
list containing some excellent questions, most of which no one had
asked me about before, or not so interestingly in point of view. For
the past two weeks I've been trying to polish and edit his raw
transcript into a more readable shape (answering knotty questions
ad lib makes for very clumsy reading, however glib you
may attempt to be), to meet their rapidly upcoming deadline. We'll
post some interesting selections from the interview on this website,
too, with links to the complete version with its several video clips.
We hope you enjoy it.
And
don't forget the unusual two new pages I posted to end 2006,
containing my surprise applause (don't do this very often) for two
excellent companies who make tools I use regularly, and am honestly
excited about. There's the current definitive version of a mature
audio editing, tweaking, maniupulating, and mastering program
by
BIAS, called Peak,
and then there's the recent suite of acoustical instrumental
libraries by Gary Garritan,
especially his new solo instruments starting with a performable
Stradavarius violin. (And don't forget MotU's Digital
Performer and Make Music's
Finale,
both of which I've depended on for many years.) I've been often asked
what musical software I work with regularly, what I would recommend
to others to try. Well, this will answer a few of those questions
you've asked, anyway (and you know who you are!).
Right
on the heels of that short note just above, my speculations on the
Garritan solo instrument replicas are coming true. There's a new solo
'cello just released, which is even more responsively programmed than
the Strad solo violin, this time based on a wonderful Gofriller
violoncello Gary meticulously sampled. I've just been trying it out
-- many smiles!
Is
this a good time to mention beloved pets again? I'm just noticing a
recent increase in mails from over the years about the creatures we
invite into our homes and lives, who quickly become "members of the
family in good standing", not to get silly about it. Thank you all
who share this interest (shux, it's more than an "interest" ...
"hobby"? HA! "Obsession"...? Um..., yeah, that's more like it) for
taking the time to write. And thank you for sending your stories
about canines and felines and other breeds who are so cherished in
your own lives. Some lovely pix, too. There's one message of a few
months ago from a writer who has a responsive, alert cat who is now
over 20 years old... such a fragile, bittersweet, time of life. I'm
touched, very. And I keep thinking of a not well known observation
which goes something like this: "As we grow older, our remaining
lives may become worth less -- but are also more precious." Thanx to
all of you for the stories, empathy, and affection!
A
recent message was from someone who used to live not that far from
here in NYC, while a student at Julliard in the early 90s. He tried
to help them with a small, thoughtful lobby exhibit on electronic
sound, which at the time they were quite slow about adopting in any
of their classes. But, alas, the reply was negative. It "would
jeopardize their funding", was the reason offered. Quite a sad
commentary, is it not? But as is evident throughout this site, and in
my interviews, articles, liner notes, and so on, I've been
chronically quite disappointed by nearly all my associations with
those "hallowed halls of academia." I was never anything but
supportive of them, as I value the role education plays in the lives
of individuals and in our society. We need MORE educated citizens,
especially right now, to guard against the bogus wails of regressive
gullible fervor currently threatening this country, as it is the
Middle East.
But even as institutions of
knowledge, large and small, remain our main hope against backsliding
back into a new Dark Ages (no kidding), they also seem to attract a
kind of "stuck in the mud" reluctance to embrace the new. Despite the
frequent epithets by manipulative agendaists insisting "colleges and
universities are nests of dangerous leftists" (okay, among
intellectuals one does often find that side expressed, sure), you
can't help but discover a great many arch reactionaries in them, too.
I'd always expected I might eventually become involved slightly, a
toe in the water, to teach a few classes in some local music
department. It came as a bitter disappointment to discover that this
kind of reactionary fear, or whatever the hell it is, was never going
to allow "the likes of me" to participate. I bring it up because
often you send me messages asking why I never thought to teach a
class in electro acoustic music, or sound design, electronic
orchestration -- or even microtonality.
Oh, I did, did try. I suddenly
noticed the subjective passage of years speeding up (this was 15
years ago), and wanted to do my share of passing the torch, sharing
some bits and pieces I'd collected in my dustbin of a mind all these
years. It's a wonderful tradition, like watching Uta Hagen teaching a
young actors workshop in 2001, or older performers and singers
conducting "master classes" in their field. But once you discover
that the same individuals in academia, who "just want to shake your
hand" or tell you "what a big fan they are", remain too threatened in
some weird way to allow your presence in their department, no matter
how friendly and unthreatening you actually are ... Um, well, you
just stop bashing your head against that brick wall and move on in
life. As I've done. But as you can tell from this brief true
confession, it's not without some bewildered frustration, over the
false hopes, in such a sad waste of time, cheerful affection, and
concern. I guess it does take all kinds... Perhaps someday I'll tell
you more of the story.
It's
probably mentioned in some earlier Open Letter replies, but bears
repeating here again. There were several other versions of albums put
out at one time which superficially bear a resemblance to my own
albums. Heck, many of them WERE actually copycat albums riding the
wave of attention some of my work happened to receive. Then again,
I've recently been asked about a purported "original" version of
"Sonic Seasonings", which instead of Rachel's vocalise at the end had
a synthesizer imitation. Sorry, you're being sold a bill of goods, or
perhaps it's just an honest instance of misremembering something from
a long time ago (happens to me ALL the time...). Also, we live in a
time when: Urban Legend. Is. All. Thus dopey, perpetually heated and
conceited, desparate opinions trump "the mere facts." It's a
deplorable downturn in the quality of information available, despite
(or actually, BECAUSE of) the "Information Superhighway" of the web.
Time to speak up, I guess, another step in an unwinnable battle?
I've encountered the damnedest
baloney online, stuff that causes my eyebrows to attempt to dive for
cover, up into my hairline! "Wiki-esque" sites are particularly
offensive this way (some decent, accurate info mixed up with SO much
fiction and propaganda -- YOU decide!
...[LOL]...).
One quickly discovers the futility of trying to correct all of it
(but we still ought try). Attempts to counter the BS with any reality
remain as effective as, well, plugging a leaking levy (the horrific,
waiting to happen Katrina disaster in NOLA), with your little finger.
Anyway, here's some sober factuality of a not especially important
kind, for those who remain reality-based. I mentioned "Sonic
Seasonings," above. The version I in fact created is available in our
definitive ESD edition, which you can read
about HERE.
It includes the one main last-minute change, at the end of Winter, as
a special bonus track. There were no other versions, sorry.
Obviously there were soundtrack
albums of selected music used on "Clockwork Orange" and "The Shining"
released by Warner Brothers, and on other labels in "cover versions"
as well. Aside from their inclusion of dubs of some of the music
tracks I'd sent to Kubrick, I had nothing to do with these releases.
For my score to the films I've worked on, you'd be much more advised
to get the ultra-clean, definitive CD editions I've put together from
the original first-generation masters. For "A Clockwork Orange",
there's my full
filmscore HERE.
And for a newly discovered few bonus tracks from "CO", plus a great
deal of the various music I composed for Kubrick's "The Shining", you
ought check out the two volumes of Lost Scores, HERE
for volume one, and
HERE
for volume two.
The second volume also includes
selections from my score to "TRON" (the
official TRON soundtrack album was unexpectedly dropped by
Disney not long ago, alas), and
the one for a late 90s British independent SF film, "Woundings"
(also
oddly renamed: "Brave New World" on some USA DVD
editions). And there are other
smaller filmscore tracks on both disks. As for titles like:
"Everything You Ever Wanted to Hear on the Moog", and many similar
vintage Moog albums: sorry,
not mine. Even this century
you'll find new albums inspired by my earlier classical music synth
realizations. If
they're not mentioned on this website, they're simply not mine.
I'm not trying to be
pedantic here, and honestly, some of these albums do look a lot like
mine, but it never happened. We've got to remember this is a
burgeoning, popular field, electroacoustic music. It may by now even
represent the most common form of music, at least in western
countries. That's healthy, and as it should be (yeay -- we
succeeded!). But it does leave room for such confusions, in
deliberate instances or the accidental variety.
Finally, for those brief
appearances of broadcast music you may spot which bear a more than
superficial resemblance to some of my music, please be skeptical,
okay? (Not to underplay the less frequent instances of actual pirated
or "sampled" steals.) I've heard several tracks which were
meticulously copied (audio rotoscoping?) from my work, and indeed,
those can sound a lot like the originals. TV commercial tracks often
find people to "duplicate" the timbres or feel of many artist's well
known tracks, including some by me. The opening title music to
"Clockwork Orange" has been mimicked in several background tracks
recently. Imitation and forms of flattery notwithstanding, if you
compare carefully with the originals, the differences are clear, at
least on decent equipment. Small speakers, ear buds or phones,
generic TV sound, mp3s, and so on can mask the quality, make it
difficult to tell exactly what's on the tracks you're hearing. Like
tiny jpeg images on the web, you get a rough idea of an original
illustration or photo, but that's about it.
Not
many months age I was lucky to hear from two thoughtful, chatty fans
in England, who knew some further information about the nearly
forgotten pioneering
microtonal instrument (a
multidigital harmonium) constructed by R.H.M. Bosanquet more than 125
years ago. This fascinating 53-note ET instrument appears to have
been moved about a few times in the last couple of decades. It had
been most recently in the collection of London's justly famous
Science
Museum (which is where I've
listed it), but then it was sent out for repairs and refurbishment,
and is currently (perhaps) in the shop of the restorer. It was also
supposed to be in the Victoria and Albert Museum's musical instrument
collection, but seems not to be there at the moment, either. Sheesh,
can it truly be lost? Misplaced? Something that large and
heavy, sitting forgotten in some corner of a workshop? No doubt it
will turn up.
Anyway, it's just one instance
of the often delightful serendipitous nature of the Internet and Web,
that people sharing interests and passions about many rather arcane
topics can trade stories. In a similar way, one exhibit at the
Science Museum which I happily did see is the impressive
reconstruction of one of Charles Babbage's amazing brass and steel
mechanical digital computers! And sunuvvagun, I've been told (thanx
again especially to Ian Kemmisch) that the artisans who machined this
wonder have been commissioned to construct yet another, perhaps to be
located in the USA, for those interested. So there we are, one
somewhat ambiguous bit of news (that they're not quite sure WHO has
the Bosanquet harmonium at the moment) and one worth anticipating
(another real working Babbage Engine is under way)!
This
Spring (2008) included the loss of two greats in their respective
creative fields, whom I'd like to acknowledge in this comment, while
it's still timely. First, on March 19th, the venerable Sir Arthur C.
Clarke passed away. His fiction and nonfiction dominated most of my
readings from high school through the present. Most of us, knowingly
or not, were greatly affected by his ideas (for example:
geosynchronous communications satellites), innumerable books,
tireless inspiration and support of the arts and sciences. That
includes the once highly suspect (now mainstream) hybrid literary
form, "science fiction" (most of us nowadays prefer the simpler term,
SF). Sir Arthur and I maintained a twenty year long frequent pen-pal
correspondence, and there are a few interesting stories about it I'd
like to share with you. Let me try to collect some material together,
see how best it might become part of a new page on our site.
Meanwhile, for the second artist
(who died nearly exactly one month later, April 20th), I've just
finished assembling a brand new page about composer
Bebe
Barron. Bebe's one of the
often forgotten pioneers of electro-acoustic music who, for my
generation, "showed us the way" to high quality, original, memorable
electronic music. She and her husband, Louis, created the
unforgettable score to the 1956 MGM SF hit: "Forbidden Planet", and
the music world never again was quite the same. By preposterous
coincidence, they put together their early work, including that
score, just a few blocks away from my loft and studio. There are
photos and a detailed description of how she inspired and greatly
influenced my early career. Read
the story about Bebe and her music HERE.
 Bebe Barron -- RIP |
During
a phone interview I had several months ago with Dave Tompkins, a
bright, curious NYC writer who's working on a definitive book about
the varied history of Homer Dudley's invention, the
Vocoder (yeay!), I began to
dwell on the complex interconnections of technologies for music and
speech synthesis and processing. We traded several messages
afterwards. Dave's trying to stay in touch with most of the people
with experience with vocoders who also agreed to be interviewed by
him for the book. That's smart, you may forget something important,
may misspeak, be misunderstood, or follow-up questions may come to
mind later. You want to be sure all the important stuff is covered
and accurately described.
So it was that the topic of
other speech processing effects came up, and THAT triggered for me a
cluster of memories about other devices I've seen or worked with that
have used for speech transformation. One of these was a little known
processor called the Eltro
Mark II (an "information
rate changer", no less). I'd been an engineer at a NYC recording
studio for a few years, just as it became one of the first in the
country to own and use an Eltro. Soon I was processing many of the
tapes in need of time compression, expansion, or pitch shifting, for
their clients. And then I remembered: THAT was also the
same device that Stanley Kubrick employed to process the voice of HAL
in his film, "2001
-- A Space Odyssey." I'm not
speculating here, I got confirmation on it from Stanley's own lips,
the week we first met in Elstree, England, on the Clockwork
Orange post production.
You may enjoy the background story I've just posted on
its own new webpage HERE.
 The Eltro (click to read about it) |
Thanks
for reading this continuing (slowly) growing stream of (loosely)
connected thoughts triggered by you. I'll get back with more feedback
and comments, and certainly more questions from you as time
permits.
--Wendy Carlos
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Carlos Open Letter 7
A
Gold
Leaf to
Mark
C. Petersen of Loch
Ness Productions for being the fourth person I know of to
have correctly identified that single Moog note! Bingo!
(Note:
The first three sharpies were two musician friends, and a
radio interviewer at CBC, not sent via our website, as the
rest of you below have done.)