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TimeSteps,
the Autograph Carlos Score
With
the release on ESD of the full Carlos music to Kubrick's
A Clockwork
Orange, "Timesteps" became
available at last in new 20-bit Hi-D digital sound. Long-awaited by
fans (many, many earnest requests were sent to our site, in fact),
this well known example of sophisticated Moog
Synthesizer composition from
the early 70's was available in miniscore for several years upon the
release of the film. It went out-of-print eventually, and with that
the composer's manuscript became difficult or impossible to locate
copies of.
Wait no longer. The point of
this first note is to lead you to a new feature. We've added some
high-res jpegs of the first pages of each section of that unusual
score. You may enjoy studying
them or saving them, exclusively available on our
site. Compare the graphic
music overview with the TimeSteps musictrack on the new CD (or your
memories of many Laserium Concerts of the 70's and 80's.)
Adventures
with Aris's MusiCodeAll
my new ESD CDs have something else in common. All use the
Aris
MusiCode, a form of audio
watermarking with an invisible brief message of ownership. My good
friend Larry
Fast was the first one to
jump aboard during his new remasters (he gained control of his back
catalog a year before I did.) We both encountered the quiet Aris
folks at an AES
meeting in New York (Larry told me to be on the lookout for them
there, having contacted the company a few months earlier,) and were
fascinated by their brazen concept. Could it be possible? Wouldn't
there have to be audible byproducts, a compromise of the fidelity of
the music? There was good reason to hesitate...
About twelve years ago a
petition was being passed around during a summer music conference
that protested what then seemed both inevitable and awful. Record
manufacturers were lobbying for placing a chip in every CD player
that would detect a steep notch at about 2.5 kHz in CDs, If such were
found, the equipment would prevent digital copies or clones from
being made. Hmm... wouldn't such a steep notch, right in the middle
of where the human ear is most sensitive, not be kinda obvious, I
mean, wouldn't this be a crummy thing to do to all music recordings
from now on?
I tried out the steep filtering
in my own studio. Soon I found that others had assembled even better
demos, "before and after" of the actual notch-filter on many examples
of music. Listening time ensued. Results? Just off the top, you
weren't always aware of the notch, especially in somewhat distorted,
raucous selections. But on well recorded live masters, something as
straightforward as a solo piano, the damage was plain enough. I could
hear it right away. On piano and many synth sounds the notch was
steep enough that a few med-high pitches were
almost completely removed!
After notching, it sounded just as if the pianist had stumbled, and
not hit all notes equally hard (can you believe it?!) There were
other similar gaps (LITERALLY!) in other recordings, and I could
produce the same disturbing problems with my own music here. Yikes! A
first-class IDIOTIC idea, fer sure!
Depressingly, I discovered later
that no other modestly well known musician had signed the protest.
Nope. My much more famous "colleagues" were either asleep at the
wheel as they were about to crash, or just didn't care, as long as
the new scheme brought more royalties for them. It felt rather
awkward to be alone among the majority signers, a new niche of "keep
it sample, stupid" producers, who simply wished to be able to stea...
oops, "borrow" passages from someone else's CDs to use in their own
productions (a practice that some of us still have honest
reservations about.) Their motive was clearly self-serving. All I'd
hoped was others would altruistically protect the quality of music
recordings, even if it might hurt them a little in the wallet. I was
disappointed in my fellow musicians. Also in this lousy "protection
scheme".
I tend to be very skeptical, and
when in doubt, like that earlier Summer, I ignore the "latest
miracle". That I've decided finally to go ahead with MusiCode comes
about only after a long careful testing. Last year I learned that a
Brit rock group had stolen about a minute of my music from
"Well-Tempered Synth." The lift is obvious, including the wow of the
original CBS-LPs (no CDs of WTS exist yet -- it's only now in the
works for midyear)... wot unbelievable cheek! It feels exactly like
arriving at home and finding you've been burgled while you were out
to the movies -- not too pleasurable.
It would be wonderful if all my
music contained hidden signatures, signatures that could not be
removed without screwing up the music. MusiCode survives severe MPEG
audio compression, cassettes duping, radio transmission reception,
and even picking up over a microphone sounds coming from a cheap
speak, to say nothing of the various audio manipulations that the
average DAW provides. Watermarking will help BMI, ASCAP, etc., learn
when your music is used on the air, even a snippet. Some of mine has
been stolen for commercials several times in the last ten years. Are
folks just getting cheekier, or is dishonesty becoming fashionable?
No matter, if no one can hear the watermark, but it's easily decoded
with a modest auditioning device, I think the industry ought give it
a nod. I hope the Aris company's new MusiCode will become the
standard, and have nothing to gain in writing this to you, except to
spread a helpful bit of information.
For months last year I'd
followed up with tests begun in 1997, trying to prove I was able to
detect MusiCode by ear. Aris kindly made me special custom CD-Rs
containing many selected excerpts of my music and all other kinds,
with the same "before and after" comparisons. Sorry, but I failed.
And so will you. Even when the level of their coding is pushed a
hundred times the usual level, it remains amazingly subtle, dammit.
Our conversations were amusing: "Still can't hear it. Didn't you say
you'd boost it until I could detect the differences?!" "Ah, yes we
did boost it a lot; it's now WAY louder than you'd ever use on a
master!" "Well, please humor me, and boost it even some more." "Fine
-- a new CD's on its way with another ten times more than the last
batch. Let us know what you hear."
That's how I got to hear super
exaggerated examples, until they warned me the coding was reaching
the limit of what they could generate, but still so damn subtle. How
is it possible? Remember that the data is short and move very very
slowly, only a couple of bytes per second. That means very little
information is added, compared to the music. The system is psycho
acoustically designed, like Dolby
SR, or the high compression
of Dolby
Digital, with barely audible
artifacts. In Aris's case, they reduce coding when it might be
subtlely audible, then bring it up only when the music will hide
more. It adapts to the music, fits each selection like a glove, not
the other way around.
I just could not train myself to
pick up the teensiest traces of MusiCode -- I still can't find it on
my music, or tell when it's there or not. (Wouldn't it be cute if
there actually IS no MusiCode, and they're just having me on...?
;-]) But I saw their little boxes pick up the messages, as it
averages over time and figures out those nearly invisible clues to
the slim data stream. Now you know how it is that my lovingly
slaved-over masters and remasters come to include MusiCode in them. I
DARE any of you to detect a thing. A data base is now being
assembled, in ISRC codes. Soon it will be unlikely a broadcast of any
music can be played for commercial profit without the artists getting
their tiny share, and a credit for their labors. I don't see how any
reasonable person could object to this, and suspect that this is
another one of those ideas whose time has come.
PostScript! Many of you by now have learned the good news: Aris MusiCode (with one other alternative in certain cases) has been accepted as THE watermarking standard for all DVD audio disks. And under the new company name, Verance, it's also being used throughout the industry, in broadcasting, web audio, tracking for BMI, ASCAP and other major lisencing agencies.
Censored,
"By Request"For
the British version of By
Request, CBS 73163,
"Pomp & Circumstance", a parody of the Elgar chestnut, was
removed, since this had been CENSORED
in England! At least that was
the story CBS told us at the time. Several years ago on a trip I
found a copy of the Brit version in the big London HMV store. The
rumors were true -- quite unbelievable! A few selections from
The Well
Tempered Synthesizer had
been substituted in place of our good-natured, if "over-the-top"
parody.
When Rachel and I first were
told about the mini-debacle, I slyly suggested that we put a sticker
on the USA version reading:
"Banned
In Britain!", if
this were indeed the case. Of course CBS refused. On the upcoming ESD
Hi-D remastering we won't be so timid, (heh,
heh, heh...) so finally you'll
get the whole story.
About
"Switched-On Bach" on CDWhile
it was very deeply satisfying to have the chance to go back over this
pioneering album, when I produced the 20th Anniversary edition for
Telarc (Switched-On
Bach 2000), there
remains a charm to the original versions, inexact tunings and several
finger-slips notwithstanding. It also has its historical function,
and no new revisiting on the old chestnut can take that away or ever
replace it.
You will see above that there
were two versions put out on CD by CBS/Sony during the 80's and early
90's. The first one was a completely normal transfer, while the
second was more deluxe, in packaging, in its use of an early form of
20-bit encoding (SBM = Super Bit Map, as CBS called the innovation,
supervised by the true digital expert and friend, David Smith), and
in the price, which was only to be expected. When all of my albums
reverted back to me in 1997-98, both of these CDs were discontinued.
Some warehouse and store stock still existed for quite some time.
That was fine by the terms of the contract. But no new pressings were
allowed -- I was going to get control over my music at long last!
Huzzah!
And as you'll also read above,
the original SOB
will in fact be coming out on ESD
in 1999 (Note:
this happend right on schedule -- see the informative page about our
new Switched-On
Boxed Set!). The news is
even better than than, though. It will be coming out in the new
20-bit Hi-D sound, supervised by me, and will be taken from the very
first pre-master mixes of the multitrack (as
I explain below, no remixes
are allowed this time.) In a very non-straightforward process (the
only way possible), I am now working on reproducing in my DAW the
final master from sources two or more generations earlier than any
before available on LP, Cassette, or CD. Tricky business, but well
worth it. The quality on this new SOB CD will be much
better than anything you have yet heard. No kidding (ed: so it was
written; so
it was done!).
(By the way, you ALWAYS lose something during analog copies, however good. That's where, however well-meaning or deeply believed, the stereotypic hype about the best analog sounding more accurate and honest than the best digital breaks down, in unprejudiced double blind tests. That's a test in which you have nothing to gain from the evidence going either way, like a career, or saving face over earlier dogmatic proclamations. We all do it, nothing but human nature at work, hearing what you previously believed you would hear, even when you're fooling yourself. That's why magicians in Las Vegas get those big bucks -- we all can be fooled. Check out my notes to Land of the Midnight Sun. Twelve+ generations of carefully recorded sound-on-sound digital, and only the slightest loss, a bit of hiss, at the end. Try that with a good analog machine, and tell me about it. By the way, LMS was the test in reality that conviced ME (in the mid-80's,) when I had found the first digital disappointing (it was), and hesitated to try it later on -- a tale for another time, folks...! ;-)
Eventually (perhaps soon, now
that the standards seem to be in place) surround sound on DVD will be
a popular medium for home music delivery. The good news is that the
third and fourth disks of the Bach collection (S-OB
II and the
Brandys)
are now preserved in superb 20-bit surround master transfers, from
which the ultra-stereo two track CD versions on the new boxed set
were made. So those will lend themselves neatly to 5.1 or whatever
versions quite nicely. Switched-On
Bach I was mastered in two
track stereo, but a couple of years later got the early quad
treatment, too. We made careful new mixes at CBS's bequest. But that
mastering was released in their phony-quad system:
SQ,
if only for a couple of years in the early '70's. We will evaluate if
that mix lives up to our usual standards, and also how greatly it may
differ from the original we're all used to.
The
Well-Tempered Synthesizer
was never mastered to anything but two channels. Evenso, we have the
original multitrack tapes, so it might be reasonable to do new
surround mixes, which would allow ALL
the Switched-On Boxed Set music to become surround-ready, if you'd
permit the fact that the first two will not be exactly the same in
balances on every line and part to the originals (this is why the
Boxed Set has been made available first as the best possible version
of the original masters, for historical reasons. Other versions can
then follow, as interest demands). Perhaps it would be best to test
the reactions to the selections which would not need such revisionist
history as surround remixing. Stay tuned for news on those after all
the stereo titles have been completed.
The optimum 20-bit masters first
became a part of the Switched-On
Boxed Set, equivalent to a
"director's cut" LaserDisk, with many additional bits not seen or
heard before. Included in this boxed set is the very long requested
(but not as much as the first two re-releases, SS and CO),
The
Well-Tempered Synthesizer.
Indeed, indeed! I'm rather thrilled by this, myself, as it has
remained my favorite of the Baroque things I did, in many ways.
No need to chill out any longer
(which is what this page has been saying for a couple of years --
thank you for your patience, good people). You can get the
collection, or the individual titles. All four unbundled Bach and
Baroque albums are now available on ESD. These are DEFINITIVE
editions, no hype, no nonsense, and took a long time and a great deal
of TLC to prepare. As I get older it seems everything takes longer
than ever before. But they do get done, and the quality is still the
best we can make it. We're near the end of the list of back albums
finally, and they all will be available. And that, dear WebSurfer, is
all I can tell you at the moment. Wish us luck, as there's a lot of
work remaining, and hold on. I like to shout at such moments: "Don't
worry -- it'll happen!"
Back to the Main Discography Page
(Top
of Disc Notes)
which continue below.
About
That Recent Logo
(Original
Synth -- a spirit of exaggeration?)
As
for the new Original Synth(esist) logo on the Main Discography page,
the Biography page, and in the banner area of all the new ESD CD
jewel cases, thank you for your compliments. We like it, too. In the
best spirit of promotion. It isn't historically true, of course, that
I was the first person to use a synthesizer. The RCA
synthesizer predated SOB I by nearly 15 years, and its roots can be
traced much further back than that (see Tom Darter's excellent
history in the earliest issues of Keyboard magazine, and in their
The Art of
Electronic Music book.) Of
course these earlier devices were generally NOT performance
synthesizers (some were non-performing synths, others were performing
non-synth instruments, like electronic organs.)
However, to the non-specialist,
the word "synthesizer" was quite unknown until Switched-On
Bach introduced it to the
music world, rock 'n' roll, and the public at large. We used to
shudder at the many attempts just to pronounce the word,
"synthesizer", back in the late 60's -- and Bob's last name, too (the
former they now say easily, but many still go "Mooo -- g", like a
cow!) East Side Digital and we are stretching the point (the whole
thing was designed with a smile) only a little to go with the above
catchy slogan. We first thought about something like the more
accurate:
"The
Moog synthesizer was the first electronic performance synthesizer
widely known and recognized by the public and the media. Wendy Carlos
is the original Moog synth performer and composer whose early albums
were responsible for this recognition, and for the modern concept and
highest standards of synthesized music."
But that version kinda ruins the
play on "Original Sin", as a wink-nudge. Hard to remember, also. And
very pompous sounding. As a slogan, it fails completely. Oh, well,
back to our catchy version. But please forgive any trespass into the
borders of hyperbole...
Remastering
the Masters
In
answer to several recent questions about the new remasterings on East
Side Digital, please understand that they are all taken from
the original
mixed master recordings.
Small overall adjustments of level and EQ were made very discretely
(mostly to compensate for better monitoring now, and desired
adjustments that couldn't be made back then very easily.) Minor
repairs were made to ticks, thumps, hisses and hums and the like,
that were NOT a part of the music nor our intent. I was just trying
to squeeze the maximum out of those old tapes. Not a single case of
remixing was performed.
The master tapes from the first
mix stage were located, gently gotten to play smoothly, and became
all the source material. The multitracks were NOT touched in any way.
All the originally performed
mixing (good mixing always seems to me to be a performance) was done
back that day when the multitracks were completed, and their contents
were familiar territory. To try to do this again so many years,
decades, later, would result in a new interpretation of the work,
perhaps better, but in other ways worse, certainly different.
If you hear actual differences,
some due to a few gentle EQ tweaks, be happy that the distortions and
forced squashing of the master needed to fit onto an LP have been
removed. Isn't that wonderful?! The many compromises that were found
necessary to keep the cutter from distorting, the stylus from jumping
a groove, or the final LP from being unplayable, are
all gone (removing maskings
and that prior "veiled" quality you may note is missing.) The new CDs
sound here essentially like the Dolby master tapes (those were a LOT
better than CBS was able to put into vinyl or cassette!) We may try
to release modern versions, new remixes, of some of these
performances eventually. But if and when we do so, we will say so
clearly on the package, that these are reinterpretations of the
original multitrack masters. Fair enough?
Timbral
Trivia to Listen For
For
a lotta years I was trying to refine my LSI Philharmonic Orchestra
voices and sounds (first heard on Digital
Moonscapes), so that
rich traditional timbres might also be fair game for a medium that
promises: "any sound or timbre you can imagine." To a strict sense,
that may never hold true -- no matter how far we come, there will
always be areas worthy of improvement, even if only in subtle, minor
ways. But over the last two decades notable progress was made. By the
late 80's I was pretty happy with the ability to recreate the spirit
and replicate the essential timbre of most woodwinds, several brass,
and large chunks of keyboard and mallet instruments. The percussion
battery came a little earlier; but strings definitely came much
later.
I still love many of the replica
voices I synthesized tediously over years for the GDS and Synergy
synthesizers. In a few cases, when compared to the finest
sample-based programs, they may not be quite as real for single
notes. But they "play" and "interact" as melodic or harmonic elements
much more in the flavor of an actual acoustic instrument. While I was
moderately successful on duplicating the essence of a section of
lower pitched strings, 'celli and viole in ensemble, the upper ranges
of all, especially the violin, mostly eluded the most intense
efforts.
(This is a good spot to place another pertinent comment: "Why synthesize orchestral sounds?" If we pretend that the new medium CAN provide any sound imaginable, it's difficult to avoid trying to do this. as I suggest above. I find that most folks who say that creating such a bank of sounds is "beneath the dignity of a true electronic musician" are also the same few who are most incapable of pulling the trick off. The goal, at least as I see it, is to have these sounds available, for the "if and whens" that you discover you are hearing such a sound in your inner, composing ear, and don't really want to compromise, nor wish to record a big orchestra just for a few measures, a few lines. Finally, the world of alternative tunings is much less easily done in the acoustic world than with the digital precision of the newest synths. So if you conceive of a section of orchestral timbres played in, for example, 15-note Equal Temperament, an excellent case can be made that the way I did this in "Afterlife", using the newest LSI Philharmonic, is pretty reasonable, even if other options exist, given a huge wallet, and amazing musicians.)
The splendid, effectively "state of
the art" synthesizer, the Kurzweil
Young/Chang
K2000
and K2500
family (currently the K2600 and K2661), helped me more than I can say
in gaining some of the added "reality" of waveforms derived from
actual samples of the desired instrument, but while retaining all the
essential expressivity and variations that only a true synthesizer
could provide. (Note:
for something new which uses them, see the new
instrument setup, HERE.)
It certainly changed my mind, when up until then I thought that
sampling was pretty "slim pickens." Over the last several years I
transferred much of the data that I had collected on the Synergies
into their flexible synth environment appropriately called: "Vast"
(I've praised the K2000/2500/2600 in the past, and will eventually
post on this site a few interviews in which I discuss more details.)
In so doing I learned a lot more, and got a lot closer to including
real orchestral timbres in my arsenal. In the non-orchestral category
the gains were even greater. But the string section remained a sore,
nuisance point.
That finally changed when I was
generously given first the ProSonus library of Strings that Scott
Levitin so able produced, and then Ken Hiskey's lovely reworkings and
extendings of the Synclavier Strings for his excellent
Ilio
Entertainment company (Ken's
also a neat person.) They are very different, but both are
beautifully done. Initially I thought very little would come of this:
someone's "canned" samples? Gotta be kidding. Was I wrong! Snap
judgments and prejudice are no way to form an opinion... It took me
quite several months to corral this rich but sprawling assortment of
material, and assemble it into versions I needed in making music the
way I do. Again, I learned a lot in that effort, building flexible,
wirey voice program families that were highly expressive, yet very
real sounding.
I have wanted to thank Scott and
Ken for a couple of years now, and I'm glad to be able to bring the
topic up here. You will hear mostly Scott's strings at work in the
spooky-real string ensembles of several kinds that float their way
through "Clockwork Black" (in Tales
of Heaven and Hell) and
parts of "Transitional". The classy solo and ensemble strings from
Ilio are best heard in "Afterlife" and "Heavenscent", and their
remarkable ensemble blend in "Seraphim" (I doubt if an acoustic
string orch could have pulled this off as well for this gentle,
celestial work.) Other strings heard on TH&H are my polished
Synergy string voices, which sound better when low, as in the opening
of "City of Temptation". You get the opportunity of comparing each
within this one album -- which is quite neat, even if accidental!
(See if you can really tell which is which.)
From Feb through June of 1998 I
used all three string families within my score to Woundings.
Ken also stepped forward and sent me some excellent optimized
orchestral percussion, with his own good additions. You'll hear these
when we put out our pending collected Film Music CD at the end of
this year. For Woundings, an anti-war movie, I needed military drums,
snare ruffs and flourishes, additional coloristic cymbals, some Latin
exotica, and other realistic material to add to the percussion
battery I'd been live-sampling and building for a few years. It's a
lot easier to incorporate percussion sounds into Vast than strings,
but that came as no surprise. I'll use them all again, and newer
variations and additions on the next new project, just begun, but to
await completion of the ESD rerelease commitment first. I'll keep you
all informed as things continue.
©
1996-2008 Serendip LLC. No images, text, graphics or design
may be reproduced without permission. All Rights Reserved.
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