The M'Google Doodle Man - "I wouldn't call this music"

[Guest]

Interesting media coverage today of pioneer Robert Moog on what would have been his 78th birthday:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/23/robert-moog-interview-google-doodle?newsfeed=true

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/google-doodle/9284108/Robert-Moogs-birthday-celebrated-with-Google-Doodle.html

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

the man shows a certain taste ....

[Lateralthinking1]

Nice one Calum. Then this, admittedly excellent, thing happened just before the world froze over:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x10ila_de-la-soul-me-myself-and-i_music

[Globaltruth]

If we hadn't had Mr Moog then this would never have been invented.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8qh6jRzjmcY#t=10s

[Lateralthinking1]

If we hadn't had Mr Moog then this would never have been invented.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...6jRzjmcY#t=10s

A wonderful clip. Reminds me of the sort of techniques we would see on TOTP around that time. Tie-dye screens and silhouettes of Pans People, all in 405 b & w, although I assume they were produced differently. I saw those first when in hospital - I know the precise edition of it from 1970 - and recall the discusssion among seven years olds as to whether they had any clothes on.

Culturally, I had expected adult life, particularly working life, to look just like the clip of Mr Sandin. Everyone would have big hair, glasses and a tea cosy on the head and be operating a Cape Canaveral control centre, even if it was just working in the local newsagent. More to the point, they wouldn't be ordering people around and generally being horrid, nor would they be at all bothered by something as trivial as money or power. The world of people would be intelligent, unassuming and "a nice place".

Among the biggest disappointments was on walking in to IBM in Croydon with others at age 16 to collaborate with them in a Young Enterprise scheme for making lamps. Everyone looked like 1956 even if there were clean carpets and water cooling machines.

I assume this is him now - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Sandin. He seems to remain "in the spirit of" his former self. These brilliant people should really be household names but it is a good thing for them that they aren't a part of the media circus.

[MrGongGong]

Moog's genius was not so much in the actual synthesisers (though the Minimoog has an awesome Phat bass ........ as they say !) but more in getting people to actually buy them. Buchla instruments came without keyboards so no-one really knew what to do with them and where to put them (as with the EMS Putney)....
By sticking a keyboard on them he made them look like "musical instruments" even though one of the best things about them was always the ribbon controller...

this is very interesting reading and not too "geek of the week" (as Clinton would say )

http://www.amazon.com/Analog-Days-Invention-Impact-Synthesizer/dp/0674008898

[Lateralthinking1]

Moog's genius was not so much in the actual synthesisers (though the Minimoog has an awesome Phat bass ........ as they say !) but more in getting people to actually buy them. Buchla instruments came without keyboards so no-one really knew what to do with them and where to put them (as with the EMS Putney)....
By sticking a keyboard on them he made them look like "musical instruments" even though one of the best things about them was always the ribbon controller...

this is very interesting reading and not too "geek of the week" (as Clinton would say )


http://www.amazon.com/Analog-Days-In.../dp/0674008898

That does look an interesting read Mr GG. I'm warming to this theme as 2012 progresses. It has now arisen in two or three contexts. My angle is more the social history of it. I tend to think that just as WW2 influenced a generation and computers influenced another, the defining moment for mine was landing on the moon and yet the new technology was emerging at that time too. That period is an odd mixture of the scientifically highbrow and what was perceived to be low culture.

No one in their right mind would suggest that "Popcorn" was seen at the time as anything other than a novelty hit. It was even on the label. Ditto "Switched on Bach". While there was cutting edge material in the field of classical music, there is an argument that for music to have advanced in line with the new science, 80% of new classical music composition should by now be electronic.

Some would say that it was rock music that took the new technology to a higher cultural level although the rapid improvements to musical user-friendliness and accessibility meant that it also became the amateur's plaything. Anybody in Liverpool or Sheffield could potentially make a record and not just with guitars. In a sense, that was the forerunner to the millions of multi-use pcs now. But there was that period when people didn't really know how it would all gel or to what extent any of it could be taken seriously.

It led to some very bizarre anomalies. For example, our neighbour was a cockney builder whose only daughter married one of the American pioneers of new technology. Obviously the world changed for them. They lived in a mansion and their children had anything they wanted. In fact, the kids had electronic games long before they hit the high street. But they were always keen to come to Britain not so much to see their grandparents as to ride on the local milk float. That absolutely fascinated them.

Probably leading lights at Apple or somewhere now themselves, it goes to show how socially things were ticking on so many different levels and I do feel that it symbolises aspects of everyone's living with and without technology even now.

[MrGongGong]

Interesting stuff Latt
I would say that even though much composition isn't electronic one can clearly hear how electronics have shaped music
if you listen to Ligeti's music a piece like Atmospherescould only have been written by someone who had experienced working in the electronic studio...
and , of course, more or less ALL music is now made , notated, distributed with these same technologies

You would like this if you get a chance to watch it........ some great things from Peter Zinovieff and co (though I think it ends in a bit of an odd way ........)

http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=What_the_Future_Sounded_Like

[Serial_Apologist]

Interesting stuff Latt
I would say that even though much composition isn't electronic one can clearly hear how electronics have shaped music
if you listen to Ligeti's music a piece like Atmospherescould only have been written by someone who had experienced working in the electronic studio...
and , of course, more or less ALL music is now made , notated, distributed with these same technologies

You would like this if you get a chance to watch it........ some great things from Peter Zinovieff and co (though I think it ends in a bit of an odd way ........)

http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=...e_Sounded_Like

Tristram Cary - why don't we hear more of his music? Another of the British neglecteds from between the Tippett and Maxwell Davies generations. I have a tape of some of a broacast he made on R3 in 1967, interviewed by Alan Rawsthorne. Extraordinary electroacoustic music for Expo 67, and a setting using electronics and a Soldiers' Tale-sized ensemble of Mervyn Peake's poem "The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb" which still blows me away with its power. He also wrote the score to the original Ladykillers.

Thanks for posting this, GG

[MrGongGong]

Tristram Cary - why don't we hear more of his music? Another of the British neglecteds from between the Tippett and Maxwell Davies generations. I have a tape of some of a broacast he made on R3 in 1967, interviewed by Alan Rawsthorne. Extraordinary electroacoustic music for Expo 67, and a setting using electronics and a Soldiers' Tale-sized ensemble of Mervyn Peake's poem "The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb" which still blows me away with its power. He also wrote the score to the original Ladykillers.

Thanks for posting this, GG

Indeed
his untimely death in 2008 was almost ignored
the rather wonderful Trunk Records have released some of his music
and he was, of course one of the founders of EMS

http://www.trunkrecords.com/turntable/tristram_cary.shtml

[Globaltruth]

It's been a while, but this thread wins the prestigious World Music SubForum Thread of the Week award.

The prize is a soft continuous modulated tone.

[johncorrigan]

It's been a while, but this thread wins the prestigious World Music SubForum Thread of the Week award.

The prize is a soft continuous modulated tone.

It feels like lying on a couch for a spot of thereminapy.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

funny i read that as a spot of terminal therapy .... as in ...

[handsomefortune]

this thread wins the prestigious World Music SubForum Thread of the Week award.

many congratulations on this success! i've yet to catch up on all the contributions posted in response.

"The keyboard was an afterthought. That was one convenient way of controlling it, switching it on and off and changing the pitch. The mini-Moog was conceived originally as a session musician's axe, something a guy could carry to the studio, do a gig and walk out. We thought we'd sell maybe 100 of them."

apparently, the pitch control, so loved by mr wakeman etc, was also added as an afterthought. originally there was a spacial gap at the end of the keys, usually used to hold an ash tray for a performer's onstage ciggies! the pitch nob was added instead, which may have annoyed smokers in particular, but delighted wakeman...and many others....

actually, omnipotentcockwomble's post about 'eurocrack' (in the guardian comments section) sprang to mind during the eurovison song contest, and r4 discussion about azerbaijan human rights abuses.

also

piffle and tosh Sir! piffle and tosh!

No, it's just really really really boring! Muzak is muzak, even if it's made by Bowie and Eno


it's a shame these rarely get a mention http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPrTUC7BDn4, certainly not 'muzak' or 'eurocrack', and in the circumstances, imo an ideal export to azerbaijan. much better than turning a blind eye, being polite http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18GBiJhI4Jw (fancy sending ingleberk humperding, and those two children, pop duo jedward)! not that the likes of mr moog could have anticipated where musical accessories might take us all in the longterm!

[MrGongGong]

it's a shame these rarely get a mention http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPrTUC7BDn4, !

exactly what the jubbly needed imv