Post a controversial music opinion

I own a Prophet-6 ( similar architecture) and it’s a breeze to program if you put in a small amount of time. I’ve owned some “classic” synths that all but asked to be hurled out a window if it hadn’t been for their sweet, sweet voices.

I own a Prophet-6 ( similar architecture) and it’s a breeze to program if you put in a small amount of time. I’ve owned some “classic” synths that all but asked to be hurled out a window if it hadn’t been for their sweet, sweet voices.

(sorry for the 2x post)

one of my fave synth discovery stories. about 2 minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERFUbX648S4

Another big player around that time was the Roland Juno, right?

I don't actually play keyboards but I remember when the Korg M1 came out a whole bunch of people in my personal orbit sighed with relief.

I would define the early milestones in programmable polysynths along these lines:

1978 Sequential Circuits Prophet-5
1979 Oberheim OB-X
1980 Roland Jupiter-8
1981 Korg Polysix
1982 Roland Juno-60
1983 Yamaha DX7

Yeah the Juno-60 is all over everything from Cabaret Voltaire's music to Nile Rodger's productions ( "Like A Virgin"). I owned and loved it. 80s in the best ways and also a remarkable machine for long, deep drones.

^ quality content

I think Duran Duran was a lot of both DX7 and Juno-60

iirc, the Roland Juno-106 was some sorta digital/analog hybrid. I remember it having presets, but it also had the usual analog filters that could be easily adjusted with sliders (but not stored as presets...at least, I don't think). I knew two people in high school who had one, and it was much more fun to mess around with than the DX7.

Gear talk does not seem very controversial.

thank god

I did post this itt cuz I thought it was controversial:

dx7 electric piano sound is good

― brimstead, Thursday, 27 December 2018 03:17 (four years ago) link

Gear talk vs. Geir talk

Hongroberheim

Wait, no: HongRoland

Prophet Hongro

Shakey Moog

lol

my Jungle Love

Hongro-ee-o-ee-o

"I don’t know much about their gear though!"

i read once about the time that kraftwerk visited new order and checked out their equipment and basically said in german: get the fuck out of here. you made blue monday with THIS crap?

i'm paraphrasing. but they couldn't believe new order's cobbled together set-up.

that's my memory of it anyway. someone should make that movie.

― scott seward

Peter Hook says he never met them, Bernard Summer attempted it but was asked to leave:

“They were streets ahead of anybody else, even from an electronic point of view. They were making their own sequencers years before anyone else. I remember seeing them at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on the tour where they didn’t appear on stage. It was amazing to sit in a sold-out venue, watching four mannequins and have them get away with it because the music was so wonderful. They had a quadraphonic P.A. in the Free Trade Hall, and that was something else that we ripped off in New Order as soon as we were able.

“I’ve never met them. The last gig they played with Florian was at a festival in Spain in 2006, and we were playing too (as was Snoop Dogg). Barney was a little worse for wear, shall we say. He was very merry indeed and desperate to go and talk to Kraftwerk. My wife always tells me off for passing up the opportunity, but he went into their dressing room and was so fucking off his head that they asked him to leave! In a funny way, it’s probably for the best I didn’t go.”

- https://www.nme.com/features/peter-hook-florian-schneider-kraftwerk-new-order-joy-division-influence-tribute-2660805

hmm, i could have sworn that anecdote was in an old Mojo or something. maybe Kraftwerk just saw where they recorded? and New Order weren't there? i remember that blue monday thing vividly. that they couldn't believe they made that music where they made it. but maybe i dreamt the whole thing.

I don't think I've heard the Kraftwerk story. I did hear an interview with Neil Tennant in which he remembered being astonished that four straights from Manchester could produce such a stellar piece of gay disco.

But despite KRAFTWERK being the pioneers of electronic music, Ralf and Florian had been so impressed by ‘Blue Monday’, they arranged to meet its engineer Michael Johnson at Britannia Row Studios where it was recorded. “They wanted to book into the studio we used…” remembered Hooky, “and they wanted to use our engineer, because they wanted their next record to sound like ‘Blue Monday’, which is most ironic because we spent years trying to sound like them!”

KRAFTWERK had a look round Britannia Row but unimpressed with the old fashioned, faded grandeur of the studio, they cancelled the session. “I took that as quite a compliment” quipped the Salford Bass Viking playfully.

https://www.electricityclub.co.uk/electri_city_conference-in-dusseldorf/

I assume to mix not to record.

quipped the Salford Bass Viking playfully

Lol I was about to suggest maybe they visited the studio and spoke to an engineer involved.

Pink Floyd built the Britannia Row studio.

Sleep, that's where I'm a Salford Bass Viking

There’s a New Order doc where they interview Quincy Jones and he is very complimentary towards NO as a tight band that could really lock in and groove together as a band

I assume to mix not to record.

Ralf told a similar story in MOJO about visiting the Power Station in New York which had just been outfitted with a digital setup more advanced than what they had at Kling Klang, so they turned around headed home to upgrade (delaying the finishing of Electronic Cafe/Technopop for years).

delaying the finishing of Electronic Cafe/Technopop for years

lololol god bless those German perfectionists

Neworderstory (where the anecdotes from Tennant and Jones are from, I think) is so great, in 1994 when ecommerce was in its infancy I mail-ordered the Canadian VHS videotape version from HMV Toronto because the US version had more than an hour cut.

i've thought about it and i've decided i'm going to continue to tell the story of the time that kraftwerk went over to new order's house and made fun of their crappy equipment. we need legends and fairy tales in life.

(i would love to know what the actual mojo mention of this said and how they said it. i have no clue what year i read it though...)

we need some controversy though.

why does unperson hate bill evans so much? bill evans was amazing!

keith jarrett on the other hand...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz................

Keith Jarret in the 70s is good. I have no interest after that though.

Actually his classical playing is good!

Never liked Jarrett, apart from his work with Miles (ditto Corea...maybe throw in Circle with Corea, though). Love the story about how Jarrett heard about Pete Townshend's demo process, recording/overdubbing everything himself, and called Townshend to pick his brain about equipment and such. Townshend refused to speak to him.

i love chick corea. he owned the 70s. i kinda love everything he did in the 60s and 70s. and probably later too if i listened to more of it.

Return to Forever was cool, but a distant second to Mahavishnu Orchestra in the fusion sweepstakes.

Chick Corea is one of those artists I owned very few albums by, but when we he came to DC this century, I always went to see him, including a great duet with Herbie Hancock. He was very enjoyable live, and by this time he was mostly back to acoustic piano.

The best thing for Jarrett was for Steely Dan to steel a melody for one of their best songs.

re New Order: that 1993 documentary they included in the 2005 DVD package with their videos. It's not informative, but it's got good interviews: Q, a drunk Bono, an even drunker NO getting steadily hammered at some outdoor party.

for me chick is the really really enjoyable keith jarrett. small groups, big groups, solo, semi-classical, latin, fusion, whatever. make mine chick!

Maybe I haven't heard enough Chick, but the clips of his '80s electric bands I've seen struck me as an over-the-top parody of the nadir of the shittiest fuzak imaginable. At best.

the return to forever album with the bird on the cover is 10/10 amazing music

chick i love: tones for joan's bones, now he sings, now he sobs, the song of singing, a.r.c., sundance, return to forever, outback, bliss, hymn of the seventh galaxy, light as a feather, circling in, the mad hatter, three quartets.

i don't actually listen to the solo improv records much.

I love several RTF albums: Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy, Where Have I Known You Before, No Mystery and Romantic Warrior. I also love Stanley Clarke's and Lenny White's albums from that era and even the first few Al Di Meola albums — fusion as wanky funk-rock, basically. His earlier acoustic albums didn't really do it for me, and his later stuff is exactly as horrible as Tarfumes says. He was born without taste, so sometimes he was brilliant and sometimes he was an absolute nightmare, and I genuinely believe he couldn't tell the difference.

I've listened to a bunch of Jarrett's stuff; I wrote a whole long thing about his 70s quartet with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. A little of his solo material goes a long way, and I've never explored the Standards Trio.

I don't know if I can fully put into words my distaste for Bill Evans, because I find his music so dull that I can't even give it sufficient attention to decide what might be good about it. I slide right off the surface of it.

i'll tell you what was good about bill evans. he was an amazing piano player and incredibly creative within his own confines. and he went deep! you have to swim under the surface of it.

Scott LaFaro, Evans' secret weapon.

for a minute anyway! but he found other simpatico bass players over the years.