Someone mention Isao Tomita? Part 1: Korg PS-3200 Menuet

AndyHoneybone

The recent excellent @Felsenstein adaption of Má vlast has set a very high bar for this type of electronic realisation but for those who enjoy the aesthetic of imperfection, I offer you from my archives, a pre-MIDI late seventies (c.1979) home studio rendition of Debussy’s Menuet from the Petite Suite. It used a borrowed Korg PS-3200 polyphonic and a home-built monophonic synthesiser bouncing parts between a domestic Sony reel to reel and a JVC cassette deck. I arranged it on the hoof from the four-hands piano duet parts.

Drove my family mad with the endless retakes.

rapidfire

@AndyHoneybone said:

The recent excellent @Felsenstein adaption of Má vlast has set a very high bar for this type of electronic realisation but for those who enjoy the aesthetic of imperfection, I offer you from my archives, a pre-MIDI late seventies (c.1979) home studio rendition of Debussy’s Menuet from the Petite Suite. It used a borrowed Korg PS-3200 polyphonic and a home-built monophonic synthesiser bouncing parts between a domestic Sony reel to reel and a JVC cassette deck. I arranged it on the hoof from the four-hands piano duet parts.

Drove my family mad with the endless retakes.

Hi Andy,
you didn’t need to specify it was Tomita inspired…..it is obvious and is Tomita to a T but without all his boat load of reverbs lol
Great work here, and excellent sound quality, it must’ve been quite a task bouncing tracks from reel to reel down to cassette, and what’s even more fascinating is the fact there wasn’t sequencers around like today, so you would’ve had to play all parts live and get it right - hence your endless retakes, but your efforts were definitely worth it otherwise we would not get to hear this for ourselves.
I built a 2 oscillator synth using Curtis CEM chips in 1979, but I never managed to make recordings to this standard.
I look forwards to hearing more of your music in the future if it becomes available.
Mike

cyberheater

That was fantastic. Thanks for posting.

MrStochastic

@AndyHoneybone said:
bouncing parts between a domestic Sony reel to reel and a JVC cassette deck. I arranged it on the hoof from the four-hands piano duet parts.
Drove my family mad with the endless retakes.

That sounded really good! An accomplishment for sure, especially considering the recording constraints you mentioned.
As a Debussy fan I know that music pretty well and I thought you did a good job with the voices. I also tried this sort of thing in the 80s when I first had a 4 track cassette; before computer sequencing made editing a lot easier. It’s not easy making synth classical music because it’s hard not to throw in every crazy sound so it often sounds cartoony to my ears; not ‘sensitive’. At least that was my problem.

Dav

Really impressive @AndyHoneybone! Sounds extremely good. Great arrangement too. Do you still have that JVC cassette deck? If it’s still working, it may be worth something. I was surprised the other day looking up what my Nakamichi MR-1 was going for these days. Crazy.

Thanks for posting your track. Enjoyed it.

AndyHoneybone

@rapidfire said:

I built a 2 oscillator synth using Curtis CEM chips in 1979, but I never managed to make recordings to this standard.
I look forwards to hearing more of your music in the future if it becomes available.
Mike

Hi Mike. Great to hear from another builder. The monosynth was based on Tim Orr TRANSCENDENT 2000 designs published in Electronics Today International in 1978. Temperature compensation and oscillator log tracking were always a challenge with discrete designs as you can hear slipping in a couple of places here.

Much appreciate you listening and for your encouraging words. I was in my mid-twenties when I recorded this. Forty-five years on, I’m not sure I would even start such a project now even with (or perhaps because of) the technology available. So many choices and expectations. And what would be the chances of someone being able to find and read the project files 4 decades later? A lot to be said for a shoebox full of cassettes.

I did do a Debussy/Tomita piece more recently using Cubasis but me being me, I had to impose a major constraint as you will see in a followup post.

GeoTony

What a great blast from the past Andy, impressive given the technology… must have taken ages.
I’m have fond memories of my Nakamichi deck @Dav , one that I had was the 600 sloping front thing… wish I still had it ☹️

AndyHoneybone

@cyberheater said:
That was fantastic. Thanks for posting.

Kind of you to say. I’ve enjoyed revisiting it myself. One more to come.

AndyHoneybone

@MrStochastic said:

@AndyHoneybone said:
bouncing parts between a domestic Sony reel to reel and a JVC cassette deck. I arranged it on the hoof from the four-hands piano duet parts.
Drove my family mad with the endless retakes.

That sounded really good! An accomplishment for sure, especially considering the recording constraints you mentioned.
As a Debussy fan I know that music pretty well and I thought you did a good job with the voices. I also tried this sort of thing in the 80s when I first had a 4 track cassette; before computer sequencing made editing a lot easier. It’s not easy making synth classical music because it’s hard not to throw in every crazy sound so it often sounds cartoony to my ears; not ‘sensitive’. At least that was my problem.

Thank you. Synth classical music was very much a thing back then. Appreciate your insight as someone who’s been down that path. I think by the time I got a 4-track cassette, I had a MIDI sequencer on Atari and ran timecode to sync them together. Never achieved anything worthwhile - should have stuck to tape.
While Tomita’s sound palette is instantly recognisable, I question whether those sounds were always right for the piece. I was ‘fortunate’ with the Korg PS-3200 in that its architecture owed more to an organ than multiple monosynths and so it’s timbral range was fairly conservative.

LinearLineman

That was very refreshing, Andy, and hard to do.back in the day!

Paulieworld

I agree with all of the above. Sound quality is superb. More importantly, your playing is spot on. Very well done! I had a Tascam Portastudio back in the 80s. We would bounce down to a metal cassette and start adding two more tracks at a time. Your sound quality here is much better than anything I could achieve. Sometimes I think we had more fun back then. These computers make things so much easier, but I felt more of a sense of accomplishment doing it the hard way. I will never forget my first “overdub”. Thanks for posting this. It brought back some nice memories. Hope you are well!

rapidfire

@AndyHoneybone said:

@rapidfire said:

I built a 2 oscillator synth using Curtis CEM chips in 1979, but I never managed to make recordings to this standard.
I look forwards to hearing more of your music in the future if it becomes available.
Mike

Hi Mike. Great to hear from another builder. The monosynth was based on Tim Orr TRANSCENDENT 2000 designs published in Electronics Today International in 1978. Temperature compensation and oscillator log tracking were always a challenge with discrete designs as you can hear slipping in a couple of places here.

Much appreciate you listening and for your encouraging words. I was in my mid-twenties when I recorded this. Forty-five years on, I’m not sure I would even start such a project now even with (or perhaps because of) the technology available. So many choices and expectations. And what would be the chances of someone being able to find and read the project files 4 decades later? A lot to be said for a shoebox full of cassettes.

I did do a Debussy/Tomita piece more recently using Cubasis but me being me, I had to impose a major constraint as you will see in a followup post.

Hi Andy,
Looking forwards to that 👍
Mike

AndyHoneybone

@Dav said:
Really impressive @AndyHoneybone! Sounds extremely good. Great arrangement too. Do you still have that JVC cassette deck? If it’s still working, it may be worth something. I was surprised the other day looking up what my Nakamichi MR-1 was going for these days. Crazy.

Thanks for posting your track. Enjoyed it.

Thanks for your comments @Dav. As with your restoration project, I used Brusfri to clean up. There was some print through I had to trim at the start and I did try and add a reverb tail but couldn’t sort anything that didn’t sound like a bolt on. Yes, I’ve still got the JVC and the Sony TC-377 reel machine. One channel of the JVC was dead so I managed to recover the track using a 40-year old Denon. Time isn’t kind to these mechanical marvels. Drive belts degrade, capacitors short and the complex switching contacts oxidise. Restoring the Sony was supposed to be a retirement project but realistically it’s not going to happen. I guess premium brands or niche kit like DAT (digital audio tape) will hold their value. Not so sure about my collection of MiniDisc models though …

AndyHoneybone

@GeoTony said:
What a great blast from the past Andy, impressive given the technology… must have taken ages.
I’m have fond memories of my Nakamichi deck @Dav , one that I had was the 600 sloping front thing… wish I still had it ☹️

Thanks Tony. At the time I thought I was living the technology dream having the use of a 48 voice polyphonic synthesiser!

AndyHoneybone

@LinearLineman said:
That was very refreshing, Andy, and hard to do.back in the day!

Thanks for listening Mike. Pleased to have provided some refreshment. A musical sorbet? Hope you’re keeping well.

AndyHoneybone

@Paulieworld said:
I agree with all of the above. Sound quality is superb. More importantly, your playing is spot on. Very well done! I had a Tascam Portastudio back in the 80s. We would bounce down to a metal cassette and start adding two more tracks at a time. Your sound quality here is much better than anything I could achieve. Sometimes I think we had more fun back then. These computers make things so much easier, but I felt more of a sense of accomplishment doing it the hard way. I will never forget my first “overdub”. Thanks for posting this. It brought back some nice memories. Hope you are well!

Hi @Paulieworld. So pleased my archive piece brought back nice memories. Until you said, I’d forgotten how magical overdubbing used to seem. The moment when playback was more than you could achieve with just you and your instrument. Getting to that point for me was often the driver for writing the song in the first place. I think you’ve summed up the then and now situation really succinctly.

I’m good - you too I hope.

AndyHoneybone

@rapidfire said:

I did do a Debussy/Tomita piece more recently using Cubasis but me being me, I had to impose a major constraint as you will see in a followup post.

Hi Andy,
Looking forwards to that 👍
Mike

Hi Mike, part 2 is here https://forum.loopypro.com/discussion/66003/the-snow-is-dancing-someone-mention-isao-tomita-part-2-cheetah-ms6-mozaic

Cheers