Friday, December 31, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
On Musicians and Depression
NOTE: The following was written in response to THIS POST on Waveformless, but the contents are based on observations and conversations.
The perceived wisdom that a true artist must feel pain is rubbish. It starts with the Van Gogh Myth - the poor, struggling, misunderstood artist who is posthumously recognized for his genius. Nine times out of ten, you are not misunderstood. Instead, you are not a genius and you wouldn't be poor and struggling if you were in a different line of work.
Next came the rock and roll / working class myth. For this, I blame the Americans, and, to a lesser degree, the British. The birth of this myth seems to coincide with the rising stardom of a former truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi. The idea that rock music is for / a product of the working class and is therefore born out of a desperation sounds great if you are looking for street cred, (or writing a Springsteen song) but it conveniently overlooks the fact that some of the most influential bands ever (oh, just to pull a few names out of the air, like the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk) were formed when their members meet at university. Life does not have to be crushingly hard to create brilliant music, but the myth prevails.
Finally, rock music and its offshoots are firmly based upon the myth of manliness. Manliness, of course, has nothing but disdain for the weak. And, for many years, depression was seen as a sign of weakness.
The existence of these myths has meant that within the music community, people have been too slow to fully recognize depression as a medical condition. Now, I don't know what causes your depression. Me, I lived through several black years until I was diagnosed as a diabetic. However, I do know these myths have caused great damage to many people. Screw the myths, go see your doctor.
Monday, December 20, 2010
An Incomplete Guide to the Mellotron
(NOTE: Instead of embedding all the links in this post, there is simply a list at the end for the curious.)
Even if you don’t know what a Mellotron is, you’ve heard one. If you know what a Mellotron is, you probably want one. If you own a Mellotron, don't waste your time reading this.
How could something so lo-fi become such a classic? How could an instrument that included sounds recorded by the Lawrence Welk Orchestra be embraced by __________ (fill in the blank with the name of any worthwhile band from the past 45 years)? How could something musicians’ unions on both sides of the Atlantic objected to become something many musicians would kill love to own?
Let us start with the basics. This is a Melodica.
Not to be confused with a Mellotron (MK400 to be precise), which looks like this:
The birth of the Mellotron
In the late 40s, an American named Harry Chamberlin developed a mechanism that allowed a keyboard to playback short pieces of recorded tape (thus inventing sampling). The recordings were produced and supervised by Lawrence Welk in Harry Chamberlin's house: all Chamberlin recordings performed by members of the Lawrence Welk Orchestra in the late '40s and throughout the 1950s. In the early 60s, one of Chamberlin's salesmen, a rather unscrupulous fellow by the name of Bill Fransen, takes a Chamberlin keyboard to England where he claims to be the inventor and sells the idea to some unsuspecting Brits, namely the brothers Frank, Norm, and Lesley Bradley. Harry, who has had no idea where his salesman went, gets a phone call one day from the American distributors of a new British instrument called a Mellotron. I think we can all agree that Harry had every reason in the world to be pissed off. After a business chat with the brothers and a few choice words for his former salesman, Harry agrees to let the Bradleys produce the Mellotron. One of the conditions was that the Mellotron used the famous "3 violins" that was created in 1952 for the Chamberlin. This violin sound became the Mellotron's main sound used on much of the output of British Mellotron music beginning in the mid-1960s.
How a Mellotron Works - Give it a few seconds to load...
Mellotron Fun Facts
- Welk was impressed with Chamberlin's idea of a tape playback instrument and offered to fund its manufacture if it was called a "Welk" machine. Chamberlin refused Welk's offer.
- In 1975, Tangerine Dream had to pay a £2000 fine to the British Musician's Union in compensation to three chamber orchestras which they had allegedly made “redundant” with their Mellotron.
- Harry Chamberlin pulled one of his keyboards from production because of fears that he would upset the American Federation of Musicians.
- The choir sounds on Kraftwerk's Radioactivity and Trans Europe Express are NOT produced by a Mellotron, but instead by Orchestron, manufactured by Mattel. Yes, that Mattel, as in Barbie and Ken. The Orchestron attempted to remedy the instability of the Mellotron by using a disk instead of tape, but the instrument flopped and few were manufactured. Kraftwerk would later show their allegiance to Mattel products by using a Bee Gees Rhythm Machine on Computer World.
What a Mellotron Sounds Like (Or; We finally Get to the Purpose of this Post)
Here's where you get to have your fun: there are two free VSTs available that use actual Mellotron samples (sampling a sampler, how post-modern can you get?). First is the very excellent Redtron 400, available HERE. Unfortunately, for my Turkish friends, the link might bring up this familiar sight:
Google sites remain blocked by the main service provider in this country - I had to check the link at work to ensure it was still valid. Anyway, enough politics, the Redtron 400 looks like this…
…and it sounds even better. Clicking the On/Off switch brings you here…
…where you can mess with the sounds to your heart's content. For authenticity, don't click the LOOP buttons so the sound only plays for eight seconds. Likewise, go back to the first screen and put the ABC dial in-between any two of the letters and the sounds will overlap, just like the original. I can and have played this for hours. The quality of this VST is amazing.
Less amazing, definitely less versatile, but still quite functional when I need a more lo-fi Choir sound, is the Nanotron, which is available HERE.
Knowing that there are people out there who create and distribute instruments like these for free helps restore my faith in humanity.
Peace
TJ
Links:
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Be Back Soon...
...I want to play for a while instead write.
So I'll leave you for the moment with something old:
Saturday, December 4, 2010
VST 101
PRE-READING NOTES:
- This is a tutorial for absolute beginners. If you have any previous experience with VSTs, move along, there is nothing for you to see here.
- If your computer does not have midi installed (which is odd, because it is pretty standard, but I have seen one laptop without it, so there you go), stop reading now and go do something useful (because, as we know, all art is quite useless).
- For the rest of you, get ready to spend an enjoyable half hour. I know you have time to kill: you are reading this blog.
INTRODUCTION
As some of my readers have no idea about synthesizers (hello, Dicle), this post is designed to remedy the situation. I will not ask you to buy a synth; instead, we'll work with something easier and considerably more accessible: a VST.
VST stands for:
a. Venezuela Standard Time
b. Very Sexy Tights
c. Vancouver Steel Trees
d. Virtual Studio Technology
d. Virtual Studio Technology
If you chose “d”, you are already well on your way to synth-pop stardom.
If and when VSTs (also called “plug-ins”) become widely known to the general public (and not just music geeks), they could change the way we make music in much the same way Napster changed the way we acquire music. Even better, many VSTs really are free. However, with technology, there is often the fear of the unknown (I blame sci-fi writers & Hollywood). Well, by following the following the eight easy steps described below, you will see that playing with VSTs is easier than operating a mobile phone.
THE EIGHT STEPS TO SYNTH-POP STARDOM
Step One: Download VST Host, possibly the best music-related freeware available (You want "vsthostx86.zip".) I am not afraid to call Hermann Seib a genius. The zip file is 1.25MB. You only have to extract the contents; there is no installation - the blue diamond named “vsthost” in is an exe. file which opens the program. You can delete “VSTHostBridge32.” Put extracted contents into a new folder and give it a clever name, like "VST Host" or "Fred".
Step Two: as the name suggests, VST Host needs to "host" something. You will now download that "something". I decided to share with you Prodigious (scroll down the page, the zip file is 2.11 MB), a good all-round synth that has been a favourite for over a year. Extract the contents. Put this and any subsequent VSTs in the same folder to make your life simpler.
Step Three: Go back to "Fred" and click on the blue diamond named “vsthost” to open the program. If you don’t see a piano keyboard at the bottom of the screen, click on the icon in the top right of the menu bar. Next, go to "Devices -> Midi -> Midi Input Devices" & click on whatever name appears (if nothing appears, you don't have midi installed; sorry to have wasted your time). As for the rest, go with the default settings & don’t worry for now.
Step Four: Click on "File" (top left corner), go down to “Set PlugIn Path” and tell VST Host which folder contains Prodigious.
Step Five: Your VST folder is loaded into VST Host’s memory, so now click "File" & go down to “PlugIns,” follow the arrow & click on Prodigious.
Step Six (Optional): In the little box that has appeared, click on the dial icon (circled).
(Click to enlarge)
Prodigious will appear like this.
(Click to enlarge)
Do not be afraid to adjust the knobs with your mouse - that is why they exist, to be turned (or, to use the geek term - "tweaked").
Step Seven: Play. You can use the piano keyboard at the bottom of the screen with your mouse, but this is an inefficient method. Instead, you want to use your computer keyboard. If you get no sound, click on one of the piano keys, and then use your computer keyboard. If you want to change the "preset" sound, use the big blue arrows in the menu bar (you can’t miss them, they are big & they are blue – you’d have to ask Hermann), or you can click "PlugIn," go to the bottom to "Programs" and choose from the list (for Floyd fans, find preset 58 "To Mr. Rick Wright" and go nuts. I also strongly recommend presets 83-85, the Solina Strings). Remember to click on the piano keyboard again if you have no sound.
Step Eight: Repeat Step Seven until you are addicted & want to buy your own midi controller keyboard, which is a reasonably inexpensive purchase.
CONCLUSION
If just one person out there starts playing music because of this tutorial, I'll be happy. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me. Many more free VSTs can be found at VST Planet and elsewhere.
Peace
TJ
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Prices
Right, so my sister just bought me a second-hand Korg Electribe EA-1 MKII from gear_maestro/ on eBay for $200 US. Perhaps I over-paid, but I wasn’t going to ask my sister to get into a bidding war, so I went for a “buy it now” from a reputable dealer (100% Positive feedback). It will be 7 – 8 months before I actually get to play with it, but it is on its way.
Now, let us do some comparative shopping. Oh look, you can find a MKII here in Istanbul, for €300 + tax. A quick search, however, reveals that the MKII originally retailed for £200.00, or €237.596. We need to also consider that the MKII has been discontinued. In fact, Korg has released not one, but two subsequent models since the MKII, but never mind, they are still charging more than the manufacturer’s suggested retail price for six year old + piece of gear.
Now, let us do some math:
$200 US is about 300TL (Turkish Lira)
€300 equals 587 TL + tax comes to 694TL
Even their “Havale ile” (bank transfer) price is 611TL
Twice the price. Lovely.
Peace
TJ
Listen with headphones:
And because I found it:
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