Archive for the ‘Biography’ Category
Simmons electronic drum sounds were the trademark for many Brittish synth pop bands in the early eighties, but other bands like New Musik also used them. They had a very distinctive sound, you should know it by now as one of the electronic drum sound memes in your mind. Going back to my memories. I was in two bands (actually same members, but two different musical angles) where we needed a Simmons drum kit, and our nice drummer saved enough money to get the first kit in Finland, maybe in any of the Nordic countries. At that time they were custom made, and you had to wait for three months or so before they were delivered. The price was also half-way astronomical. Anyway, what you could do with them! You had a really unique sound, few bands sounded like you. Today most of the equipment is within reach for anyone, which is good from a democratic point of view, but makes it harder to sound different just based on the equipment you have. When we arrived on gigs, the sound guys were confused when all we asked for were 12 ports or so in the mixer board — all instruments including drums where connected directly into the board. The only mikes needed were the singer microphones. Our drummer had to re-learn how to hit the fixed pads, he used to complain about this from time to time. The kick was really strong, you could really push the kick sound out with live gigs, which was great. Once, at a gig, we could not get out any sound from the Simmons kit, we were desperately looking for the problem cause. The ultimate reason was that one of the light technicians had built a power supply chord that looked like the ordinary chords, for 380V (in the Nordic countries, you have different plugs for 220V and 380V), and we had plugged in the kit into the 380V outlet. Fortunately the electronics did not get damaged, and we found a proper outlet and could start the gig.
Cabaret Voltaire - Sensoria, while now listening to it again I’m amazed how they already did a lot of electronica tricks, drum programming, samples, repeats, and so on. The video is wacky and refreshing, too. I’ve yet to see a contemporary video, with the exception of Beck’s productions, that are as interesting, especially with the budget they most likely had. Freur - Doot Doot, took me ages to get this song on 7″ vinyl long time ago. They had a very different take on music and how to use synths. Freur then later became Underworld and the rest is history. They also invented the whole idea of a symbol as a name (sorry Prince), Freur was closest to how to pronounce their symbol. Heaven 17 - Penthouse & Pavement — yes, Heaven 17 become more and more commercial at the end, but before that they really mixed drum machines and pop music together into all kinds of funny versions. Amazingly, this track could be played for the dancing audience at that time… The Human League - Being Boiled, yes synths sounded gritty long time ago, so electro house is nothing new. As with many similar bands, they became more and more commercial, until the original audience had deserted them. I even forgot that this song had a Buddhist theme! And no quantization, just plain finger playing. When listening through these songs, I realized that they all had catchy tuned, or at least there was an attempt to write melodies. But what I now also found striking, in hindsight, was that these bands started with a pure intent, and later became more and more commercial (Human League, Heaven 17), but some stuck to their core (Cabaret Voltaire), and Freur just evolved into Underworld, and as Underworld it is still changing. Maybe the third alternative is the best.
Me and a friend had great fun with the Roland TR-808 back in the late eighties, we used to sit on the floor with the TR-808, a Jupiter-6, a mike and a Portastudio and lots of beer, and write 12-16 songs a day. Going forward in time, a lot of my drum parts were done initially using Reason, it has a nice pattern drum machine, then LinPlug LMIV and the built-in drum kits in Logic such as Ultrabeat and various EXS24 kits. It was matter of punching the midi keyboard and put together kicks, snares, hihats and various combination loops. Which leads to today. Nowadays, in Ableton Live, I’m just reusing old loops and drum samples I’ve saved from former projects, import them in, and change the loop points around, pitch shift, different volume envelopes, and so on. For example, for a kick, I just take in a single kick sample, and I could quickly make a four-bar loop out of it by just making one single two-bar version, and drag out the loop. Or change the loop frequency to get a stuttering kick. So it’s like painting with drum sounds. Makes it all very easy and interesting. I could also layer drum sounds, such as kicks, and with envelopes define which one starts and which one ends. Or quickly make reverse cymbals, or very second clap reverse. It might be that I’m getting nostalgic next month and will get a used drum machine, who knows. Meanwhile, the paint-drum loops approach works really well, and who would have known long time ago how one could make drum sound today by direct audio snippet manipulations. I have not even explored Specrasonics Stylus RMX, which seems to be very much in use by other producers. Maybe it would be worth talking about loop uses next.
Sigh, listening to radioio70s.com is dangerous, I’m feeling old. While listening today I heard two songs that for me personally had a big influence. The first one is the B-Sid song from Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery, or Karn Evil 9. What a trip! So many parts, variations, funny arrangements, non 4/4 bars, out-of-your mind passages. Sigh. We need to get this back to music today. Most ELP fans also consider this to be their master work. Another interesting side note is that ELP took classical music and rearranged such pieces — how many are doing this today? The other was a song that got stuck in my brain for a long time, especially in my past guitar-centric world and bands with guitars, that’s Three Man Army’s Polecat Women, it’s not that special as a song, but it has a wacko guitar line, a hook, something that makes it fun playing or listening too. Such guitar hooks are really the spice of guitar-centric music. Anyway, those two songs are also music that inspired me when I was a kid with my ears glued to a cheap FM radio.
Maybe it’s good to write down some biographical content, hehehe. Each one of us has a record or song that has a big influence in your life. One of those for me, definitely, is Todd Rundgren’s Real Man, the opening song on his Initiation album. I think this was back in 1975 or so, I got interested in Todd after hearing his songs, the few times they played, on the Finnish radio. At that time you could hear rock music maybe 30 minutes a day, every second day or so. Those were the times.. Anyway, I took a field trip with the middle school class to a local town, they were visiting schools and so forth, but for me it was just an excuse to get there, sneak out from the scheduled programming, find a record store and purchase Initiation. After that it was listening time. We didn’t have iPods or even walkmans at that time, so they only way to re-listening the song was to try to remember it in your head, and while I was working on the farm the song played in my head, over and over. I could analyze the arrangements and so forth. What struck my young mind at that point was how Todd used strange synthesizer instruments, weird sounds, in a classical song structure. The lyrics and theme of the song is also uplifting. Todd really inspired me, even today, especially with the concept that you could really do something, anything, in the studio. Maybe that’s the reason why I like to produce and write any kind of music, why my musical career has been extremely diverse, maybe even related to my professional computer career… |
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I found this 
YouTube is really nice as it has now a lot of video clips from the eighties, especially music I listened to and got inspired by. The early to mid-eighties was great time concerning music and new ways to use synthesizers, instead of progressive rock use (melodies, solos), synths now became a real part of the whole system, drum machines, et rest. And musicians explored this inside out. And you didn’t need to be a concert pianist or trained jazz musician to make synth music. That was liberating.
I got the taste of drum machines back in 1983, I think. We had a gig in a local TV program with a band long time ago, and somehow I got the local Linn distributor to borrow us a Linn Drum machine for the TV session. I picked it up from the company, went straight to the TV recording room, put the machine up, did a loop, and used it live when we played.
