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EM119

Laurie Spiegel Obsolete Systems Laurie Spiegel, electronic music pioneer, has worked with cutting-edge electronic instruments since the 1970s. She has written software and designed systems and she is also a wonderful composer! And the music on this CD is so talented, beautiful, and fascinating that it becomes a stunning demonstration of how musical and expressive technology can be. Spiegel writes: "Each musical instrument, whether electronic or not, implies an aesthetic domain and sensibility unique to its design. This comprises both its sonic output and the method whereby a human being interacts with it to form and control that sonic output. "With new instrument designs having proliferated almost exponentially in recent years, I am pleased to see increasingly widespread interest in those historic few which, though now obsolete and limited in many ways compared to current technology, succeeded aesthetically and musically. These are a few I've personally explored. "When it was new, each of these music systems, now long obsolete, was state of the art, visionary, radically new and so revolutionary that it required extended explanations in response to common questions such as 'Why would anyone ever want to do that?'" This CD will give you insights into instruments, knowledge of Laurie Spiegel's work through informative and beautifully written liner notes, and lovely music. MP3 excerpts Improvisation on a Concerto Generator A Harmonic Algorithm Drums Voices Within Tracks Four Short Visits to Different Worlds Swells (c. 1972) Electrocomp 100 modular analog synthesizer Mines (1971) Modular analog synthesizer, built by Don Buchla, mid-1960s Crying Tone (1975) Electrocomp 100 modular analog synthesizer A Garden (circa 1970) Buchla 100 modular analog synthesizer with tape delay   (Excerpt ) "When one of my teachers at Juilliard, Michael Czajkowski, took me to see Mort Subotnick's Buchla studio on Bleeker Street and I soon began to work with that instrument myself, music turned back into the medium I had loved. In fact it went far beyond that, virtually turning from black-and-white into color. Not only could I work directly with sound itself again, like painters and authors do on their works ..." Improvisation on a "Concerto Generator" (1977) Realtime digital audio synthesizer by Hal Alles et al, Bell Labs   (Excerpt ) "This composition was commissioned by Bell Labs and the Motion Picture Academy for the 50th anniversary of talking pictures ..." A Harmonic Algorithm (1981 version) Apple II computer with Mountain Hardware oscillator boards   (Excerpt ) "I wrote this algorithm in the Apple Pascal language with additional 6502 assembly language modules, based on analysis of Bach chorale style harmonic progression ..." Three Modal Pieces (1983) A Cosmos A Legend A Myth McLeyvier computer-controlled analog synthesis music system   (Excerpt ) "To quote Mark Vail, 'Like an object caught in the Starship Enterprise's malfunctioning transporter, the McLeyvier shimmered between existence and Limbo for a few years beginning in 1981.' It consisted of an impressive console on a DEC LSI 11/23 computer that controlled a bank of analog 'voice cards' through 50 digital-to-analog converters ..." Immersion (1983) McLeyvier computer-controlled analog synthesis music system   (Excerpt ) "This piece evolved from sketches for my chamber orchestra piece 'Hearing Things'. After completing 'HT', I realized that the instrumental writing had wandered away from sonic vistas that the early sketches had embodied, so I went back to capture and refine them in this work. ..." Drums (1975) GROOVE Hybrid System at Bell Labs   (Excerpt ) "Computer control added to analog synthesis the abilities to generate, describe, store, and edit a musical work or process in far more complex and varied ways than had been possible with only instrument and tape. The GROOVE Hybrid System at Bell Labs was also a breakthrough to realtime interaction with composer-describable process and structure ..." Voices Within: A Requiem (1979) Electrocomp with classic tape techniques & Echoplex   (Excerpt ) "Possibly my only musically successful microtonal piece, 'Voices Within' came together over several months of sustained and arduous work during which I synthesized and recorded the individual sounds and fit them together ..." For complete liner notes, go to Laurie Spiegel's website. Buy it!

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