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New
Music Box
A
Major New In-Depth Interview
(including
Video QT excerpts!)
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We're
pleased to announce a major new in-depth interview which was
conducted by Frank
Oteri for the
online music magazine, New Music Box, in January of 2007. I
met Frank originally at the radio station for Columbia
University, WKCR, during their Tricentennial celebration of
the birth of J. S. Bach. The marathon broadcasts that week
included a great many music specialists and authorities on
Bach, his music, life, and performance practice. I was
honored to be asked to appear, which turned out to be the
early evening of New Year's Eve, the very end of 1984. Frank
was bright, knowledgeable, and most affable, and we got
along fine for a freewheeling live interview, mainly about
my pioneering albums of Bach's music, the Switched-On
collection, and other topics which we inevitably digressed
upon. A lovely memory.
So I was happy to hear
again from Frank near the end of last year. By now he was
around the age I was when we did the radio interview, and
had matured into a fine composer and music historian
himself. He'd become an adept synthesist, was working with
microtonality, and various software based music tools which
I also use regularly. So it was a meeting of peers this
time, as Frank proposed coming by to interview me for his
newest ongoing project. This turned out to be
New
Music Box, an
online music magazine I'd only heard about before. He gave
me the links to show the kind of interview he wanted to do.
I checked it out, and went back for more quite a few times.
Nice work, including many people who I respect, quite a few
whom I've known or have worked with before. Like: Milton
Babbitt, Mario Davidovsky, Pauline Oliveros, Leonard
Slatkin, Ned Rorem, John Corigliano, Joan Tower, Annea
Lockwood, John Eaton, Richard Einhorn, Joan Jeanrenaud...
and so many other notable people in music. Lovely.
So I felt in good
company (understatement) to be asked to be included in such
a list. The interviews, while featured one each month,
remain online for years. That's even better than a print
magazine edition, which can become lost or tossed out, much
too ephemeral a record of ongoing dialogs and historical
documentation. Another novel bit is that Oteri wanted to run
a video of our conversation, as he had done for the other
musicians, composers, performers, and theoreticians during
the years the magazine has been active. "Um. Well..., a
video you say? Does that mean a filming crew would have to
be here, if we did it as you want, in my studio? (Memories
of bashed in door frames, scratched cabinets, walls, and
knocked over equipment, side-effects of past filming
encounters, danced nervously in my head...)
Turns out Frank
captures these interviews VERY informally, usually with a
small DV camcorder. But I have one of those already. "Could
I just set up my camera to tape us, and spare any other crew
having to be here?" That was fine for Frank. Kewl. So I
carefully setup some lights, tripod, mikes, and so on, all
in front of the Wurly II, rolled up comfortable chairs
facing each other, and made some test videos. Once that
looked pretty good, we scheduled a get together, which took
place this January 18th, right after dinner. It was great
fun, Frank couldn't have been better prepared (although I've
been lucky in general with many fine people who've
interviewed me through the years), and we let it continue
until after I AM, filling up more than two cassettes in the
process. He had brought some notes with him, including a lot
of uncliched questions and topics to cover that I'd not
heard that way, if at all, before. Which made it more
enjoyable for me, too, provocative, intelligent stuff, I
thought...
It was a major time-sponge
for Frank and his team to make a transcript of everything we
spoke about that evening. Finally Frank sent me a long text
file (originally 40 pp!). He'd promised I could do a good
editing and double-checking of the final version. Don't get
such respect very often. I took it seriously, and spent a
good week+ at it, several hours a day, until I had smoothed
out the ad lib comments into a more publishable form. I sent
that back to Frank, he edited it further, and we co-tweaked
it with care as the deadline arrived. Frank wanted this to
be their April cover story, and we made it just in time.
It's there now.
Aside from setting up
the camera gear, I had nothing to do with the video editing
and assembly. I was slightly concerned it might end up
chopped into pieces with little context or continuity, or
that it might garble our thoughts. Need not have worried.
Frank and his video collaborator and editor at NMB, Randy
Nordschow (another composer, BTW), did a lovely,
professional job. I'd never have had the objectivity nor
patience to cut down something like two and a quarter hours
into about twelve choice minutes, including a neat
slide show assembled by Randy, all tied together with
selections of my music -- a fine QuickTime video we hope
you'll enjoy.
Anyway, after this
happy experience, I want to share it with you, sincerely, if
immodestly. I waited a couple of weeks (until a few odd
technical networking problems had been solved) to add this
to our website, but it's all working fine at last. So here's
the deal, I'm placing, with Frank's permission, a "concise
edition" of the interview online here. You can read it on
our site, selected highlights of all the stuff we spoke
about, broken up with section titles befitting the topics
discussed. If you don't have the time to read the whole
thing, that would be your best bet, read
it HERE.
The whole interview appears online at New
Music Box itself
(<www.newmusicbox.net>),
search for the April 2007 cover story page if it's moved.
And in either case, please take a look at their streaming
video. Printed word can be very misleading at times. It's
rather nice to have the chance to watch people talking
directly on an unadorned video.
(It's
still best to try off-peak hours, as the connection can be
slow or busy, or give it time to load in the
background.) It's
around ten minutes long they said, and will give you a good
feeling for that evening Frank and I chatted away in January
(for
time reasons, Frank cut himself out of the
video). And while
you're there, take a look around, there are many excellent
interviews and articles on broad selection of musical
topics. Meanwhile, thank you, Frank, for being so well
prepared, and for putting together such a nice document of
an interview I won't soon forget!
Lost
Filmscores, Rediscovered
Music
Never Before Available
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Two brand-new volumes of
Lost Filmscore Music
About Volume
One -- About
Volume Two
We're proud
to announce that our mastering schedule has moved ahead
steadily as promised, if somewhat more slowly. Further below
we mentioned the newest remastering of Wendy's albums,
including the 1992 sequel to the original
S-OB, our 25th
Anniversary edition: Switched-On Bach
2000. And right here we present two brand-new titles,
albums of music heretofore unavailable in any form,
Rediscovering Lost Scores,
volumes one
& two.
The subtitle, "Quintessential Archeomusicology" goes
right to the heart of the matter. The Lost Score albums
required digging though stacks and shelves of dusty reels
and boxes, back into the forgotten past in a search for lost
treasures. The project took over a year to complete, in
several stages, as master tapes were played, cataloged and
transferred to new digital masters. This was the best way to
locate the most interesting of the forgotten filmscore
tracks (quite a few had been mislabeled, or placed out of
order, mixed in with other projects during the haste of
deadlines). We were excited, as these new albums would
complete our contract with East
Side Digital in great style.
Wendy also took the time to create the striking
covers and other graphics for the two CDs, which convey a
flavor of the search, a tomb-raider adventure into music
which had remained unreleased, unheard for years, and in
many cases, for decades. It's a pair of albums worth
checking out, especially if you're a fan of her filmscore
music. You'll discover surprising tracks from three
well-known features, Kubrick's A
Clockwork Orange and The
Shining, and Disney's
TRON.
You'll also get to hear other equally memorable
selections from less well known films, some for the Dick
Young documentaries created for
UNICEF, and two British
features, Split Second,
and Woundings. As a
bonus, we've found the masters to the music Wendy created
for her friends at Dolby Laboratories, for two short films
which demonstrated the magic of
Dolby Surround
Sound!
(Note:
these latter two tracks, as with most of the tracks on the
album, decode very nicely into Surround Sound with Dolby Pro
Logic.)
To give you a better idea, here are the contents of both
volumes, with 61 tracks in total, nearly two hours of music.
Then for more details check out the two new web pages we've
just created about the albums. The first
volume is described HERE,
and the second volume is described
HERE.
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Lost Scores --
volume one
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Lost Scores --
volume two
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From "The
Shining" (studio
music):
1-Colorado
2-The Rocky Mountains
3-Chase Music
4-Nocturnal Valse Triste
5-Greetings Ghosties
6-Horror Show
7-A Haunted Waltz
8-Psychic Shout #237
9-Danny
10-Heartbeats and Worry
11-Subliminal Ballroom
12-Thought Clusters
13-A Ghost Piano
14-Visitors
15-Dark Winds and Rustles
16-Bumps in the Night
17-Setting with Medea
18-Two Polymoog Improvisations
19-Fanfare and Drunken Dies
20-Clockworks (Bloody Elevators)
21-Danny Bells Ascending
22-Postlude
From "Clockwork
Orange":
23-Stately Purcell
24-Pop Purcell
25-Trumpet Voluntary
From several
UNICEF
films:
26-The Children of Peru
27-Shanty Town and Farewell
28-Daycare and the Colonel
29-Two Distant Walks
30-Ethiopian Life
31-Tanzanian Scenes
32-Three Hopeful Places
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From "The
Shining" (orchestra
& studio):
1-Shining Title Music
2-Paraphrase for 'Cello
3-Where's Jack?
4-The Overlook
5-Psychic Scream
6-Day of Wrath
7-Paraphrase for Brass
8-Title Music "Dies" (Owens,
flugelhorn)
9-Clockworks "Dies" (Owens,
trumpet)
From
"Tron":
10-Creation of Tron version I
11-Creation of Tron version II
12-Lightcycle Games
13-Anthem (studio version)
14-Little Interludes
15-Trinitron
From "Split
Second":
16-Visit to a Morgue
17-Return to the Morgue
From
"Woundings":
18-Woundings Title Music
19-Angela's Walk
20-Jimmy
21-Louise
22-Doug Does Angela
23-Scattering Ashes
24-Angela's Aftermath
25-Jimmy Kills Louise
26-In a Cemetery
27-Fly Away and End
From two Dolby
Demo films:
28-Bee Dee Bei Mir
29-Listen: Tannhauser
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To learn more about the two latest titles, and to
audition and to
purchase any of our deluxe editions see
the Discography page
HERE.
--Wendy Carlos / April
2005-07
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SEAMUS
Award
Wendy
receives 2005 Lifetime
Achievement Award
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Talk about
your big surprises. Near the end of 2004 Wendy was contacted
by the well-known and long-established electroacoustic music
group, SEAMUS
(Society of Electro Acoustic Music
in the United States -- it's pronounced like the
Irish-Anglo name: "SHAY-muss"). They wished to present her
with their 2005 Life Achievement Award, at the April 2005
Convention, due to be held at Ball State University in
Indiana. That event recently took place, as is described in
more detail at the SEAMUS
2005 Convention's website
HERE (if this link is no
longer working, check their
main homepage).
While Wendy was unfortunately prevented from
attending the Convention due to the deadline final assembly
work on the Lost Scores
project, she sent her
thank-you comments plus a custom CD in which she introduced
selections of her music reworked into a new suite for the
event. It was played during the final evening concert for
the Convention. Wendy describes how she felt about the honor
towards the bottom of our Open
Letter Six page. And Bob Moog generously contributed his
encomium to the Convention and to Wendy, which
you can read HERE.
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S-OB
2000
The
25th Anniversary All-New
Sequel Edition -- Available
Again
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Our deluxe CD
remastering completes
the Wendy Carlos Bach/Baroque Collection
Switched-On Bach
2000
As the
twenty-fifth anniversary of
Switched-On Bach
approached, Wendy wanted to return to the pioneering album,
and do something exciting to mark the occasion. With all of
the changes that electro-acoustic music had undergone during
that quarter of a century, the tools of creating such
realizations had moved from being rather experimental custom
synthesizers (generally a struggle to use), to a more mature
stage we now take for granted. Digital oscillators provided
ultra-stable tuning, even in any arbitrary tuning scale. The
range of newly created sounds had broadened considerably,
and instruments included near-exact replicas and samples of
traditional acoustic instruments, plus a large range of
timbres which fell in-between.
The audio quality of the latest digital multitrack
recorders brought about another major improvement, even when
compared to the large, heavy fully professional Ampex tape
machines Wendy had used for the first albums. Auxiliary
sound processors had evolved to a similar degree. It was a
different world of music making.
After discussions with several musician friends, a
few industry experts, it was decided that this was an ideal
time to recreate all of the music heard on the original
album, plus new bonus tracks, as a way to show off the
latest state of the electronic music making arts. So
Switched-On Bach 2000
was born (we often call it:
"S-OB
2K"), a sequel to
S-OB, a revisiting of
old musical friends, seen through different, mature eyes, a
world of new possibilities.
The anniversary album was launched in Spring of 1992,
with a decent campaign to bring it to the public's
attention, and has remained a popular album since then. Many
people found the comparisons and contrasts with the first
album to be fascinating: the new timbres were richer and
darker, and Wendy's growth as an artist gave a subtler, more
confident tone. The new sounds benefited greatly by playing
the music using the smoother tuning scales Bach himself
preferred, which are seldom heard today. And with the
recording arts so much more transparent, the addition of
Dolby Pro Logic encoding for the whole album, the final
results have a clarity and around the room impact that must
be heard, to appreciate the growth of 25 years.
The original Telarc edition become unavailable in
2002, and we were inundated by many requests from you to put
it out again. Wendy recently did just that, taking the time
to further polish and tweak the audio masters with great
care. They've never sounded better, as you'll hear on our
new Hi-D edition. The original somewhat disappointing cover
art was also replaced by a new one, a tribute and wry
takeoff on the original S-OB I cover. If you add this album
to the Switched-On Boxed Set, or
the unbundled individual Bach and
Baroque titles, you'll own the complete set of Wendy
Carlos's definitive "Switched-On" albums, music which
launched the world of sound we hear all around us today.
Read more about our 25th Anniversary
Edition HERE. And see all
our albums on the discography page
HERE.
--Wendy Carlos / April
2005
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CBS/Sony
Album Remasters Completed!
End
of a L-o-n-g Haul...
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Two final CBS/Sony
albums, in new deluxe CD editions,
"By
Request"
(left) and "Secrets
of
Synthesis"
(right)
It has
taken five years to reach this stage, but we wanted to do
things right. And we suspect that most of you will agree.
That is how the famous "Quality
Triangle" operates. All projects embraces three
factors: Quality, Cost, and Time -- pick any two. It
was easy here, the first one, quality, stays. And since
these editions are a labor of love (the market for non-rock
music has become vanishingly small, alas), the second item,
"cost" has to be held down (we've also dropped the list
prices on all our titles). The final element, time, then
must adopt a pragmatic: whatever it takes.
The eventual result? These are the best editions we
could create of all the Wendy Carlos titles originally
released on CBS (later Sony). Most of them make their first
appearance on CD. Even the handful of titles which CBS had
released on CDs didn't have the advantages of 20-bit Hi-D
transfers from the first generation master mixes, mostly on
1/2" four-track tape. This was an ideal way to proceed, but
took much more time and work than the routine transfers of
the vast majority of CD remasters.
We're very pleased the results, and thank the many of
you who have shared your appreciation and enthusiasm. Why
did it take longer than we first predicted? In many cases
the conditions of the master tapes demanded a degree of
improvisation and care we'd not experienced before (for one
example, read about the TRON
master tapes HERE). Then
with the extraordinary clarity and transparency of the Hi-D
process, what we could get away with in the past now stood
out in stark relief
(translation:
we could suddenly hear low level glitches we'd never noticed
before!). It required a good deal of hand editing,
cleaning and tweaking to assure that only the subtle
problems were removed (one detail at a time) but none of the
music (automatic process are a compromise and leave
artifacts).
We realize than a lot of you out there have been
anxious to obtain ultra Hi-Fi copies of
"By Request," to judge
by the your letters in the past two years. Some bemoaned the
loss of "Secrets of
Synthesis," when CBS's contract expired, and that
album sold out, over a decade ago, as with our more popular
titles, like the Switched-On series. All we can say is:
"Thank you for your patience and
enthusiasm, good people!" We hope you'll be
pleased with the results, and spread the word among your
friends about these appealing new CD editions. In every case
we've taken the extra time to create new bonus features,
befitting true Collector's Editions of classic CDs and
DVDs.
The covers and graphic elements have been reworked
from often faded, aging originals. Where the originals were
not available to us any longer we came up with all-new
artwork which suits the albums better than the originals.
Working with a large company like CBS required a lot of
corporate compromises, and we were often bullied into
accepting ideas we didn't find appropriate or effective.
Here was the chance to make amends, and assure that the
physical CDs look and sound first rate, even if it took more
time than CBS would have allowed. If you haven't heard and
seen our new editions, if you have only the jpegs from the
web to judge by, the music via compressed audio like mp3,
you're in for a treat. Such demanding sounds as the pure
tones of the Moog synthesizer require an unusually high
acuity sound transfer process. And that's just what Hi-D 20
bit audio is all about.
We've discussed regularly the next remasterings to follow
these, which include the 20th Anniversary Edition:
Switched-On
Bach 2000, originally on Telarc, and
unavailable for a couple of years (update
note: now released -- see
above for details). More
surprising is a compilation album of music soundtracks that
have never before been released, a fascinating world of
"Lost Soundtracks" -- music composed and performed by Wendy
but either dropped from the final production (a face on the
cutting-room floor?), or simply never the focus of a record
album or CD before now. We've spoken of that idea before
(update note: now also released --
see above for
details). And after that
there are two brand new music projects which are in the
early planning stages, one including music performed on the
new Wurly II
instrument described below. As we've said throughout the
discography section of this site:
Please Stay Tuned -- you'll read
all about it here first!
To learn more about the two latest titles, and to
audition and to
purchase any of our deluxe editions see
the Discography page
HERE.
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The
WurliTzer II
New
Custom Hybrid
Instrument!
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Take the
Virtual Tour
(or click image for
just a large view)
During the
more than a year since this News Page was last updated a
whole new construction project has taken shape here in the
studio. It wasn't ever actually planned, but several paths
intersected in such a way as to lead to a whole new musical
instrument. It's called the
WurliTzer II (or Wurly
II) since it combines something old (the classy 80+ year old
WurliTzer pipe organ tradition) and something new (mature
digital synthesis and MIDI), in a unique setup we think
you'll enjoy learning more about. So there's a major new
addition just uploaded to our website: a complete
Virtual Tour of this new hybrid musical tool. The tour
includes some of the history behind the Wurly II, and many
of the custom features and devices which were essential to
get the whole ensemble to operate as a single, live
instrument. Hopefully it will be something of a surprise,
even to those of you who already know a lot about Wendy's
work and this homepage site. Take a look!
--Wendy Carlos / Dec
2003, updated April 2005
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Bach
& Baroque
As
you remember them!
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Four Individual Bach
Baroque editions
FIRST TIME ON
CD AS YOU REMEMBER THEM
You have
responded with surprising enthusiasm to our recent deluxe
edition, the complete Switched-On
Boxed Set, for which we'd like to thank you. Still, it
was always our intention to provide two choices for fans of
Wendy's Bach and Baroque synthesizer realizations. The boxed
set was created to appeal to those of you who typically
collect "director's cut" and expanded, restored films on
DVD, those who want lots of bonus material unavailable
elsewhere. Others want only a few of the titles, and are not
so deeply involved with the musical and technical side of
music making, or seek new editions which recall very
accurately the original LP's and Cassette tapes of these
classic recordings.
Read all about these four titles, and audition /
purchase the
new deluxe editions from our
Discography page HERE.
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TRON
-- Original Soundtrack
First
time on CD!
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New Disney Release of
TRON
During the
remasterings for the four above "unbundled" Bach &
Baroque albums we were finally contacted by Disney in
regards Wendy's long-sought after filmscore to their
groundbreaking computer graphics film, "TRON." It was with
great enthusiasm that we briefly interrupted work on the
Baroque albums to assemble a definitive edition of this
score. There's a full page which describes some of the
details online at our site. (Note--
we've just learned that Disney has discontinued this often
requested album without our knowledge. We're looking into
it, and will try to make it available again.)
Read all about it
HERE.
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Two
More Total Eclipse Reports
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It's been
awhile since we last mentioned here the ongoing gradual
additions of new total solar eclipse observations and images
of our Eclipse Page. The last time was for the August
1999 totality, as observed and successfully photographed
by Wendy from Romania. To bring us right up to date, there
are two major additions now online: the report for the June
2001 eclipse, from Zambia, and also one Wendy worked on
"vicariously," from December 2002.
Read all about the June
2001 Total Eclipse, and see the naked eye
images.
Read all about the December
2002 Total Eclipse, and see the naked eye
images.
--Wendy Carlos / Feb
2003
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Since
we released the complete Switched-On
Boxed Set last year, the most requested
album has been Beauty in
the Beast, which has had to wait its turn.
There's a very good chance you've heard of it
before, but more than likely you've never heard it,
or been able to find copies of it. Little wonder,
as despite a great many surprisingly enthusiastic
reviews, BitB
was only available for a few months, early in 1986.
That summer the album's debut on a new label,
Audion (Jem records) ended brutally abruptly, after
only a couple of thousand copies had been pressed.
The reason? Jem went bankrupt, a victim of the
hazards of overextended smaller record companies at
that time, when CD's were no longer an automatic
ticket to success.
The few remaining copies in stock sold out
quickly, and the masters reverted back to us. It
became a sore spot that this special creation of
mine had to be put aside for the time being, while
other projects intervened. It was our intention to
put it out again on our own as soon as possible.
Well that took much longer than expected, and it is
only now that BitB can receive a proper second
"debut" on ESD records. This may be just as well,
as by now the sound tools available have matured to
a stage that permit the original masters and
artwork to be finessed a great deal, made even
better than those few original copies Audion
pressed. We're very pleased to announce this deluxe
Hi-D 20-bit
remastering, truly "better than new", certainly
better than ever before, and hope you will enjoy
becoming acquainted with something neat I don't
think you've ever heard like before.
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Read all about
it (or just
click image for a bigger view)
It was a
fascinating learning project for me to attempt to assemble
the new release's layout and graphics work all by myself. In
the process I learned more about Quark than I ever wanted to
know (*wink*), and many somewhat arcane realities and
practical tricks from the printing trade. It took a lot more
time and effort than I expected, of course (the best
shortcut is usually: "don't look for shortcuts," after all).
We attempted to get the images to look closer to the
original painting that was possible in the mid-80's, and
made many careful test prints and trials. In the end the
reproduction still came out a bit dark, but is much improved
over the original Jem versions.
Since Murray Brenman had done such a fine job with
the Audion release, collaborating with us during many
pleasant meetings, we tried to retain his good work,
expanding on it with several newly minted graphic elements.
The book is expanded, too, with added graphics touches to
both the original notes and our customary "looking back"
additional remarks, as seen from the present (20:20
hindsight having its advantages). We've included both sets
of notes on this website, so those who wish to know more
before purchasing can find answers to many questions
here.
The complete original
BitB Notes
Additional new "looking back"
BitB Notes
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Additional
Bonus on new CD editions of BitB:
= Tuning, at
the Crossroads =
Read the complete article by
Wendy that originally appeared in
Computer
Music Journal, 11/1.
Includes all the original images and all audio
soundsheet examples that appeared with the
article.
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Many of you
have sent us requests and questions for this pioneering 1986
article. We eventually may post it or at least much of it on
this site, but in the meantime, you can enjoy the whole
thing as a free bonus when you buy the new
BitB Enhanced-CD. It's
particularly fitting a combination, as the article goes into
great detail about the fascinating world of tunings and
temperaments that are explored in music and sounds on the
Beauty in the Beast
album itself. Hear the results, then learn the hows and whys
about them, in a newly edited and convenient, attractive
html document. Many small mistakes in the original printing
have been found and corrected, and the figure size has been
greatly enlarged from the journal's version for this
definitive publishing.
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When
Digital Moonscapes
was first released in 1984, CBS (later Sony) had
their own album cover department, which was pretty
much solely responsible for the "look and feel" of
all their product. Sometimes this worked out very
well, as their covers for "The Well-Tempered
Synthesizer" (using an imaginative photo by
Horn/Griner) and "Sonic Seasonings" (the two-LP
edition had a lovely wrap-around image featuring a
classic painted screen by
Ogata Korin) were marvelous. Sometimes a poor
original version was made quite decent
(see the Boxed Set big book for
that story...), like the cover for the first
"Switched-On Bach." Other covers and graphics I
have always thought were just lame, as the 1972
"Clockwork Orange," or this album's initial
release. Well, we managed to redo the "Clockwork"
cover in 1998's ESD deluxe remastering, and that's
also the case for our new edition of
Digital
Moonscapes.
Much as with the second album release for
Fall of 2000, Beauty in
the Beast, described just above, the new
20-bit audio is also given the benefit of a lot of
new powerful sound tools, and a LOT of time and
care using those tools to squeeze every bit of
music from the definitive master recordings, while
minimizing the gremlins of old, like bits of hiss,
hum, or tiny ticks and glitches. Both albums now
sound better than ever before, and look snappy,
too. The story of the new artwork is explained in
some detail on the Enhanced-CD files included on
the new DM album. It's also mentioned on the
additional new notes.
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New DM cover vs.
original CBS version
Read all about
it (or just
click either image for a bigger view)
After
completing the final layout for
Beauty in the Beast, I
tackled the much bigger job of creating the completely new
graphics and layout for this deluxe remastered edition of
Digital Moonscapes.
Since CBS owns the copyright on most of the albums after
1972, we actually have little choice on the changes, as we
are not allowed to use either the good or not so good
versions. For DM, that
was no loss, as it turns out. There were many more graphic
elements to generate, including a very complex compositing
and rebuilding of elements for the cover art, than
BitB required. But it
was a wonderful learning process, and most gratifying to
return to the concept we'd originally envisioned, before CBS
had ideas of its own. The Enhanced-CD of our new release has
many examples of producing the new graphics, and also
contains an interesting comparison chart of the Moons that
the music is based upon, and some newly discovered details
about the Synergy Synthesizer used for all the sounds heard
on the album.
By the time that the graphic work for both albums had
been done, and the audio polishing and optimization had been
completed as well, we had pushed up against the factory
deadline with only days to spare (I got quite sick
afterwards, a sure sign of the downside of all work and no
play from March-October). So these two albums, which
originally were selected to be less time and labor intensive
than the Switched-On Boxed
Set of last year, actually turned out to be nearly
as much of a marathon, especially sans the great help of
Chika Azuma, who's mentioned below in
her marvelous, crucial work on the Boxed Set. I know I don't
have her flair nor speed, but it was educational and
stimulating to try these two on my own. If you hate them,
I'm the only one to blame...
Meanwhile, for those of you who want still more of an
idea about DM, take a
look at both the old and new notes for the album:
The complete original
Digital Moonscapes Notes
Additional new "looking back"
DM Notes
--Wendy Carlos / Nov.
2000
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The
album you've been waiting for and asking about is
now available! While the final stages of the newest
ESD
remastering were proceeding to completion, we had
no time to document the stack of new material here.
But here is what we posted after sending the
masters to the factory:
Many
of you have been asking how the work was going on
the Switched-On Boxed
Set. The short answer was : slowly and
wonderfully. As I write this the last audio steps
have been done for less than two days. I burned and
sent two duplicate sets of final masters to the
factory on an amusing day (just by coincidence):
9/9/1999! They will be marrying the Enhanced-CD
files to Disk IV, and pressing them all. The
printer is at work on the stack of pages for the
two books and all the lovely graphics elements.
I've been told that before mid-October the set will
appear in stores, and a campaign of advertising for
this and my prior ESD releases will commence for
the first time. It should be worth the wait. Here's
some additional information, to give you a preview.
--Wendy
Carlos
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(FYI: on the
title of the new set, the final name had been my original
"working title." Later two of you kindly suggested the
nicely "punny," "Switched-On Box", and I thought we'd go
with that. Sadly, almost everyone else hated it, a few
complaining it was also a smutty(!) pun. Lan'sayxe, I lost
all my patience! So we went back to the crisp formal
original. I still hear an imbedded, much subtler word-play
going on: "Switched-On Bach's Set", another last ditch
naming attempt no one saluted. Oh well, aname is aname is
...)
The
last steps of the audio remastering and restoration are
currently underway. There will be some neat stories to share
with you here about that. Our four-CD boxed set will be a
major ESD release, and
contains a book of nearly 150 pages, subtle duotones printed
on gorgeous art papers with a great many images in full
color, packed with background notes and photos of the people
and equipment and locations that went into those wastershed
albums of 1968-79. It's a feast of information never before
available anywhere. All the original liner notes are
collected neatly in a second book nearly a third the size of
the big book. Our operative word has been:
CONTENT. You'll get your
money's worth!
Mock-up book covers
(click for bigger
view)
The look and feel of the package, designed by NYC-based
Grammy Award winning graphics designer, Chika Azuma, is
quite special, and very appropriate to both the original
Baroque masterpieces and the technological and musical
breakthroughs behind the legendary performances. She also
hand-made these wonderful mock-up books of which I've
scanned a few pages to give you the "sneak preview" here.
This classy set (thanx, Chika!) ought become an "instant
collectable."
Mock-up example
pages (click for bigger view)
Since it turns out there is still no definitive web site
containing this sort of information and photographs of the
Moog modular synthesizer, detailed new texts and images were
produced over many months. You'll also find in-depth
discussions of the music, master tapes, old covers, special
music notations, an interview with producer Rachel
Elkind, the three TEMPI logos, and commentary from
Bob Moog himself,
written for the set. Two long new CD tracks highlight many
of the original experimental discarded attempts behind the
first two albums. These are narrated demos, and feature
first time ever mixes of
material unheard for 30 years. There
really is something for
everyone!
Example: Vol II (of 4)
CD box cover (click for bigger
view)
You'll no doubt be pleased the quality of the sound.
Everything has been transferred from the very first mastered
tapes, thus skipping the several additional analog
generations that all prior releases were obtained from.
These are the cleanest sounding CD's ever heard of the
"switched-on" repertoire, a fair payment to those stuck
having to replace any of those CD versions CBS/Sony issued
on their own. The sound on the original masters, once
coaxed out and cleaned and
polished with the lastest technology, is quite breathtaking,
and perhaps the best reason for doing the project in the
first place.
East Side
Digital is releasing the deluxe boxed set in early
October, with appropriate fanfare and tie-ins to the
previous three releases documented
on our site some months ago. We'll let you know more
soon.
Please spread the good
word!
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An
Incredible Total Eclipse
Not news with a
capital "N", perhaps, but definitely something special. You
might want to take a look at the results from a magically
successful eclipse expedition to Romania in August 1999. I
observed with a friend from eastern outskirts of Bucharest.
Another veteran eclipse chaser and friend, Jonathan Kern,
observed several miles to the west of us. We both got
wonderful negatives, using his special custom filters, which
I computer composited and optimized back here. It also is
the cover image (repeated on p. 118) of the November 1999
issue of Sky &
Telescope magazine! I've prepared a report
on our eclipse page that describes some of the unusual
methods we used to obtain some unusually fine images of what
proved to be a particularly gorgeous corona. Any
coronophiles among you will want to take a look.
(Attention
eclipse-virgins: this is about as close to naked-eye view as
you're likely to see anyplace without going to the real
thing.)
The next earlier item is on a sadder
note...
Stanley
Kubrick
(1928
- 1999)
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On Sunday
morning, March 7th 1999, Stanley Kubrick, one of the world's
finest filmmakers, died in his bed of a heart attack. A sad
loss to all of us. I worked with him, composing and
performing much of the music score for
"A Clockwork Orange",
and "The Shining", and
wanted to include on my site some personal memories and
observations of those collaborations.
Read them
HERE.
--Wendy Carlos / April
1999
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Go
Bake a Tape
(or,
Tron lives!)
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There's an
important, and even frightening story behind the scenes of
some of our master tapes, including those for the soundtrack
to Disney's TRON.
Read the whole story
HERE.
--Wendy Carlos / Feb
1999
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