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REVIEWS' TEISCO SX.4OO POLYSYNTH* ARIA TS-4OO GUITAR * TC EFFECTS* MOVEMENT DRUM COMPUTER* BEYER MICS 8 SOUNDCHASER* CASIOTONE CT-7OI* PLUSOTHERS

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IruNGERLNEDREAM

Tangerine Dream at the Hammersmith Odeon, London.

Christoph Franke during their recent UK tourAn interuiew with Edgar Froese and

angerine Dream was formed in1967 by Edgar Froese, whoderived the name from 'Sgl. Pep-

per', and initially started as a powerfuland unpredictable rock band. Froese'sexposure to modern contemporary andelectronic music made him determinedto go beyond conventional modernmusic of the time. Despite a strongUnderground following, TD was notexactly a commercial success, reform-ing twice for short periods. Then in1969 Klaus Schulze (drums) and ConnySchnitzler (cello, violin and flute) joinedFroese to make the group's first LBElectronic Meditation in 1970, thatconsisted of tape sounds and experi-mental effects. Soon after, ChristophFranke (known for his jazz drumming)and then Steve Shroyder joined Froeseto make'Alpha Centauri'in 1971. PeterBaumann then replaced Shroyder toreform TD with Froese and Franke forthe next six years.

A whole series of albums followed:Zeit representing their furthest depar-ture from rock, yet coinciding withUltima Thule Parts 7 and 2 thatcertainly was rock; Atem marked thegroup's move from Ohr Records to theBritish 'Virgin' Record Company;Phaedra which reached the Top Ten inthe UK without much airplay, pressinterviews or British tour - this soonfollowed with performances in almost

Edgar's mainkeyboard console.

total darkness! An Australian tour in '75put Michael Hoenig standing in forBaumann and brought many equip.ment problems in transit.

From L977 some preconceivedstructure in live performances wasused and TD gave a notorious perfor.mance at Rheims Cathedral and otherunusual venues such as CoventryCathedral, Liverpool Cathedral, YorkMinster and the Royal Albert Hall. Twofurther albums Rubycon and Ricochetemerged, the latter recorded live withthe group's sound output often reach-ing 130d8. Then Stratosfear employedrecognisible instruments and melod-ies, and a North American tour intro-duced laser effects.

Next came Sorcerer film music and

Edgar Froese.

shortly after Baumann left the band topursue a solo career. Froese and Frankestill remained the nucleus of TD, andadded Steve Jollifer (vocals, keyboardsand wind instruments) and Klaus Krie-ger (drums) to record Cyclone. 1979highlighted solo projects and experi-mentation, despite the more traditionalForce Majeur. ln February 1980, TDbecame the first Western rock groupever to play live in East Germany, joinedby Johannes Schmoelling who remainscurrent third member of the trio.Tangram, Thief and Exit have sincebeen recorded and the latter shows yetanother side to the music of TangerineDream, who continue to pursue theirinnovative production of electronicmusic.

N

JANUARY 1982 E&MM44

Tangerine Dream

Christoph's keyboards.

I nstru me ntsEdgar: We get hardware mainly f romAmerica and Japan and the instruments areadapted by our engineers to our specifications. lhave a number of keyboardsincluding the OB-X, PPG Wave Computer 1 &2, various Arp equipment, and four custombuilt sequencers made in Germany. I alsoplay guitar and I use various instruments in-cluding Fender and Gibson. I don't reallyneed to use gu itar synthesisers as we have thekeyboards. I like to work with the RolandMC 8 Micro Composer and TR808 drummachine. These are some of the instrumentsI use regularly, although we do have lrnkswith most of the synthesiser producingcompanies who supply us with new equip-ment from time to time.

Christoph Franke.

For this present tour, I play one largekeyboard rack containing the PPG2, PPG1,Korg Polyphonic Ensemble (which I use onlyfor strings), and the Arp Pro-Soloist. There isalso a Conn Strobe Tuner for matchingprtches. To my right I operate the SoundcraftSeries 1S 20 rnto 4 mixer which takesboth keyboard and guitar signals. For theguitar, whrch is a Gibson on thrs tour, I havean lbarrex UE400 Multr Effects unit and anMXR Digital Delay. The lbanex effects arecontrolled by a foot swrtch box with com-pressor/ phaser / distortron/ chorus/flangerand I setthe guitarvolumewrth a Boss pedal

The new sequencer unrt on a large standbehrnd me was burtt br Helrnui Grcthe. anlhas 1058 steps 'c. a,aE.er- -i ::r.-:.:,::ages z^=:. g;e.s ,',i -3.: a s,s:e.-:*a:

e na bles a ny one of us to send control triggersto the others. So f rom one piece to the nextwe would alternate 'control' responsibility.There are two 6" TV display screens in theinstruments for checking out memory allo-cations and control f unction settings, alongwith numeric LED displays in each sectionthat indicate mode selection, multiplesequences, tuning, program parameters,random note selection, routing and furthersequence storage. Some of the ppG softwarei_s also here, and there's a Grundig StereoCassette which we use for setting up, but notin performance. ln front of the sequencerunit is a PPG 61 note keyboard which is usedto program the note seqllences.

lncidentally, we don't work with voices atall. Any sounds you hear resemblrng voicesare usually from the PPGs. Each of us has amixer to balance individual sounds and wehave a monitor mix (which we hear throughthe foldback speakers on stage) and themarn PA 'out front' mix for the audience.Sometimes we do put everythingtogether ona two track mix down and like to be totallyopen about the way we balance the sounds.For instance, at one concert we startedrmprovrsing totally without any sort ofagreement On the next night we might bet,reo from a long lourney and use our:orlers ,vhrch we walk along' to bring the

'-1 -SrC tcgether

E&MM JANUARY r982

Tangerine Dream

Eesides the new presentatlo n and equip-ment used by Tangerine Dream, what is newabout the music?Fdgan lt's now much more structured. Thatdoesn't mean we .have forgotten how toimprovise. We can still do both - we can sitand structure the music as we want to playand yet we can still maintain our individualidentity gained throughout the years. Thewhole idea of TD was to just sit down and tryto perform a creative piece of electronicmusic. Butonethingwe haveall had toagreeto is the jump froh anatogue to dieitit tocomputer equipment. Of course, one has tobe much more aware of the contrrollingabilities as well as the sounds. You can't justsay 'let's drift away and let the hardwarework'. Therefore we now have to structuremuch more carefully.Chris: I use the rack mounted modularsystem behind me for most of the short

repeating sequences and electronic drumsounds. A lot of it is Moog and containsvarious synthesiser modules (some of whichwe don't use in performance any more). lnaddition, there's a brand new digital sequen-cer and trigger selector which I designedwith a 16 step, 64 program capability. Thegreat thing about it is that it runs like ananalogue sequencer, even though it hasdigital storage and can be continuouslymodified in performance. Linked to it is itsown programmer and synth sound bank.There are more synthesiser modules fromProjekt Elektronik (ptus one EMU Oddityyoice card, PPG filters and SequentijlCircujts sequencer) as well as drum voicingboards with VCO, noise, ring mod and EGs.Projekt Elektronik is a company that pro-duces scientific instruments generally andmakes music equipment only for us.

for slightly modifying time delays as well aspitch.

At home in my 24track studio, I use theMC-8 and I'm building my own editingsystem with a large comouter. capable ofwriting a three hour program with 10 millionbyte storage. Edgaralso has a24trackstudioin his home, giving us 48 tracks in alll

Some people think rhat we are technic-it.xi::liiiiianS aS weII aS muSIcIans. but we conCgn-iiii:li:lii';:ii,.,.i.ii:;

iifftrate on the music ano only tearn tneiiiiffi

-ls6finical operating requrrements for us to-

f ully exploit our instrurrer:sEdgar: Johannes uses ar.tother sequencersimilar to mine behind hrrr and has the OB-Xand MiniMoog synthesrsers ,n front. Mixingis done through a Boss K['t.80 6 rnto 2mixer,with an MXR Digitat Deta; and Korg WT-12Chromatic Tuner comp g! r! nrS irne-up.

CommentsEdgar: Now that you can Duy r€Ft sophisti-cated instruments that 1'r.are done all thework for you in creating a rar1€ of sounds, itis easy for musicians not iJ ]c:her to inventtheir own. (For exampte, re ^ave been toldthat 90% of Oberheim,' Prc,prisl synths comeback for service with the or g -,a programs inthem.) They do go for rhe scund rn the firstplace, but only 10 or 20:: :r lne way!Chris: There is this gap be:'reen 'synthesist'and 'keyboard player'. !t'e f rs some peoplehave the ability to create ne,,r scunds whilstothers have the ability to p a, lhem.

The analogue sequencers from Mooghave 64 steps and switches for semitones,step (1-12) division, two control voltages ofswitchable 12 semitones, five octaves, twoti m e cont ro I I ers a nd ei ght se lect triggers. Six

lows o! separate pots derive control voltagesfor VCF, VCAs etc. We use one volt peroctaveCVs and have various interface units tomatch up to this and use 15 volt triggersthroughout the systems. Gate lengths ofeach note can be altered and notes can havea delayed trigger which can take away someof the 'machine-like' feel that the sequen-cers produce. I have two random generators

Eco

@EQ9ffi9

Front stage

TANGERINE DREAM EQUIPMENTEdgar Froesel. PPG I Computer2. PPG Wave 2 Synthesiser3. ARP Pro-DGX Synthesiser4. Korg Polyphonii Ensembte5. Custom Sequencer6a. lbanez UE-400 Multi-Effects6b. Foot controt (qf above)7. MXR Digitat Detay8. Boss Volume Pedal9. Conn Strobo Tuner

10. Soundcraft Series tS 20 into 4 MixerIt. PPG 5 octave Keyboard/ControllerL2. Gibson Guitar13. Foldback speakers, etc.

Chris Franke14. MiniMoog Synthesiser15a. Elka Rhapsody15b. Prophet 516. Arp Oddyssey

17a. Moog Osc/R.M./VCFIVCAs17b. Projekt Elektronik VcEnv x2

& Proj. Elek. 2V CO /W. Noise/ R. M.,/Waves(for Drums)

17c. PPG VCF High/Low/Band x217d. Digital Sequencer & Trigger Setector (16x16)I7e. Programmer (for above)17f. Synth Sound bank (for above)179. Roland SPV/35517h. Triggerlgate matching panel.18a. Moog 960 Sequential Controller18b. Proj. Elek. Sequence Controller18c. Moog VCF Random Trigger & Reset System

for 960.18d. Moog 930 Voltage Store Units18e. Moog 3-Band Parametric18f. Moog 12 Stage Phaser18g. Tape lnterfacel9a. Moog 960 Sequentiat Controiler19b. Proj. Elek. Sequence Controllerl9c. Moog 920 Programmer

19d. Moog 930 Voltage store unir19e. Moog 16 Channel Vocoder19f. Klark Technik DN27 Grapn c EQ20a. Drum Envelope Unit20b. Drum EPROM Sampled sounds2Oc. Phillips PM3207 Dual Trace Oscilloscope20d. Rhythm Robot Sequencer20e. Boss KM-60 6 into 2 Mrxer20t Roland SRE-555 Chorus Echo20g. Link Panel2Oh. 12 Analogue Drum Sounds20i. Klark Technik DN36 Time Processor2I. Foldback speakers. erc.

Johannes Schmoelling22. Oberheim OB-X23. MXR Digital Delay24. Korg Tuner25. MiniMoog26. Boss KM.60 6 into 2 Mixer27. Custom Sequencer28. Foldback speakers, etc.

46JANUARY 1982 E&MM

MNGERLNE

"CHORONZON" from'EXIT' LP

This exciting piece is a good example of the new Tangerine Dream music and will be a rewarding chailengefor any electro-mqlician to play. Every note of music is given, along with sound etfect suggestions for you toexperiment with. This type of electronic music is based on repeated sequences that are faded in and out -in fact there are five 'note groups' for DRUMS (D), BASS (B), SEQUENCE 1 (Sl), SEQUENCE 2 (S2),and POLYSYNTH (P) that could be recorded continuously throughout the piece on separate tape tracks andsimply faded in or out as shown on the score. Only two further tracks remain: EFFECTS (E) and MONOSYNTHtheme (M). Thus the piece is suitable for an eight-track recorder (e.g. Fostex) or it can be'layered on to afour-track (e.g. Teac) or bounced across two stereo machines. (e.g. Sony, Revox, etc.). For simplicity, whenevera note group is repeated, it is labelled with its letter code instead of being written out. This is quite normal whencomposing and leaves room for EFFECTS, MONO theme and any other new music that is'used. Do listen to thistrack on the EXIT LP and study the way sounds blend together - the balance is important, although you mayprefer to try your own mix. Because it is possible to learn one part at a time (merely a few bars), iishouldnot be difficult for a music reader to enjoy Tangerine Dream's world of electronic music

o1981 Transcription by Mike Beecher. Reproduced by kind permission of Edgar Froese and Chris Franke.

E&MM JANUARY 1982

Edgar Froese. Christoph Franke. Johannes Schmoelling.

47

Tangerine Dream's "CHORONZON" from 'EXIT' LPYou'll needtostudythe musicwiththistrackfrom 'Exit' LP Virgin Y2212. ln addition, a

sample interpretation is played on Cassette5 minus the theme for you to practice with.

NOTE GROUPS:

?--_SEQUENCE (St)

+r+BASS (B)

POLYSYNTH (P)

SEQUENCE (Sz)

t Short cyrnbal (or white noise \ )2 Brush on S.D. - closedhi-hat top3Low Torn-TorntBass Drum

DRUM (D)

MUSIC:

f o- D

-

D D-D-D-D-D- D--

& VCA. Pan left)

Poly or MonoBass

sl-

D- D__

sl-

Guitar/ Mono (Neg. glide)

D- D-

(l,toNosrNTn THltME)

sl

-

Poly

D D- D- D- D-- D- D

CI 1981 Transcription by Mike Beecher. Reproduced by kind permission of Edgar Froese and Chris Franke.

JANUARY 1982 EaVfr,r48

An Original Electro'Music Transcription

ty(i44 :1tr as !g!ore)

Guitar/ Synth glide . Voice (aah) ad lib. (or PPG'$/ave 2)(Monosynth)

fr---=-*o

Poly glide *>\-- --=- i--- )--- phasg rnodulation

D- D D- D- D- D- D ff

Hands on polysynth, clirnbing at randorn

" (#;J# D

sl_sz

-E

th fuLl reslilhitelnoise "r,". lt- shape

D- D-- D- D- D_---- D- D-

O 198f Transcription by Mike Beecher. Reproduced by kind permission of Edgar Froese and Chris Franke.

E&MM JANUARY 1982 49

"cHoRoNZON"

p p _____VtTherne

asD- D- D DD D:

+

sl-sz_

D--

PPG,ad Lib over Em

sustainedD

-- D-

f=\---

D- D- D-- D- D-- D_.-_- D- D_- D-

F--=- t--=\ Poly slide (portamento) with full resonanceI noise lose LPF VCA

D D D- D- D ---FADE OUT SEQUENCES

o 1981 Transcription by Mike Beecher. Reproduced by kind permission ol Edgar Froese and chris Franke.

JANUARY 1982 E&MM

f-..-....-.-.-.- r.---=- l-==- .==.---

Dt

s1--s2_

sl_-P---sl_s2_

sl_Poly/Monosl_--s2_

sl ------- sl __s2-.-

sl_ sl_s2_

* White noiseE Sl-- n fiLter pan left/

ght with echo/verb increasins to en

50

Tangerine Dream

Johannes' keYboards.

We dlscus sed how the non'musician isoften able to come up with sorne extraordin-ary sounds by a differentthought process tothe musician - many Young PeoPle inschoo/s are now getting the opportunity intheir music c/asses to do thls.Edgar: Through the centuries, we have beentold what good music is and how we shouldplay it. People never had the personalexperience to be creative in making soundsto find out what music, besides all thetraditions, could be. The last l0 years haveshown us the possibility to create things, notjust to overtake it from the past. My belief is

that the young teenagers could bethefirsttostep into this new approach to musicmaking.

We have seen something that links withthis happening on our tours. On one suchtour recently, we were gettingthe'Superstar'kind of image as we were esborted from oneplace to the next. But we wanted the contactwith our audience and so we fired ourmanagers and did the tour on our own withthe help of a few friends. After the gig, we

wrote autographs and met people as we

wanted - but what astonished us was thatthe people were so young, around age 15 andhardly any older than about 22. Certainly,there is no awe attached to these machineswe play for the youngster. in the way we feftwhen we began - and that means thatyoung people will approach the electro-music of the future wrth an open mind

TD have a reputation for playing loud.Edgan That's right, but we don't have

distortion and the signal is clear. We never

listen to very loud signals on stage throughthe foldback speakers.

Certainly the TD sound covers a very widegamut of dynamics, from the quietestwhisper to (if you're sltting a few rows fromthe front!) the /oudest piercing penetratingsoundwaves.Edgar: We don't use as much classicalma-terial as we have done from time to timein the past. But we do want to keep theclassical 'dynamics', because this is one ofthe most important aspects of any musicmaking. The presence of strong rhythm in

our pieces has in some countries, such as

Spain and America, brought the audiencesto their feet to dance to the music.

Johannes has been part of the newTDfornearly two years.Edgar: Yes - we are very pleased with hiscontribution and also our efforts working as a

group. You know, what splitthe band three orfour years ago was purely the social aspect.For example, Peter Baumann had a totallydifferent attitude about spending his money,and since we invest about 9O'95o/o of ourprofits back into getting new equipment, itwas an important factor.

One of the most complicated tasks for TDhas always been the fading out of one partofthe music whilst fadrng rn the next one, lt's amost complicated physrcal' aural functron.It's easy to stop and start sequences but theskiil lies in fadrng rn and out. learnrng how toput a cluster underneath. how to fade ln a

new sequence, how to build bridges, how tokeep the dynamics, how to explain to eachother the structure of a prece and then to be

able to carry out these procedures withoutany mistakes in half a minute.

It was very difficult when Johannes f irstcame with us. Remember, it took Chris andme about six years to work out things withPeter Baumann. We realise how fortunatewe've been to be able to work togeth€r asequals who contribute to the music com-posing, structure, interfacing and manipula-tion of the instruments in performance.When we split with Peter, we could havecontacted many respected musiciansacross the world, but no-one would havefitted into the band. There were a lot of bignames wanting to join us, but we ended uptaking an absolute unknown musician whoworked as a souRd engineer in a Berlintheatre.

Setting up andpresentation

The newTD layouton stage is impresslve,yet economically well planned. Each playersits at the keybbards and.can easily manipu'/ate sequences and other control functionsfrom one position. There is, of course, thedanger of becoming too statlc so that visualinterest is not maintained, butsomehowthisis never the case and although the laserlighting has been dropped and a more orlesssiandard light show remains, a feeling ofspace is created by the perspective of theoverhead scaffolding and see-through netcurtains. On the recent U.K. tour, at Ham'mersmith Odeon, London, one of thesecurtains spanned the entire front of stage sothat you always 'looked through', and theback-projected lighting cast effectiuermages across it.

Havtng seen the Revox tape machine inoperation during the Coventry CathedralConcert te/evised sorne years ago, I waslnterested to f ind out thatit was merely usedfor echo effects and did not contain effectsor music tracks at all.Edgar: We never suspected that anyonewould think we were using a backingtape. Of

course, digital delays now replace the tapemachines.Chris: The effects we use comprise theusual delays, flangers and equalisers. I stillhave five Electro- Harmonix'Big Muff' distor-tion boxes on each of the mono outputs f romthe Prophet 5. lt gives it an amazing'digital'flavour. The 'Big Muff is the only fuzz boxthat I like with synthesisers, because itworkswell on the overtones without producing toomuch distortion.

ln the past TD used curtains with laserlighting projection on them, but it was too

One of the newsequencer sYstemsused by Edgar andJohannes.

E&MM JANUARY 1982 51

Tangerine Dream

expensive to keep on bringing new ideas outwith this equipment. So we are trying thegauze now to prdduce more three-dimen-sional depth. lf you use lasers, you arerestricted to the creativity of the controller,the lackof sufficient rehearsaltime, and alsothe high cost of the equipment.

The m'ixing desk for the audience sound(a Soundcratt32 into 8 Selies 800) is placedat the back of the auditorium along with the[igh'ting desk. J BL,/Gauss spedkeria're usbdin the 6000 watt PA and part of the stack isflown when necessary. We used to useelectronic links tp control the light directly,but now we rely ci6 tne operator to synchron-ise with the music.

ComposingEdgan The composition of our electronicmusic. is a long process that first involvessetting up the equipment in the way we wantit to interface - that takes 6O-7OVo of ourtime and includes the tuning, etc. We've gotquite a good systemtofind outourgood daysfor composing the music. A few days fromtime to'time are totally forgettable to workwith, so we look atthe biorhythmic aspectsofea'ch of us and find that some days, althoughwe feel we can do something, our sub-conscious has ilosed dqwnand whateverwedo the results are no good at all.Chris: What we are suggesting is thatto writeour music, over the years we have foundways of putting ourselves in a state of rnindthat ehables us to compose. Some peopleusg meditation, and othefs will receivetriggers al most subconsciously.E{gar: I never think that 'l am doingsomething'. I always'think 'l do it withmyselT', which is a completely differentaspect.

We don't meet every day. The composi-tional ideas sometimes come froh doodlingat a session, other times we have the ideawhich can be d musical theme or structuralframework and we need to develop this.Theqe are always times when somethinghappens by chance, especially when intei-faci rig instruments together.

We alreaby have pldns for linking ourstudios by telephone datalink through amodem. But, of course, it is very importantthat we mentally interact together on a pieceand don't just pass a tape over for the nextperson to work on. So there are three mainfactors playing their pirt in our composi-tions. First,. our way of composing is yerypersonal. Secondly, we need to-interactemotionally to the piece, and finally we needto transfer ideas and program data.

Johannes is stil{ learning our.ways and at

Jofannes Schmoellingat the soundcheck.

Edgar and Chris at the soundcheck.

this time is in the process of gettingclosertobecoming a third part of the band in terms ofinvolvement.

There is a much wider dimension in ourmusic than simply making use of sequen-ces. One LP can never embrace our range ofmusical experience and experimentation.There are a lot of times when we'll make asequencer orientated piece, then others willstart with drum and bass lines. Our variedbackgrounds also help to make differentpieces and often we'll simply try to paint apicture in sound. For example, at the begin-ning of December we've got a concert for TVgoing out all over Europe lnd we gained a lotof our inspiration by going to the Picasso artexhibition in London.

Prior to their latest LP, Tangerine Dreambrought out their film music for'Thief' (nowentitled 'Violent Streets' and on generalrelease in the U.K.) composed in J980.Edgar commented that itenabted himto buya lot of computerised equipment. And so iemoved on to Tangerine Dream's /atestrecording.

'Exit' LPEdgar: lt's the last record of a decade for TD.Whatever we release will not be that sort ofTD anymore. lt will be a total change, and ithas nothing to do with our not usingsequencers in thewaywe do. We simplywantto risk a bit more in life. Most successfulbands thesei days buy big houses and so on

- rather than risk experimenting furtherafield with their music, but I think once inyour life it's worth taking that chance.

We discussed the six pieces of Exitinturnand both Edgar and Chris diversified aroundthe muslc make-up.Kiew MissionEdgar: The basis of this piece came fromimprovising for some 172 hours and out ofthis we took aboutfive minutes of music. The

pening collage of sounds with the gongwasryadded later. The'f requency modulated'gongis actually made on our Synclavier (which wekeep in the studios at present), and the pinknoise output is controlled by one of thedigital sequencers, Our instruments inperformance for any of the pieces are notnecessarily the ones we used for the LP. Oristage we now use the PPG2 and theMiniMoog pink noise.

The drum rhythm is the same for everybar of the piece - oftenthecase on the otherfracks as well - but without consclous/yanalysing the drums alone it's certainly notevident in the music and has none of t'hemonotonous feel that home organ rhythmunits can produce.Chris: Our drum part does not play the samerole as in the rock band - it merely supportsthe music at the appropriate places. We havea number of 'clock' oscillators that give thedrums' pre-programmed tempo. We alsb setup tempos for the triggers that control thesequencers with pre-programmed oscilla-tors linked to digital counters.

Once the sequencers are running, themelodic parts and the sound effects for thepieces are interchanged amongst the threeof us. Since allthe instruments can becomethe bass or monophonic melody and mostcan be polyphonic, there rs plenty of scopefor experiment. 0n stage. each person wouldknow the part he hadto play inthe piece, andthis is where the pre-defined structuring isimpoftant to create the required balance,but within that framework there is freedomto improvise and experiment.Edgar: The words in this piece are Russian -we have manyfribnds in Russia and it's a sortof message forthe peace movement, againstNuclear Power. The words are spoken by anactress from Berlin.

The sonorous synthesise r bell effecfscomg f rom a PPG2 and the make-up of thepiece highlights another extremely impor-tant aspect of TD music: the sequence endsbefore you become tired of it. (Consider thenumber of experimental etectronic musicrecordinls you've. heard that seem to say itall in a few moments, yet ptaugh on for thewhole slde.)Edgar: Don't forget one thing, working it outon record is totally different to doingthe liveconcert. All the adjustments we havetodo inthe live conceit make it much morecomplicated and even if you want to press aparticular knob, it's so easy to miss it in acertain bar or press another, so that thesequencers are slipping out of sync, and thepiece then develops in a slightly differentway.Chris: When we record a piece, it is sometime before we are able to put it on stage.Some parts can be very difficult to set up inreal time.Edgar: ln the studio, I have an editingfacilitythat shows me the notes I play as llmimprovising. Afterwards, if we find some-thing interesting, all the notes are there forus to play. We don't follow the old fashionedway of writing down everything exactly. Wememorise our parts for the keyboards andmy guitar in performance' and that, ofcourse, implies knowing the control settingsrequired as well as the notes. lf any writing isdone, it's in the alphanu meribal code

JANUARY 1982 E&MM52

Part of the PA stack that delivers 5000 watts ofelectronic music.

tHsrirdi,fcii

speakers.Mucfr of the rnaterial ffis rlevr to rne ard

displayd the sort of seamless cohererrethat o*e has corne to expect from this gmrp-More than that, the frequently-rnalign€d stdofi-irnitated textures that TD spin out *ithsuch effortiess skill create real exciternent'even thougi: occasienally the musb colrr€s

required by the computer system in use.Once the information is stored in thecomputer, we don't have to recall it again. Wedefine semitones, octaves and even 100thsof a semitone (micro and macro !ones).

Many of the sounds on the LP as a wholeare of the same characterand therefore helpto amalgamate the pieces together. General-ly, the pieces on the album have no directlink to each other apart from being writtenwithin the same time period. ln the past, wehave put together all the pieces for an LP inthe space of a few weeks and then there is anobvious feeling of aff inity from one piece tothe next.Chris: Because there are only three'of us, wehave to program a lot of the sequencesto runthemselves, once they are started, through-out a piece (as in Choronzon). That'swhyourmusic is much more complex than four orfive years ago.

A 'sequencer' is perhaps not the rightword anymore - I now call it a 'consequen-cer' becausea sequencer means really justarepeated group of notes - but often ourlayers are long and don't repeat within apiece.

i.i.rc*iiiiil,+g;iilif*,lji],:ill

Tangerine Dream

Coming back to the flrst plece, theinteresting string unison that arrives in themiddle cornes from the Prophet. But onceagain, actual instruments are not too impor-tant - i t's the character of the sound that isinteresting. The track is dominated by thesound of digital PPG waveform shaping,which was a new sound for the group at thetime. The 64 waveform scan can make atremendously rich harmonic sound with nolack of high frequencies that is oftennoticeable in analogue LPF sysfems, (fhePPG Wave 2 was reviewed in detail in E&MMJuly 1981 and is a/so on demo CassetteNo. 3.)

The piece ends with a reference to theopening theme and fades away to end.Edgar: We had to do this on the recordbecause of the time factor and we preferredto fade out rather than add a poor endingpoint - it was a compromise, and we don'tlike to do it.Pilots of Purple Twilight

fhis uses iust one sequence runningthrough the piece. Thewaythe music beginshalf way through the bar gives a fascinatingstarf to the rhythms and it takes a while toorientate yourself to what is happening. TheOB-X is the sound maker except for the'bleep' melody line later, produced on theWave 2.Edgar: A lotof the melodic lineswecomposeare more easily played directly on thekeyboard. 0ther complex sounds lend them-selves to sequencer treatment, but if youwan: io add accents it is better done(\arJa'y rn pedormance. The best thinga3c-i tne sequencer is that it f rees you from:.e noies to concentrate on tonala o j- sime nts

Choronzonfne noise effects come from the Mini-

Moog. Edgar pointed out that a lot of theeffects TD do are much simpler than youimagine! Chris could not recallthe notes ofthe sequence as this was programmed sometime ago and so I have made an approxima-tion that fits in suitably on the printed muslc.The electronic drum start is unusualfor TDand reminded me of a recent Ultravoxconcert where nearly allthe pleces started inthis way.

The polyphonic glide is done on theOberheim and the main theme is played onthe MiniMoog using two osci//ators. We

agreed that synthesiser sounds never needbe static - they canalwaysbechangingandthis makes e/ectronic music much moreacceptable in the long term.

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E&MM JANUARY 1982 53

Tangerine Dream

Edgar Froese.

Chris: As far as panning is concerned, it'snicer if you see a spectrum where you seeevery instrument sitting instead of walkingaround in a field! That's why we do not use itvery often except for one or two eff ects suchas noise sweeps.Edgar: Maybe one secret in the way we mix orrecord music in general isthat wedon'tthinkof panning a sound in a single movement,but move the colour of the sound. There's adifferent sort of feel this way - for example,the same signal can be derived on the PPG2in stereo but with completely differenttonalqualities that can be panned from left toright.

The voice sound on this track is again thePPG (Preset no. 60!). The PPG slap sound inthe middle piece comes from the MiniMoogwith envelope two working on the oscillatorto make a sudden sweep down in pitchwithin 10 milliseconds, so you are just leftwith the sound movement. The resonance isincreased, but not enough to put the filterinto oscillation as a resultingsinetone wouldbe too weak. The two oscillators are set to apulse wave with noise added. The reverbthatfollows the effect is done with two EMT platesin the studio, but on stage if we do have toadd anything to the hall acoustics, we usethe AKG BX-15 or BX-20.

That led to us questioningthe use of echo

and reverb on certain instruments and noton others.Edgar: Where have these rules come from?They are just a fashion - one producer'sgood for four or five records and thensomeone else takes over!Ghris: We produce allthe material forour LPsourselves - right down tothe final mixdown.So really the studio itself becomes aninstrument for us.

(You can play the Choronzon piece fromthe music in this issue.)

Exitfhis is a smoothly prformed piecewith a

floating quality that is pushed gently alongby the repeated two bar two-note sequenceand 'spiked' bass sound. There's a tapereversal effect at the starl which is a cymbalbackwards and Edgar calls the filter sweeps'sp/ashes'. Once again a very strongtheme isplayed on the Pft which appearsfourtimesThe syncopation is very preclse and givesthe subt/e move away f rom the beat fhat is afeature of TD music. lt ts derived from Chrisand Edgar's likingfor mdern jazz. The fastrunning notes up and down tn the nextstageof the piece are made on the PPGLSequencer with a random reset pointse/ected by Edgar durrng recording to give afree feeling. As the rnusrc rnoyes on, realthunder sounds are treated with flangingand phasing.Edgar: We love to use natural elementsagainst our electronic sounds and asa resultwe don't actually perform this piece onstage. Some effects suc['r as this do restrictus from playing several preces lrve, althoughfor example, we now do the reversed cymbaleffect on the MiniMoog.Chris: ln our performances we don't play toomany pieces - our program rs rn two partslasting around 45 minutes each (plus twoplanned encores!).

The piece ends with treated 'rain'wash-ing away the music.Network 23

Treated sampled sounds reveal a steadytempo with ringing filtered notes and apasslng 'seagull' effect. Once again thefiltered single sequence dominates, until asplit channel (left and right) three note motifoverfakes, with i nteresti ng interjections fromflute-like and other echoing sounds. Panned'seagull'flies past, with plyphonic chordsanticipating the beat and'voice'PPG soundscrying out. Finally, the Eass Drum is notice-able as the music fades away.Remote Viewing

Here's a different sound altogether, withethereal blends of strings, voice images andad lib beats. A more ominous mix of soundsbrings metallic PPG nofes and continuousfades of other layers that eventually becomea single flute. Behind the flute hangs threerepeated sequences and an octaye bassquaver group. As the flute whistles ameandering melody with vibrato, maracasshake semiquavers gently The volumegradually increases as ofher PPG soundsimprovise over the rhythmic seguences andthe bass changes imperceptibly. Backcomes the flute to c/ose.Mike Beecher E&MM

JANUARY 1982 E&MM