Vangelis's Chung Kuo (Revisited)

For better or for worse, I'm (just) old enough to remember when "mainstream" analog synthesizers were new and mysterious. I can recall an early teenage afternoon at Draper's Music Center in Palo Alto (it's no longer there I'm afraid) making strange and wondrous sounds on a Yamaha CS-80, and marveling at the bulky landscape of sliders and push-buttons. And ever since that time, there's been a permanent place in my sonic heart for fat, analog synth sounds - Wendy Carlos, Isao Tomita and Vangelis providing the bulk of those tones.

Fast forward to today….

I recently purchased a great batch of samples of the Roland VP-330 Plus - one of the greatest Vocoders/String Synths - at Hollow Sun. For those of you who don't already know, besides the Vocoder section (listen to the solo on ELO's Mr. Blue Sky), the VP-330 was one of the main "goto" synths for lush string and faux choir pads. So when I loaded the samples up and hit that big chord… I was suddenly back in time; warm analog string tones pouring out of my speakers. And within a few minutes, I found myself playing the chords to Chung Kuo, by Vangelis. You remember the tune don't you… from the Mecury Lynx commercial from the early 80s? So once I had the chords down, I decide to attempt to recreate the entire song, and that's what I'm presenting to you below.



A few performance notes: This isn't meant to be a 100% note-for-note recreation, but I wanted to capture as much feel of the song as I could using similar tones and "signature" lines from the song. With the exception of the VP-330 samples, the bulk of the analog tones are coming from Applied Acoustics Systems Ultra Analog VST (8 instances). The melody line is played on Ichiro Toda's Synth1 VST.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did making it.

Get your (retro) game on!

Hello again,

This time it's just a short little ditty with a 80s video game type of vibe. I went to the California Extreme "Classic Arcade Games Show" over the weekend and got my retro-geek on.

Enjoy.

PolyKB Blues

Who doesn't love Blade Runner? If you don't... I don't wanna meet ya! ;)

So here is my meager tribute (aka blatant copy) to the music Vangelis wrote for Blade Runner. This one features nothing but the XILS-lab PolyKB VST (5 instances, with the exception of the drums).

So snuggle up to your favorite Replicant, pour a glass of wine and enjoy.

Mission Possible

Once in a blue moon, an opportunity comes up when I get to do some music for my real job. At a recent company function, we had to create a video that had a "Mission Impossible" theme. So rather than use the actuall theme from the TV show, I did a quick redux of the movie version of the theme. If you have headphones, use them... some nice panning fx going on.

Something Dark

Well it's been quite some time since I posted something new, so.... here is something new. A dark little piece that came out recently. I think it was the influence of How To Destroy Angels.

Enjoy.

Smashing Mashup

Hello loyal listeners. This is another one pulled from the archives, dusted off, re-jigged and polished for your listening pleasure: Without You (Eminem vs. Yes). But, there is a small tale behind this one.. so humor me a moment. Sherman, set the wayback machine for 2004...

It was around this time that I became aware of the Mashup scene. Party Ben was in full swing on Live 105 in San Francisco and was churning out some great Mashups (if you don't already know Party Ben, go look him up). Having listened to a few tracks, and spent way too many hours making music with Sonic Foundry's Acid (they owned it before Sony bought them up), I thought I would try my hand at a Mashup.

I got a hold of the acapella to Eminem's "Without Me" and just started to goof around with it. As a joke, I looped a section of the 'pella with a section of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes, thinking that the two songs were so far a part, how silly it would be to join them.

Well... it worked. It worked really well! In fact, the more of the tracks I laid on top of each other, the more they clicked – they had same basic verse-chorus structure underneath. So after a few hours (or was it days) of work, some sample hunting and splicing, I had a really great Mashup.

Back to 2010.

I keep coming back to this mix and cleaning and polishing it every few years. For the 2010 mix, I've re-sliced some of the guitar loops, added some ADT to the lead vocals, adjusted a few levels and toned down the final master compressor.

To this day, this is still one of my favorite tracks I've done to date.

Enjoy!



Techie Stuff – for those that care.

The drum break and "orchestra hit" that Trevor Horn used on the original Yes track is from the song "Kool is Back" by Funk, Inc. I found a copy of the song and spliced those elements back in to the track along side the originals, but without the odd filtering that Horn did.

Trevor Horn was at one time or another a member of The Buggles, The Art of Noise and Yes. He also has produced just about all of Seal's albums.

Ch-Check It Out

Well. It seems that almost 3 months has gone by and nothing new posted. Life for me has been a bit "chaotic" to say the least. I won't bore you with the details, so on to the music, yes?

This is one from the archives. Some time ago, The Beastie Boys decided to upload many of the a cappella versions of their songs to their website - http://www.beastieboys.com/remixer/ - so I took a spin at remixing "Ch-Check It Out" in an somewhat old school style.

So lace up your Adidas and pull out that track suit. Here comes the BASS! Enjoy.