[HN Gopher] Malcolm Cecil, Synthesizer Pioneer, has died
___________________________________________________________________
Malcolm Cecil, Synthesizer Pioneer, has died
Author : mitchbob
Score : 46 points
Date : 2021-04-12 12:21 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| biggieshellz wrote:
| It's a damn shame Stevie never kept his end of the bargain as far
| as producer credits and compensation. (FWIW, I say this as a huge
| Stevie fan.)
|
| From https://www.okayplayer.com/music/stevie-wonder-malcolm-
| cecil...: "The first two albums, Music of My Mind and Talking
| Book, were put out with Stevie paying the bill out of the
| $100,000 he had in his account. We used about $64,000 for both of
| those albums because we were supposed to be creative directors of
| his company. We were trying to keep the cost down, and we weren't
| charging much. We were charging $10 an hour each to Stevie for
| ongoing services, engineering, and because we were under the
| impression that we were going to get percentage points for being
| the creative directors of the company. We figured that we were
| participants and that we were in this together. That's what we
| thought. Of course, that changed, but that was down the line."
|
| On Music of My Mind (the first record they did together), Cecil
| and Margouleff were listed as associate producers. By
| Fulfillingness' First Finale, they were just listed for
| engineering and synth programming. When Stevie won the Grammy for
| Record of the Year for Innervisions, he didn't even mention them
| in his acceptance speech.
|
| Malcolm Cecil later did the same thing for Gil Scott-Heron as he
| did for Stevie, and he got producer credit for _all_ of those
| records.
| dvh wrote:
| If you are into synthesizers check out youtube channel "Look mum
| no computer" and it's side channel "Museum of everything else"
| craig_livpl wrote:
| I just had another listen to Stevie Wonder's Superstition to hear
| TONTO. It's interesting to see the bulk of equipment back then,
| compared to what would be needed now to create the same sounds.
| It's like looking back at those huge computers that had far less
| processing power than the phone in your pocket. But in the right
| hands, wonderful things could be achieved.
| weinzierl wrote:
| _" I just had another listen to Stevie Wonder's Superstition to
| hear TONTO."_
|
| I'd be interested in hints where you hear the TONTO in
| _Superstition_. I know the CBC video _" Meet TONTO, the machine
| behind Stevie Wonder's Superstition"_ claims right in the title
| that the Tonto was used in _Superstition_. Also Bob Margouleff
| once said in an interview: _" We had the drums, Tonto, the
| Clavinets and the Rhodes keyboards set up in the control room,
| and there was always an open mic. Stevie could easily move from
| one instrument to another as he saw fit."_ So Stevie Wonder had
| easy access to it during the production of Superstition.
|
| On the other hand: The Superstition multi tracks have been
| available for a long time and it seems to be established wisdom
| that the 16 tracks are 3 drum tracks, 1 (Moog) bass track, 2
| vocal tracks, 2 horn tracks and 8 Clavinet tracks. The sound of
| the iconic riff, which could easily be mistaken for a synth, is
| definitely a Clavinet - a Hohner Clavinet C according to the
| legend (the bass could easily be mistaken as an electric bass
| guitar, but it _is_ a synth). So, no room for a Tonto. Maybe
| they used it as an effect on the Clav or Moog tracks? Maybe the
| multi track is not authentic and I missed it in the mix of the
| released song?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Tonto is partly an old Moog modular, and partly other
| modulars, including ARP, etc.
|
| So it's reasonable to guess the Moog bass is from Tonto.
| weinzierl wrote:
| That's a good point, especially since Margouleff didn't
| talk about a Moog in the sentence I quoted above, so it
| makes sense that the bass would have been played on the
| Tonto.
| Maursault wrote:
| > it seems to be established wisdom that the 16 tracks are 3
| drum tracks, 1 (Moog) bass track, 2 vocal tracks, 2 horn
| tracks and 8 Clavinet tracks.
|
| There's just no way. The drums themselves need at least 4
| tracks at a _bare minimum_ (stereo pair overhead, snare and
| kick), but far more likely the drums used and preserved 8
| tracks for final mixing (which is relatively standard). An
| engineer simply would not waste 8 of 16 tracks on Clavinet.
| What is more likely is the 8 tracks of Clavinet were indeed
| actually recorded but then bounced down to two tracks (panned
| for stereo), freeing up the remaining 6 tracks for isolation
| of other instruments during mixing.
|
| Scratch 1 track (everything channelled here initially,
| replaced later, so 0 track)
|
| Clavinet 2 track (initially 8, bounced down to 2)
|
| Drums 8 tracks (overhead pair, snare, kick, HH, tom toms,
| floor tom, last for one of bottom of HH or snare or outside
| kick)
|
| Bass (Moog) 1 track
|
| Trumpet 1 track
|
| Sax 1 track
|
| Vocals 2 track
|
| Replacing the scratch leaves 1 track for Tonto, (but it
| sounds to me like the trumpet is doubled, 2 separate tracks
| performed the same, oppositely panned wide).
|
| I simply don't know what to listen for to hear the Tonto.
| eweise wrote:
| Synthesizers are not computers and they haven't shrunk much
| https://www.moogmusic.com/products/moog-modular-systems
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| They aren't digital (at least, they don't have to be) but I
| would argue that an analog synth is an example of an analog
| computer.
| readingnews wrote:
| I think that something is actually lost when we go fully
| digital. Consider, with a real analog synth, one can reach out
| and change pitch, speed, sustain, attack, release, tone, heck,
| the actual waveform, amplitude and frequency, ON THE FLY, with
| more than one pattern. It is not too easy to do that inside a
| computer (e.g with a GUI). It is not the same feel and is
| limiting in nature (I can not click on more than one at a time,
| but I have two hands).
|
| Also, they had quirks that made them more interesting. Your
| digital counterpart will never have a spurious noise or that
| thing that makes your album magical compared to others because
| your Arp Odessy or DMX or 808 had a "problem".
| pierrec wrote:
| You can plug in a USB MIDI controller and assign physical
| controls to any parameter of any plugin in your project. I've
| done it a lot with my BCR-2000, quite the beast with its 32
| encoders, but lots of fun and notoriously used by Daft Punk
| in concerts. I'm actually on the lookout for something more
| portable now, I find I usually end up focusing on fewer than
| 10 controls.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Or how the sound from the noise generators would slightly
| change depending on the ambient temperature affecting the
| analog circuitry.
| poof_he_is_gone wrote:
| Or the pitch. Using an analog synth on stage without a
| consistent power supply could be a nightmare.
| biggieshellz wrote:
| Yup. As someone who has gigged an (original) ARP Odyssey,
| I can attest that this is indeed the case, even with a
| consistent power supply!
| NobodyNada wrote:
| You can get a hardware MIDI controller for super cheap: an
| array of button, knobs, and faders that you can map to
| whatever software functions you want:
| https://www.korg.com/us/products/computergear/nanokontrol2/
|
| But of course those have their downsides too: a panel of
| identical, nondescript, unlabeled knobs can be confusing
| during a live performance; some software doesn't react well
| to changing synth parameters mid-note; and I have found that,
| for whatever reason, my MIDI controller tends to have just
| enough latency to be annoying.
|
| > Your digital counterpart will never have a spurious noise
|
| Well, I've definitely had spurious noises with digital
| equipment...but software malfunctions don't exactly tend to
| sound magical.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| There is no reason that we can't program digital synthesizers
| so that they have problems or degrade over time like their
| analog counterparts.
|
| People prefer things to work perfectly, though.
|
| I also agree with your point about the hands on control of
| analog synthesizers but it has to do with the user interface,
| not the method of sound creation.
|
| An analog synth controlled through digital GUI would suck to
| use just as much as a VST does.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-13 23:01 UTC)