[HN Gopher] Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" synth sounds
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Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" synth sounds
Author : daverol
Score : 194 points
Date : 2022-07-09 18:43 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reverbmachine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (reverbmachine.com)
| taylorius wrote:
| I'm surely in a minority, but I couldn't stand that song when it
| came out, and I haven't changed my opinion. That said, I love
| most of Kate Bush's work.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Everyone already probably knows this, but if you search <Song
| Name> acapella or <song name> isolated vocals on youtube you can
| get the vocals to songs you want to cover. Sometimes its the
| original isolated, but sometimes its just someone singing it.
| I've been having a lot of fun with Reverbmachine's Legends bank
| and vocals from youtube. Eurythmics Sweet Dreams for example.
|
| On a tangent, when I was in prison my mom died, and Kate Bush was
| her favorite music. Also in prison as a coping mechanism I
| created my own superstition that music on the radio was a message
| for me (I know it isn't but I needed a way to just get a little
| space to breath). Like Tom Petty meant the the day was going to
| turn out ok. So I programmed myself to be super receptive to Kate
| Bush being popular again and it's been amazing for my mood and
| productivity. Programming little positive things into my makeup
| has been really important in getting through stuff, be it
| addiction or just day to day difficulties.
| sthatipamala wrote:
| I have nothing to add on the synth/music aspect, but thank you
| for sharing your personal story. The idea of programming your
| mind to get through tough times really resonated with me.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| It's actually been a super great tool because it randomly
| breaks me out of the moment/pattern I'm in. If a song comes
| on it snaps me out of any bad loop and I have space to
| remember it's just a bad day not a bad life.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| You might be interested in Meta's Demucs, which can split a
| song into drums, bass, vocals and other stems. It's really very
| impressive, I can't quite believe such results are possible!
|
| https://github.com/facebookresearch/demucs
|
| You can try it out at
| https://huggingface.co/spaces/akhaliq/demucs if you don't want
| to install it. If you google "source separation" there are a
| bunch of hosted services which mostly use either Demucs or
| Spleeter (which was an earlier, good but not as good, system
| from Deezer)
| themitigating wrote:
| Songs are also composed of each instrument on a single audio
| track and they are sometimes distributed
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Oh yeah of course, but in my experience it's quite rare for
| these multi-tracks to end up online. Demucs can in many
| cases extract an acappella which would be good enough to
| make a remix with (of course using ML trickery, so it's not
| going to be the actual real acappella and might have some
| leakage from other sounds in the track etc.)
| ROTMetro wrote:
| These tools are awesome, I have iZotope RX which also does a
| version of this, but when I'm in the music flow grabbing
| something off of youtube vs firing up another piece of
| software can be more conducive creatively for me.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Yeah makes sense! I'm sure we will start to see this
| integrated into the next generations of a lot of music
| making software with it being open source. FWIW Demucs
| sounds a lot better than the RX separation (which I think
| uses Spleeter, could be wrong) to my ears - it doesn't have
| any of that mushy "low bitrate" kind of sound, it's much
| crisper
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I wonder how hard it would be to write a Max4Live device
| that wraps this? That would be awesome, have the original
| track in my project for reference, and have a Max4Live
| device generate isolated stems of the different parts.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| I thought about the exact same thing when I first saw
| Spleeter and it turned out someone had already done it:
| https://github.com/diracdeltas/spleeter4max
|
| Looks like the meat of this is using a JS script to
| invoke Spleeter using execSync so it might be quite
| simple to adapt to Demucs, maybe I'll give it a go!
| kreeben wrote:
| Me and my siblings were raised by a single mother. She's still
| alive but I have a memory from when I was six or seven of her
| sitting for hours on end with headphones on, smoking
| cigarettes, sipping wine and listening to Supertramp. Three
| years later I discovered music (The Beatles White Album). Mom
| told me it's my dad's favorite record.
|
| To this day they're two of my favorite bands.
|
| Music has this weird property of connecting you to different
| people and different times. It's some kind of magic.
|
| Sorry to hear you've had it so rough. Hope you're ok.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I'm all good. I'm glad you have that music connection. It's
| so powerful.
| classichasclass wrote:
| I know all the 'tramp fans say Crime of the Century is their
| best, and it's definitely classic prog rock, but I still love
| Breakfast in America despite its commercial pretenses. My
| best friend in high school and I first heard it on 8-track
| (!) and we enjoyed every song.
| [deleted]
| emmelaich wrote:
| Not mentioned is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Jeczalik who
| helped her on "Dreaming" and was also a CMI pioneer.
|
| Jeczalik also worked on Godley and Creme's "Cry" (1985) - another
| synth heavy reverbish song.
| DennisP wrote:
| > she used the Yamaha CS-80 as her main composition instrument.
| She seemed to favour it particularly for its touch-sensitivity,
| and it was one of the few synths that offered the feature at the
| time.
|
| This undersells the CS-80. It had polyphonic aftertouch, which
| most synths don't have today.
|
| Most have velocity sensitivity, meaning each note transmits how
| much initial force you applied. And most have aftertouch, meaning
| they transmit how much force you continue to apply after hitting
| bottom. But for most it's just channel aftertouch, meaning it
| transmits the aftertouch of the key you're pressing the hardest.
|
| The CS-80 transmitted aftertouch of each individual key, and had
| nice controls to to adjust how it used that information. A lot of
| synths can use polyphonic aftertouch but only a few new ones
| actually have poly-AT keyboards. The ones I know of are the
| Hydrasynth (out for a couple years now), the Behringer UB-Xa, and
| the Iridium keyboard (both introduced this year).
|
| Vangelis was also a huge CS-80 fan and used it on the Blade
| Runner soundtrack. Incidentally, a boutique synth that replicates
| the CS-80 pretty well (without keyboard) is the Deckard's Dream.
| It's $4000 but that's way less than a vintage CS-80.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| As someone with a passing interest in music production, this is
| such a cool comment. I love this place.
| dtagames wrote:
| Arturia has a fab CS-80 recreation as part of their
| V-Collection. It has poly aftertouch. My physical Roland
| V-Synth to play it with via MIDI only has a single aftertouch
| channel -- but the CS-80 is still my favorite of the
| collection. The default preset alone is amazing and playable
| for hours.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| > This undersells the CS-80. It had polyphonic aftertouch,
| which most synths don't have today.
|
| Vangelis using poly aftertouch:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoEkyBX7qsg
|
| The CS-80 also famously had a touch strip, which Vangelis used
| to great effect in Blade Runner.
|
| The strip in action:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV3qDUTVsNo&t=1487s
|
| A famous example where it's used:
| https://youtu.be/smpTDkLCYb0?t=125
|
| > A lot of synths can use polyphonic aftertouch but only a few
| new ones actually have poly-AT keyboards. The ones I know of
| are the Hydrasynth (out for a couple years now),
|
| Interestingly the Hydrasynth is also one of the only modern
| synths with a touch strip. I think it's clear what the
| Hydrasynth was going for.
| teilo wrote:
| Indeed, and I use my Hydrasynth Deluxe to drive Arturia CS-80
| V4. It is the first reasonably authentic recreation, and it
| is a testament to the brilliant design of the CS-80 that it
| took this long for virtual analog recreations to reproduce
| it.
|
| Previous attempts were pretty miserable, such as versions 1-3
| from Arturia, and Memory Moon. At best they could be
| described as CS-80ish.
|
| Poly aftertouch on the Hydrasynth is a revelation. I didn't
| think I would use it nearly as much as I do, and now I can't
| imagine being without it. I even play my Novation Summit from
| the HS.
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| Thanks for this and parent too! I didn't realise that this is
| precisely what I've been missing in my compositions: I never
| quite understood that poly aftertouch is actually rare!
|
| Anyone know of weighted keys that implement this?
| not_a_sw_dork wrote:
| Wait until a SV guy discovers the state of life...
|
| Yes, not many synthesizers had polyphonic AT, compared to
| channel pressure / AT, implemented. AFAIK the Hydrasynth was
| one of the latest ones. And using a ROLI is like molesting a
| dead seal. Is this news? Is this discussion-worthy on HN? You
| guys are so outside of every common domain besides apps its
| cringe-worthy... all this was discussed years and years in
| knowledgeable circles, just point to it then.
| trasz wrote:
| >And using a ROLI is like molesting a dead seal.
|
| That's sadly true. Someone(tm) should make a polyphonic AT
| keyboard, but with proper, rigid keys, perhaps also with a
| vertical touch sensor on each of them as another
| controller.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Poly-AT was locked up by patents for years, much like FM.
| nkozyra wrote:
| Everyone worked around FM patents by creating "new"
| synthesis processes that were in effect FM.
| cronix wrote:
| It's also very easy to overload the midi bandwidth with
| polyphonic aftertouch data, which is likely why it wasn't used
| in more early synths. The CS80 used it internally since it
| didn't have midi and could only be routed internally.
|
| > Keyboards capable of generating polyphonic aftertouch are
| relatively rare, since it requires a more expensive mechanism
| than what is needed for channel aftertouch. Polyphonic
| aftertouch is also known as a generator of large amounts of
| MIDI data, which in older equipment was capable of exceeding
| the maximum bandwidth of a standard MIDI cable (the so-called
| MIDI choke),
|
| https://electronicmusic.fandom.com/wiki/Polyphonic_aftertouc...
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| You can buy a MIDI keyboard with poly aftertouch and just use
| that to control the synth. I use a Novation Launchpad Pro for
| this, which is a bit unconventional but I much prefer it to
| playing on actual keys. There's also the Roli Seaboard, among
| others. Pair that with Arturia's CS80 emulation and you would
| hardly know the difference if you closed your eyes.
| KerrickStaley wrote:
| This was discussed on a recent episode of the (excellent and
| highly recommended) Switched on Pop podcast:
| https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/kate-bush-running-up-that...
| itcrowd wrote:
| Awesome writeup and very topical with Running up that Hill being
| popularized again by season 4 of Stranger Things (on Netflix, I
| would also recommend the series, by the way)
| xxs wrote:
| I'd say Placebo already did that.
| 1986 wrote:
| But the Chromatics version is even better.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I never thought my favorite 80s music would come out 20
| plus years later. But it just true, Italians do it better.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Their version is great, I've not heard it for years! Thanks
| for the reminder.
| pier25 wrote:
| I have nothing to add other than I'm happy to see so many synth
| geeks on HN :)
| emmelaich wrote:
| Discussion of the Fairlight here on HN -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18225377
|
| Trivia - one of the Fairlight engineers wrote the open source
| 'libsndfile', used everywhere.
|
| http://www.mega-nerd.com/
| kaasmonster wrote:
| Related to this and worthwhile watching is the following video by
| Vox on the CMI Fairlight: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8A1Aj1_EF9Y
| tomduncalf wrote:
| What a fantastic video, thanks for sharing! I'd never thought
| about just how omnipresent this sound was.
| apachedomains wrote:
| anewpersonality wrote:
| Bored on vacation, what's the best way to learn synths in 2022?
| pier25 wrote:
| Syntorial if you want some structure.
|
| If not, just get Vital and start messing around. There are tons
| of Youtube tutorials.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Post a way to get you info and I have an Ableton Live Lite
| license if you want.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Ableton have a really cool web based intro to synthesis
| https://learningsynths.ableton.com/ (and also one for learning
| music: https://learningmusic.ableton.com/)
|
| Syntorial (on desktop or iPad) is an app which teaches you
| synthesis by doing - it's a full synth which you can use in its
| own right, and it introduces you to each part and gives you
| challenges to recreate a certain sound using that part. I can't
| say I've done the full thing but it's a cool concept.
|
| You can also just download some free/cheap synths (or get a
| free trial of Ableton or some other music making software which
| comes with its own included synths) and start messing around of
| course haha, there are a tonne of good ones around, including
| on iOS if you use an iPad (the advantage being the touch screen
| makes it maybe more fun than using a mouse). GarageBand on Mac
| is maybe a fun place to start experimenting too.
|
| Happy to advise more if you have specific things you're
| interested in!
| bbgm wrote:
| I have a 9 year old who's learning all about synths via a
| combination of the synths in garage band and my OP1. Great
| combo IMO
| ROTMetro wrote:
| The only bummer about synths now is that at 9 I learned a
| lot of networking concepts from having to adjust the MIDI
| setup of my keyboards/drum machines/sequencer (and then be
| able to get them back how my dad wanted them without him
| knowing I changed everything). Other than that I can't
| imagine if I would have had these capabilities at an early
| age. I mean, oh, you want a free symphony to play your
| music? OK. https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/bbc-
| symphony-orchestr... https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-so-
| discover/application/
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Vital is an amazing free virtual synth. It rivals the pay
| ones at this point and makes it on most of my tracks (though
| Arturia Pigments is my favorite VST).
| brunorsini wrote:
| I second the Syntorial recommendation --
| https://www.syntorial.com. By far the best method I've seen,
| largely because you learn in practice.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is so good it almost makes me not want to throw up in my
| mouth when I hear that Kate Bush song for the 90th time in a day
| because of Stranger Things.
|
| I remember seeing a breakdown of The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch
| Up" that made me lose absolutely any respect I might have had for
| the composition of that song. This writeup kind of had the
| opposite effect; I get what went into the song and how much the
| tools they were using defined it, but it's somewhat more
| interesting as a result.
| teilo wrote:
| I highly recommend watching Rick Beato's "What makes this song
| great" breakdowns.
| 0x0 wrote:
| Was this the breakdown you saw?
|
| "Making of "The Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim
| Pavloff"
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eU5Dn-WaElI
| bitwize wrote:
| It's really, really hard for me to disrespect Kate Bush or her
| music. She is a profound genius who strives to say something
| very specific with each song of hers, almost as if she's
| engaging her audience in a conversation, so I guess I tire less
| easily listening to her music than to most artists because of
| that.
|
| I'm a big fan of Imogen Heap who is very similar to Kate Bush
| in that she brings together technical sophistication in
| composition, a love of technology in the service of art, and
| something deep and meaningful to say in each song. It's hard to
| conceptualize that much awesome incarnate in a single person.
| aviditas wrote:
| If you like both of those artists, I'd suggest checking out
| Kimbra. She has heavy jazz influences and incorporates so
| much meaning into her music and videos. She does similar
| vocal layering to Imogen Heap and her live mixing of her own
| vocals is simply amazing.
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| > This is so good it almost makes me not want to throw up in my
| mouth when I hear that Kate Bush song for the 90th time in a
| day because of Stranger Things.
|
| I love this song, but I wonder if I'm the only one who thought
| it was really out of place in that scene, even kind of forced
| in.
|
| It too me _out_ of the scene rather than keeping me in.
| jnovek wrote:
| I understand your perspective and think it's a totally valid
| response. I actually found the out-of-placeness sort of
| charming -- it reminded me of being an adolescent and having
| opinions and feelings about music for the first time... while
| completely misunderstanding what the song was saying.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is an interesting pair of takes because my problem
| with it was that it was just about the most on-the-nose,
| boring, predictable song they could have put there. I was
| just joking that they should have put Cloudbusting there
| instead, but it was pointed out that there's an early 90s
| version of that song that is clearly going into Season 8 of
| the show. Just pick any other song from the Chocolate War
| soundtrack instead. "I Have The Touch" would have worked
| even better.
| peterstjohn wrote:
| UTAH SAINTS! UTAH SAINTS!
|
| ;P
|
| (It would have been more fun if we'd spent the past month
| with clickbait like "What is Orgone Energy, Anyway?"
| tptacek wrote:
| Right? It would be as good as anything else the show has
| induced in the culture. Maybe it explains the Upside Down
| or whatever. :)
| bobthepanda wrote:
| You're probably being facetious, but season 5 was
| confirmed to be the last season when season 4 was
| announced.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Which scene? They used it in two key scenes.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| I know what you mean about The Prodigy video (and even more so
| the Daft Punk sample source ones), it's a bit disappointing to
| learn a track is almost entirely samples, but I think there is
| also a real art to picking those samples. If you've not been on
| it before check out whosampled.com and prepare to lose some
| time, lol.
|
| I have to say I'm more impressed by artists who's music is
| largely sample based but they twist them into entirely new
| forms (eg DJ Shadow and Future Sound of London) than just
| lifting a few loops wholesale though!
| tptacek wrote:
| I've been in a 90s hip hop rut for the past couple years and
| I'm pulling myself out of it by making playlists of the
| original songs getting sampled (one great thing about good
| hip hop is that any given song or pair of songs tends to
| produce a pretty excellent playlist), and one thing I've
| discovered is that RJD2, a musician I was into in the mid-
| aughts during an instrumental hip hop phase, puts essentially
| zero effort into things; the best example I can think of
| there is "Bless The Telephone", which he "covered" from Labi
| Siffre in the funniest possible way.
|
| Finding stuff like that will definitely give you a new
| appreciation for DJ Shadow (both, for what it's worth, were
| excellent live).
|
| Also Labi Siffre: very good stuff.
| specialist wrote:
| Fun.
|
| In case you didn't know: KEXP occasionally does breakdowns.
| Here they played every song sampled on Beastie Boys' Paul's
| Boutique. https://www.kexp.org/breakdown/paulsboutique/
| tptacek wrote:
| Not my favorite band (they're fine), but I'll say that
| from Paul's Boutique through Hello Nasty, they're by far
| the best to generate playlists from.
| comprev wrote:
| DJ Shadow's Entroducing [0] is an amazing body of work if you
| think about the effort required to crate dig for all the
| samples. Truly mind boggling!
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endtroducing.....
| Rodeoclash wrote:
| I'm a huge FSOL fan and I think what they did with sampling
| to produce albums like ISDN was ground breaking stuff.
|
| Daft Punk not so much. Rather than composing the samples
| together they use the entire sample as the hook. Maaaybe they
| might speed it up a bit but that's usually it.
| post_break wrote:
| If you haven't heard it yet, Placebo's version I think is almost
| as good as Kate's. I know that's a strong opinion but it reminds
| me of Hurt from NIN vs Johnny Cash. Both very good takes of the
| same song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5GuBa4Bbnw
| teilo wrote:
| Check out Meg Meyers:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7iVWK2W48o
| andreyk wrote:
| Not sure if it has been recommended yet, but this is a great
| video about the writing and composition of this song "Running up
| that hill: how Kate bush became queen of alt-pop"
|
| https://youtu.be/Pum6v55X1t8
| jdkee wrote:
| Here is a fantastic vid of the sounds recreated on vintage
| machines.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAuvZr5j9as
| __s wrote:
| When you said vintage I expected something more like _Orkestra
| Obsolete play Blue Monday using 1930s instruments_ :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHLbaOLWjpc
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| OK, who do I give everything I own to for naming a Valhalla verb
| preset "Homestar Blade Runner" ?
| folli wrote:
| Apparently I'm living under a rock, but why does this song seem
| to be so popular all of a sudden?
| zomglings wrote:
| I believe because the Stranger Things soundtrack/playlist was
| recently promoted heavily on Spotify.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's a key plot point in the latest Stranger Things season.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Wow, thank you! I was walking by my daughter's room and this
| song was playing and I was mystified. I told her "That song
| is almost older than me! How did you find it??" Total WTF
| moment for me.
| tootie wrote:
| Yeah, not only is it featured in a few scenes, it's
| mentioned by name. One of the key characters needs to
| listen to it on her Walkman in an endless loop to protect
| herself from a psychic monster. The finale prominently
| featured Master of Puppets by Metallica which is apparently
| starting to climb the charts now as well.
| MarcoZavala wrote:
| [deleted]
| lbotos wrote:
| My favorite running up that hill moment is from a few years ago.
| Big Boi from Outkast waxing poetic about how running up that hill
| is his favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSdHgq3oBD8
| tptacek wrote:
| This is fantastic. Now somebody needs to sample Big Boi
| beatboxing the CELLO2 sample Kate Bush used, and cover "Running
| Up That Hill" with it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That whole album is something special. Especially 'Under Ice',
| the tension in that piece is something else.
| mkesper wrote:
| What makes this song special (by Rick Beato):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwZysZPIrYI
| newaccount2021 wrote:
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