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Instrumentdome nomination thread: Tuning up

Johnny Unusual

Johnny Unusual

(He/Him)
Y'know, the amazing thing about music is it can come from anywhere. The first tool we've had to make music is the voice and it's not just in the realm of humans.

And think of how long humans have been passionate about the sounds they hear not only to make music but to make complex tools to do-so. Even think about the more simple instruments with simple shapes are still shaped to make a very exact sound. We love music not just passively, not just as people who make music but as adventurers and engineers and scientists even to develop new ways to sound. There are still mysteries around certain songs with people unsure how certain specific sounds are made. And today, we are going to celebrate the tools of sound and the music they make.

So here are the rules
1) Choose 1 instrument
2) Choose up to 4 songs or pieces of music where said instrument is used
3) Then after 7 days, we will have a tournament for all those tracks to square off.

What counts as an instrument?
  • Any object that is designed or can be utilized to make music
  • This can include items that may not have been intended to make music but have been repurposed to
  • I will include "voice"
Any other rules?
Yes. If someone chooses an item, you cannot chose it... except... if someone is less specific (guitar) and someone is more specific (electric/acoustic guitar), I'll let it slide. There are SO many different kinds of drums, after all.

I think that's it. I hope I was clear and am not forgetting something. We have 7 days! And if it helps, here's a list of musical instruments!
en.wikipedia.org

List of musical instruments - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
Oh, and please, do not include any of these past winners.
https://talking-time.net/index.php?threads/the-dome-of-fame.798/

The deadline is September 5th!
 
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Sorry, I meant where the instrument is key. I was trying to be clever and caused confusion.

Just choose tunes (songs or pieces) that utilize the instrument.
 
Hmm, I guess I’ll go ahead and dibs my own high school band instrument, trumpet. Song picks to be filled in here later.

.... annnnnd it took a while but I came up with too many

Also Sprach Zarathustra - Richard Strauss

So What - Miles Davis (kicks in at about 1:30)

Jungle Blues - Winton Marsalis

Tank - Yoko Kanno + Seatbelts (lots of instrument do good stuff in this but the trumpets have a ton of prominence)

Fanfare for the Common Man - Aaron Copland. (Ah heck, that video cuts off, this one is the whole thing but kinda bad sound quality. Haven't scared up a good quality complete link yet and I'm short on time.)

Puttin' on the Ritz - Herb Alpert
 
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I nominate the Mellotron.

songs:
1. Genesis - Watcher of the Skies (Most prominent in the opening 90 seconds and the ending minute)
2. Kestrel - August Carol (Comes in at 3:55 and is the driving force behind the second half)
3. Nobuo Uematsu/Final Fantasy X - Lulu's Theme (The "flute" comes in at 0:15 and is the main melody, and the "strings" appear at 1:09, with the latter lasting until the end of the loop)
4. Motoi Sakuraba/Star Ocean: Till the End of Time - The True Nature Of All (Comes in at 0:05 and is prominent throughout)

For those of you who don't know what a Mellotron is, it's a keyboard instrument that was developed in the early 1960's, and can be considered an early precursor to a modern sampling machine. Each of its keys is connected to a strip of magnetic tape with a prerecorded audio sample on it; press a key down, and the sample plays until it is finished (on original Mellotron models, this was around 8 seconds), after which the playback stops until you let go of the key and press it again. The Wikipedia page has a pretty good overview of its history and design, if you're interested in learning more.

A number of different instrument presets were recorded for it, the most famous of which is probably the "three violins" sound (which features on all of the songs linked above). Other prominently used instruments include the "choir" (which can be heard at the end of "August Carol" linked above, when the guitar solo happens) and "flute" (which is probably most famously heard in the intro to "Strawberry Fields Forever" by The Beatles).

If you want more isolated examples of what the Mellotron sounds like, you can check out the page for Microtron, a VST that recreates the sound of the M400 (the most popular Mellotron model).

I went with two longer songs and two shorter ones, and included a couple from video game soundtracks. The Mellotron is far and away my favorite instrument; it has a curious mix of obvious artificiality and surprising warmth in its sound, and I feel that it's a far more versatile instrument than people tend to give it credit for.
 
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Violentvixen said:
These were two off my long list so I'm very glad people grabbed 'em. It's funny, I thought this would be really hard to do at first but then suddenly I had both too many instrument ideas and too many songs ha.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know what you mean! For me it was a really tough decision between piano and voice. I'll be interested to see whether someone else picks up the latter!
 
I know there's some virtuoso bass performances out there that would deserve consideration, but I really just went with songs where I go "bass great", haha.
 
WildcatJF said:
bass great
Click to expand...
latest
 
I'm picking Buchla Modular Synthesizers as the instrument here.

In the 1960s if you wanted a modular synthesizer (or really any synthesizer without just entirely DIYing it) your options were Moog and Buchla. They had different approaches to things (most notably how to shape timbre) and while Moog's approach became the predominant one (especially in commercial synthesizers) I just love the sound of a Buchla.

DhW9i14.jpeg

The Library of Congress's Buchla 100

The original 100 series Buchla modules were first built for Morton Subotnick and the San Francisco Tape Music Center. Not all that many were made and they were mostly bought by experimental composers like Subotnick and some progressive Music Departments in some West Coast Universities.

BJJu6Nk.jpeg

Buchla 200 series

By the early '70s Buchla had refined his modules and was selling the Buchla 200 series 'Electric Music Box' modules. There was eventually 40 something modules in the line and as with other modular synthesizers the idea was you picked and choose among them to assemble your specific instrument to suit your needs. As an aside the Buchla 259 oscillator is probably my favorite sounding oscillator in all of synthesis, it just sounds so good and has such a rich breadth of timbre. The 200 series and the Easel which I'll get into next are probably what most people into synths and synth history first picture when you say Buchla.

ULqRzJ3.jpeg

The Buchla Music Easel

In 1973 The Buchla Music Easel came out. It was two special oversized Buchla combo modules mounted together in a suitcase. Intended to be a portable entirely self contained version of a 200 series system and it is by far the most common Buchla synthesizer. Production of the Music Easel continued (with occasional long gaps) long after they stopped making all the rest of the original 200 series and are available new even now.

I'm going to skip over several other largely unsuccessful synths and say that in 2004 they released the 200e modular synthesis system; a series of modules which were themselves digital but were compatible with the original analog 200 series modules. I'm less familiar with the 200e stuff, unlike the Easel and the original 200 series (clones of at least) I've never gotten the chance to play with any 200e systems.

Katelyn Aurelia Smith - Existence in the Unfurling
As with most of her work Katelyn Aurelia Smith is using a Buchla Music Easel and her voice as her main instruments here.

Suzanne Ciani - Improvisation on Four Sequences - Chase
This is a piece Suzanne Ciani has been performing live on a Buchla since the mid 1970s. I linked to a exciting movement about 2/3 into the piece but the whole thing is excellent and worth a listen. This specific performance is from five years or so ago and she is using a system with both 200 and 200e series modules. In 1974 Ciani wrote an academic paper about performing live electronic music and the paper was largely about this piece, I found it worth reading (PDFs are floating around).

Alessandro Cortini and Don Buchla - Everything Ends Here
Alessandro Cortini (of Nine Inch Nails) and Don Buchla performing a piece Cortini wrote. Each is using a small 200e series system. This piece is lovely and haunting.

Floating Points - Bias
Crush, the album this is from, is built from pieces he wrote for a live touring set for his Buchla Modular system, a drum machine, and a few other desktop synths. Floating Points discussing his Buchla setup for live performances.
 
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