Wendy Carlos

A thread to celebrate the work of Wendy Carlos without any of the weird shit from 15 years ago on the thread. Have at it, Moog fans!

Last bump on the other thread from Tom D:

Anyway, her music for The Shining is awesome, it's a scandal it's never been collected on a single release, as it is it's spread over two volumes of Rediscovering Lost Scores - which are, of course, impossible to find.

― Sonny Shamrock (Tom D.), Monday, August 3, 2020 3:34 PM

I need to find a copy of Switched-On Bach as I’ve never heard it in full despite its being 1000% in my wheelhouse — It drives me crazy that her music isn’t on streaming services! She’s such a tremendous influence but it feels like she’s being erased from cultural memory what with all the barriers to access her work

(xp) Good idea.

I believe some of those barriers are down to her being kind of prickly to deal with and extremely protective of her music, but she's been more or less a recluse for a while now so who knows for sure what's going on?

Excellent idea, emil.y

The first three commercial sales of the moog keyboard were sold to Buck Owens, Micky Dolenz and Wendy Carlos. Going to blast out Beauty in the Beast when I get home.

So I never knew about this - Wendy Carlos: A Biography. But Geeta did - http://4columns.org/dayal-geeta/wendy-carlos

As someone who obsessed over the sound of Douglas Rain's voice as HAL in 2001 for decades, I will forever be indebted to Wendy for this amazing bit of info on her website -

http://www.wendycarlos.com/other/Eltro-1967/index.html

I used to own the early 2000s reissue of xpost Switched On Bach, on ESD, East Side Digital; who also did some other early Carlos albums: really good sound, and I ended up putting it in my P&J Top Ten. It's worth looking for!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3cab5IcCy8

nice little vintage interview on the beeb in Greenwich Village studio with loads of gear and cats!

put on Sonic Seasonings for the first time in over ten years last night, easy to forget sometimes just how much this record shaped me over thirty years ago. even now listening to it I can't reverse engineer it; mainly, the lead melody patch on the moog in the opening movement is so ridiculously expressive, I can't even wrap my head around how perfectly beautiful and technically accomplished it is -- I'd give anything to see video of how complex the patch is and the physical gestures involved in playing the glisses & trills & runs on a monophonic instrument like that... when I was a teenager, I just took it all for granted, but seeing as for the rest of the world was still getting blown away by absolute tinkertoy kludge like 'Lucky Man' or ELP, and she and Rachel are already constructing peerless alien bird-flute patches like this that people have simply not caught up to even now

ten years we tried to reach her to get the quadraphonic version for a playback at the Exploratorium, but the link fell through. I can only imagine the original quad version (the crazy insect-flight trajectories in Summer are still perceptible in the stereo-fold down). still holding out for that. she mentions an immanent release of the quad version in the liner notes to the CD, released in... 1998. for all the due she's gotten, still not enough

because so much of it is ambient / perfect sleeping music, my high school cassette only has the first half of Winter - I faded & added a long reverb tail before the wolf chorus & Rachel's vocalese, which would always, always wake me up, then put on the first movement of 'Digital Moonscapes'. the 2CD version is pretty perfect in putting the first three movements on its own disc, and opening disc two with Winter. the last half is even more intense now, it's still a crazy feeling each time I realize it's not fading, it's just getting started

fantastic post, Milton.

put me on a kick to revisiting her post-Beauty and the Beast works. still a bit mixed on Tales of Heaven and Hell - like Moonscapes, the aim is realism over the unheard, but the last half of that last track -- pushing the digital orchestra through the circle of fifths, retuning itself with each modulation, so subtle you can barely tell it's acoustically impossible. Switched On Bach 2000, historical tunings, soaring & drilling, just try and resist. Lost Scores has moments but definitely more archival.

not like she even needs to do another, but one can always hope

beauty in the beast def one of the greatest things i've ever heard

it's my personal fave of WC

it's so amazing i can't stand it

Hey, I also laughed out loud in the theater when the too-familiar strains of Strauss' "Zarathustra" began the film. I thought it was meant as a wink-nudge over-the-top joke, as I'd used it for such comic effect in a student radio parody in grad school. But no, I discovered (with a discomforting blush) that Kubrick didn't share my insider's POV, and took it completely seriously, as now do millions of fans who were first exposed to the fanfare by the film. All good, Wendy, some of stoned us kids thought it was funny too. Could be why Elvis used it as his entrance theme on tour.

I'm too young to know of Zarathustra any other way, its context has always been intertwined with 2001, this perspective is fascinating

I've wondered about that - were Strauss's tone poems part of the standard repertoire in the '60s and before? My sense is that it is only thanks to Kubrick that "Zarathustra" became so widely-known outside of academic circles.

"not only did i think of it before kubrick, but my version was smarter and funnier" hm ok

read it again

i love kubrick but the official position on kubrick in the wendy carlos thread is fuck that nerd

She seems amazed at what he did with the HAL voice, judging by the link upthread.

I had a music teacher who hated Zarathustra and the Blue Danube in the movie. He said the use of Danube was "cutesy." (Which isn't entirely wrong.)

were Strauss's tone poems part of the standard repertoire in the '60s and before?

this is mostly anecdotal, but my sense of strauss's rep in the early 70s -- as a music student in a UK backwater -- was that he was still not very fashionable, based on how my teachers (and also my dad and mums' dad) talked about him. strauss was always somewhat side-eyed in the UK i think: too decadent, too overripe, too metropolitan and creamy, all chintzy fripperies: didn't fit the folk-nat template of the favoured countercurrents of the first hgalf of the 20th C (like say sibelius or vaughan-williams or whoever) -- and then of course he wasn't quite distant enough from the nazis (never a member of the party but *was* appointed to as principal conductor of bayreuth; they too thought him decadent but he wasn't directly harrassed, tho he had jewish family and they were and he quietly did what he could to protect them)

so his war wasn't craven maybe but it wasn't especially courageous either and in britain i think this told against him in the 50s and 60s, and the gradual turnaround only really starts in the 70s. plus zarathrustra* -- thx to nietzsche -- was definitely unfashionable… but also thx to it really not being very good after the famous opening fanfare! i studied the don juan tonepoem at A-level and it definitely seemed the most minor item i was pointed at (based on the judgment of those teaching me, i mean). the main thing i know remember was reading that strauss said he liked hoow it sounded it better when orchrestras couldn't really play its opening sweep-flourish as written and were just faking… later in his life they were all much better musicians and playing it exactly as written, and he didn't think that was as good!

*i also had a quick look on discogs.com at the pattern of classical recordings featuring zarathustra and it's much higher in the 70s than the 60s, tho strauss's overall classical release pattern doesn't go up much (this is very unscientific: i'm not comparing him with anyone -- like who? maybe mahler? -- over the same time, largely bcz discogs is terrible to navigate for such purposes)

so to answer the question: yes he was in the repertoire but less than he later would be

the recording of salome (karajan) i'm most familiar with is from '77 so it fits that timeline

Booming post, thank you so much, Mark!

Yes, your post has me recalling this this:
Eumir Deodato Almeida's singular rendition of "Also sprach Zarathustra" won the 1973 Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance. It is arguably the world's most renowned Latin jazz opus ever. The introductory movement of the original work, a tone poem by Richard Strauss (1896), served as the musical motif in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey." Deodato's arrangement wondrously elaborates on the movie's modernistic theme. Strauss, in turn, was inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's iconoclastic philosophical treatise of the same title (1883-85). Zarathustra, of course, refers to Zoroaster, the Persian prophet and religious poet of antiquity (traditionally, 6th century BC), on whom Nietzsche based the principal character of his book.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJKsp9_L24Q

Momus to thread.

no

definitely not.

Well all I hear all day long on ILX is how great Momus is at this or how wonderful Momus did that. Momus, Momus, Momus!

Oh wait. Wrong thread.

is there a thread for telling Momus to fuck off? maybe there should be.

He used to have a whole sub board or at least thread category named after him iirc. They are about 160 threads that feature him in the title. Really don’t think we should talk about him on this particular thread any more.

85 today! Best wishes Wendy!