to say it has a lot of sliders is an understatement.

i love that tagline: "to say it's polyphonic is an understatement."
actually, no. to say it's polyphonic would be an exactly accurate
statement. kind of like when people refer to things as 'extremely
unique.'

but enough of my problems with the misuse of the english language
(don't get me started on 'guesstimate,' 'irregardless, ' or my
personal favorite, 'taking a different tact.')

sorry, im going to stay on this for another paragraph. try it
yourself; do a google search for the phrase 'taking a
different tact' and look at the websites you are shown, now
replace the word tact with the correct word 'tack.' instead of a
meaningless sentence, you now have one that means 'to go in a
different direction.'

sorry. back to the
polymoog. mmm, lots of switches. mine generated enough heat, it
allowed me to get rid of my space heater. oh wait. i suddenly get
what they meant by 'understatement.' the poly used a divide down
oscillator, alot like organs in the 70's did so basically it had 71-
note polyphony. ok. and it was a little bit lighter than the cs-80,
but it didn't have those swell screw-on chrome legs like the cs. the
moog did stay in tune a little better though.

anyone out there remember what it was like to
tune a yamaha cs-80? the music store in my hometown used to offer
the service for $175, Butch, the repair guy would take a whole day to
get it in tune, and it might last you a few gigs, as long as it
didn't rain, snow, or the temperature didn't fluctuate more than 5
degrees F. i do miss the old days.

not just polymoogs in this clip of gary numan on SNL back in 1980.
looks like they cleaned out the entire R.A. Moog Co. warehouse for
this one:

speaking of radiohead...

Reading Graham's behind the scenes with Radiohead blog got me to thinking about the story behind the recording of their song "idioteque," off of Kid A.

I always loved that song, built around that very odd synth riff, which i assumed was done by jonny greenwood on his analogue systems rs 8000, or something equivalent. but the true story about where that sound came from is much much cooler. it was sampled from a computer music piece called 'mild und leise' written by composer Paul Lansky in 1973 on an IBM 360/91 mainframe computer. (trust me, you want to click that link and take a look.)

i could go into specifics, but you'll learn much more by following the link to paul lansky's site and having him tell you the story. it's fascinating the amount of work that went into composing electronic music in those days.

take a listen to the piece, mild und leise (mp3 file).

and once you've absorbed that, how about checking out what radiohead did with it, almost 20 years later:

thomas dolby, radiohead, sigur ros, and whatever.

over the last couple of months i've been really enjoying Thomas Dolby's weblog. he's been documenting his one-man-show tour across the US, and i have to say it's very entertaining.

I've seen lots of big artists try and do 'tour diaries' and it usually comes off like something they got their publicist's intern to write for them. you get the feeling you're reading a press release. Thomas comes across as a real guy, though, and definitely a synth and technology geek, who doesn't talk down to his fans. the posts are chock full of details about his live setup, his equipment, and all kinds of stories about how he goes about writing and performing songs. as a musician it's fantastic stuff to read, and i'm sure even non-musicians will be entertained.

his last post was about the tour coming to a close, but a really hope he continues posting, it's great to hear what he's up to.

there are definitely some other good tour diaries out there. from sigur ros to the fascinating diary being kept by radiohead's audio engineer of their recording and tour rehearsals. as a musician myself who's looking at an upcoming US tour in a couple of months, it's very informative stuff to hear stories from 'the road.' you notice that whether you're playing big stadiums and arenas, or clubs for 15 people, life on tour is definitely a different kind of life.