OK, so I was bored and wondered how my 1969 Moog would sound multi tracked polyphonically. I downloaded a MIDI file of the 1969 British sci-fi series UFO intro theme. And layered about 25 tracks of the Moog with various patches. All Moog modular, no FX other than the 905 reverb. The percussion track is from my Emu APS soundcard. UFO theme on 1969 Moog Modular MP3 2.7megs
And here is the tune synced to the video. Gotta love that 1969 retro-future! UFO intro video with Moog track WMV file 6megs
Modules used:
1-901 osc.
1-901a osc. driver
2-901b osc.
1-902 vca
1-904a vcf
1-905 reverb
1-907 filter bank
2-911 eg
2-CP3 mixer
Those old 901ās still sound good and play in tune together very well.
There is nothing like playing an old 1969 hand assembled instrument from the R.A. Moog factory!
this is awesome, I know all to well the time-consuming task of layering multiple tracks and trying to make the whole thing sound good . You did an excellent job
Very good work! Ever notice how most of your great sci-fi themes have at least some, if not a great deal, of synth in there? It could very well be that my love of sci-fi TV during my childhood led to my love of analog synthesis later in life. Come to think of it, thats probably why I have been thinking for a while now of adding a theremin to the musical toolbox!
Excellent Mr Rider! I loved that show when I was younger. Up until a year ago a cable channel called VOOM broadcasted it in HD with suround sound along with the Thunderbirds and Flipper and then one day it just went away. GREAT WORK my friend. I look forward to more. Maybe some old Todd Rungren - Utopia ?
Thanks for all the positive replies!
That was the first time I actually tried multi tracks to build chords with a monophonic synthesizer. A fun experiment Iāll have to try again. Kind of an old school method of acheiving multi-timbre and polyphony.
Glad that video worked too! The way the future was imagined back in 1969! .. Funny, one of the most far-fetched predictions was the one that actually happened. That by the end of the 80ās every home would have a computer in it. Seemed like a crazy prediction, when a computer was the size of a room with tape drives, complete with two technicians with clipboards and pocket protectors. No hover cars or trips to the moon though.
Check these links out. The pioneers of Sci-Fi electronic music. Before synths, they made synth sounds from tape manipulation, like the original Dr. Who theme, which sounds like an ARP or something, but just tapes.
Yeahā¦there was also the RCA Mark I in the 1950āsā¦sort of a tube synth. Before that, the theremin. Before that, the Telharmoniumā¦before that, the pipe organ. Basically, there are several ways to create different sounds that no one has heard before. The BBC wasnāt the first, but they were probably the first famous name to have developed a system for creating strange sounds.
Also, it goes without saying that CZ has made another epic demonstration. Thanks, CZ!
Arguably the first real modern synth with any kind of exposure was the Hammond novachord. If you havent, take a listen, very crazy stuff on vacuum tube synthesizer.
Oh, yeah! I forgot that one! That thing is awesome! My personal favorite is the Telharmoniumā¦just for its sheer size and electromechanical workings rather than tubesā¦which it pre-dated.
Ahhh you beat me and did a good job on nice gear. I was meaning to do a cover of some sort and might even have played that MIDI file live once or twice with VA sounds.
Lets seeā¦ the percussion works. Some nice patches. I think you are having a poly to mono problem at 8 seconds. The melody has the same note twice but a whole bunch of times Iām hearing one longer note on your cover. Iāve run into this myself. You need to edit the note duration shorter manually if you are trying to play back the file (or not use the MIDI file). From an artistic side I would have mixed differently. Whatās cool about Barry Grey theme is there is a lot of contrast and a sort of call and reply of the instruments. You have things more just even balanced. Perhaps using velocity more in the patches would help besides bringing out certain lines.
The show aired in 1969 and a couple years later in the U.S. but they started shooting a year or 2 before. The Duncan Jones movie āMoonā is kind of amusing since they were clearly influenced in some respects. But UFO has that groovy score and moon women with purple hair.
The original theme has that combo organ but no synths. The show itself had quite a bit of Ondes Marenot on other cues. I love the BBC material but Andersonās shows have little in common with the Radiophonic Workshop imho. After the BBC Radiophonic got synths you had some great music but generally it wasnāt as original and creative as the years before.
I remember seeing those shows on Voom but they drove me nuts because they cut the top and bottom off to fill the wide format. Cablevision seems to have suddenly pulled the plug on all of those stations in a dispute with a pay TV partner who didnāt want them any more. Iām not sure, maybe that strategy looked good on a lawsuit involving damages from the partner, or more likely theyād make more money with them shut down than they were paying stuff over and over.
The RCA Synthesizer (Mark I) was a research machine to electronically realize music via punch cards. There may have been good motivations but Iām sure one motivation to fund it was RCA had lots of conflicts with the Musicianās Union. It did coin the word āSynthesizerā. There was also a Mark II where they built a new one using what they learned. They consulted with the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Lab in the new one and they eventually were given it likely as a tax writeoff by RCA. It definitely forwarded the art of electronic music. By the way, it had no performer interface like a musical keyboard. Youād create scores programmed on paper punched ribbons that would be fed in and the music would be realized in realtime from the program and recorded.
One common misconception is a lot of people consider any or most electronic musical instruments to be āsynthesizersā. It boils down to how you define a synthesizer and if the person discussing it knows how it makes sound and the ability to control it, not just that it makes different electronic sounds. The Telharmonium was producing electro-mechanical sound. It was very groundbreaking and could make many different sounds. Itās an ancestor of the synthesizer but not one.
