Moog spotting: Klaus Schulze on YouTube

[MC]

Clockwise from top left

Duncan Mackay from 10CC
Patrick Moraz of Yes
Jon Lord of Deep Purple
Klaus Schultz
Benny Andersson of ABBA
Tony Banks of Genesis
Rick Wakeman of Yes

What do all of these artist have in common? The Polymoog. The poster is from that era.

[Kevin Lightner]

Thanks MC!

Duncan slipped my memory.
His eyes in the poster makes it look like he's had more than 10cc's.
("I'm not in love! I'm stoned!!")

[till]

Thanks MC !

...
Klaus Schultz
...

He is spelled Klaus Schulze.

Although there are many Schultz, Schultze and other variations for this very common name known here in Germany, he belongs to the majority spelled without the "t".

KDM, a long time friend and business maker of Klaus is collecting those spelling errors in big folders.

[ARP]

Great Video...his minimoog sounds incredible! I noticed 2 reel to reel tape machines going on the right side...was he taping the show or were they providing some of the background sound ?

[thewaag]

Benny Andersson, eh??

Boy, it sure looks like a young Keith Emerson to me, but, frankly, I don't know what Benny Andersson looks like--I wasn't that caught up with Abba in those days.

Anybody else think that it looks like Emo?

[Sweep]

Definitely looks like Keith Emerson to me, and certainly not like Benny Anderson. If it's supposed to be Benny it's a very bad likeness.

But Duncan Mackay - of course! Many thanks for clearing that one up.

[Mooger5]

Great Video...his minimoog sounds incredible! I noticed 2 reel to reel tape machines going on the right side...was he taping the show or were they providing some of the background sound ?

They´re two-track Revoxes and are obviously replaying background sound. Note the fading-in Mellotron strings and choir. I too was curious to know how he could play live without resorting to backing tapes. By that time, after several accusations of using playback, Tangerine Dream made clear the tapes seen on their concerts were just for delay effects, all else played live. But then they were three. Klaus is there all by himself. It´s a very legitimate use, I´d say.

To record the event, I´m sure there´s a PA crew somewhere taking care of. Notice his sign to them, near the end of the performance. It´s fade-out time. The mixing desk and the tape recorders we see are just being used as another musical instrument.

Possibly only one track of each recorder was dedicated to music/FX, the other two reserved for syncing each recorder to one another and to the sequencers. About that, among other things, there´s an interesting testimony from the Nemo Studios engineer here: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_ar ... gelis.html
He seems to claim they were the first to develop the seq sync to tape technique, but probably Klaus was already using something similar back then.

Jarre`s Oxygen was recorded on eight tracks, using four of such revoxes.
How they managed to sync tape in those days still beats me. Does anyone know?

[bosonob]

Playing around with the voyager to get klaus's minimoog patch I get close, but not close enough. Till or company, do you know what his patch parameters were?


thanks,
stefan

[CTRLSHFT]

nice find! thanks!

[till]

Great Video...his minimoog sounds incredible! I noticed 2 reel to reel tape machines going on the right side...was he taping the show or were they providing some of the background sound ?

Hi,

Klaus always used on tape for some athmospheric playback, sometimes to bring in sequences and drums.
And on Revox A77 was used for tape echo all the time. And because these tapes were sometimes changed, some live concerts were recorded that way. This is why there are so many recordings of his concerts straight from the desk in the mid to late seventies.
His nick name for the tape echo was "Tochter der Stimme" which is german and translates to: "daughter of the voice".

[till]

Playing around with the voyager to get klaus's minimoog patch I get close, but not close enough. Till or company, do you know what his patch parameters were?

Stefan,
I never tried to replecate his Minimoog sounds on a Voyager.
On a minimoog use some Sawtooth at 16" and slightly detuned triangle at 8". And then set all the filter and envelope knobs to the 12 o'clock position as starting point.

In the mid eighties he started using a TC fuzz FX on the output of the Mini. And added wih his unique laying style, he did some great soli. A pitty that some of his best soli done this way are mixed to gether with some awful voice of Ernst Fuchs. LP/CD: "Aphrica"

[Mooger5]

And on Revox A77 was used for tape echo all the time. And because these tapes were sometimes changed, some live concerts were recorded that way. This is why there are so many recordings of his concerts straight from the desk in the mid to late seventies.

My detective work was too much far from the truth. Thank you for clarifying.

So, that means every sound we hear on this piece had some ammount of echo added.

After listening again I notice the atmospherics are "just" slowly evolving drones that don´t necessarily beg for being in sync to the live sequence. Makes the music more free flowing, I think. And they fade out right before the upcoming key changes.

[till]

Klaus uses his mixer for fading in and out the backing tape. I watched this not only on this little video, but also on concerts he played in the early eighties. In 1981 he still had those two tape machines with him. But the newer B77 versions by Revox then. They were sold on eBay about two years ago bundeled together in one special flightcase.

[hieronymous]

I had a problem with my account so I haven't been able to post in this thread, even though I wanted to! But things got fixed, and now I'm back!

The crazy thing about Klaus Schulz is that he's on the 1st albums of both Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel - as a drummer!!!

I really like the "Dark Side of the Moog" series with Pete Namlook too. I think they put out 10 volumes, and some of them have Bill Laswell as a 3rd member. They can be kind of hard to find, but it's worth the effort. A lot of it is ambient, but they do some more aggressive stuff too.