Tangerine Dream "Extended" Albums

Hi dreamers.

Not two of my favourite Tangerine Dream albums. I'd actually make Hypoborea about 30 minutes shorter. ;-)

From a technical perspective, it's quite easy to replicate 70's TD. You, er, might have seen my posts in Tech Talk about modular synths, including the one I built myself. I've got 10 sequencers. You just set up a sequence, run it through a quantiser which changes the notes according to a set of rules - ie. min 7th scale - and then have some way of switching from one sequence to another. Tangerine Dream used Moog 960 sequencers, mainly in four step patterns. Now the technology is cheap, and a modular synth doesn't cost as much as a house, it's quite easy to replicate. 

So, avail yourself of some voltage controlled oscillators, a sequencer or several, a Moog style 24dB transistor ladder filter, choose a key, solo over the top with flute or guitar or what have you, you're in business. 

"Here's some sequencers I made earlier". Three weekends with a soldering iron. ;-)

I was thinking of completely reproducing Ricochet at one point - it's an album I am absolutely fascinated by. It would be a reinterpretation with additions. "In the style of". 

The problem is that Tangerine Dream fans are extremely monolithic and only buy Tangerine Dream stuff. Even if you did a gig on their back door step "and you weren't Tangerine Dream", then no one would show up. Bands like Redshift are extremely good and in the same canon, they get some support, but the problem of gigging with old analogue gear means you have to be extremely dedicated to make it worth while. Also you need to have a lot of support from fans. They're harder to find than you might think. 

They have 150+ albums... why do we need more Tangerine Dream at this point? They already have more than I am even going to attempt listening to.

I mean it is rather interesting that people are doing this... but it is Tangerine Dream... their music goes on far longer than welcome as is. Making it even more arduous. That being said, the people who did this are pretty competent at imitating Tangerine Dream. But as was said above, it isn't that technically impressive to do so.

Davesax1965 wrote: Got to agree with Phil about the "150 albums" as well.  Probably about 140 too many.  When a band reforms with none of the original members, I get the impression they should just go onstage with a bunch of cash registers and set the ching !!! noise to music.

Pink Floyd would sue them lol.

Believe it or not, the later stuff (80's) is quite easy to (roughly) emulate using modern technology. If you don't mind (mainly) VST's. Perversely, the analogue sequenced stuff is slightly more tricky. But it's still fairly simple.

Modern technology and decreasing prices mean that a studio musician can now assemble lots of esoteric instruments - which was what Tangerine Dream was about. Where they paid a fortune to get the original instruments, there are much cheaper modern alternatives available.

Oh yeah, you can emulate the sounds of the 80s stuff with VSTs - we all have access to the digital recreations of instruments like PPGs and Prophets. But the point I was making is that compositionally, the 80s stuff is not so easily imitated. It would require a lot more compositional skill than the early improvised stuff. (I put this down to the contribution of Johannes Schmoelling, who is classically trained and has real keyboard ability). 

That and half the prog bands of the 70's had classically trained musicians, particularly keyboardists.

Throw a dart and you'll find one.

I'd argue that no one tries to imitate their later work because it is sub-standard and not at all memorable compared to their earlier stuff.