Roll On Roland: Land of the Rising Sound

One of the interesting things to be noticed here, might just be how much the music at the time, was reliant on some of this equipment, and what we gently consider the sound that has been considered and became known as "progressive" ... and you can see the difference today, with new music "sounding the same" as everything else and having no "identity" that would relate it to a time and space, thus helping "define" its style and ability. 

By comparison, today's bands, are completely bland and boring, since the equipment that is used is the same it has been for the last 30 to 40 years, thus keeping the technological advancements of the music complete out of the picture, which had helped develop a lot of experimental music and specially the electronic version of it, which flew ... only to "die" in the last 10 years (even more so after Edgar Froese moved to a new address! And Roland had built stuff specifically for some ideas in Edgar's mind!) because the technological use and playing can not get past the mechanical, or metronomic (as I call it), into the area of "visionary" and "idealistic" which so much of the new music had been a part of for many years.

(This, BTW, explains really well why some folks think that "progressive music" died ... not to mention that we also lost the ability to hear new things and learn from them, because they don't have that "different" vibe that identified the time and space!)

It follows, generally, the history of the music, and how some instruments got better known and studied and used until no one touched them much anymore. One could say that the organ came from Bach though churches had used it for a long time, but its musical talent, was often thought as "pedestrian" ... just like the religion, I suppose! Later, one could say that Mozart invented and killed the violin sound. And so on, until you get to the full size orchestra ... and it wasn't until the likes of Stravinsky and that time period that the orchestra "sound" was broken apart and all of a sudden most composers are totally different in the use of the orchestra and instrumentations, to a lot of its simplest forms, not to mention odd ball combinations, which Bernard Herrmann used to well in a some far out soundtracks, the ones that most folks "don't remember" at all in the Sic-Fi series. But it's sound was unmistakable, and defied the "history" and any "genre" in terms of composition and design, and eventually signaled the change to LOUDER and more ATTACK which became the thing after one movie, though one could say that rock music, had already stamped their foot at that for some time, but was "ignored" in many of the arts, and specially rock music, that became immediately separated from the "popular" forms, and the top ten, to become "art rock" or some other idiotic definition of music. But at least, its very "source" was not a synthesizer, but classical music ... by its use of so many pieces of music when all of a sudden you could hear the "best" keyboard artist doing classical music in an electronic style, which was not really new, but had not reached the "ears" of the commercial sound that America Radio had developed for its own profit! Eventually, this was another cheap door to break apart.

It's really important to specify that the synthesizer was not just an instrument ... it was a music changer, although I would say that it became "commercial" instead of "original" if we sue an example of Tangerine Dream and Edgar Froese who never lost their/his touch for experimenting and trying to take the music to so many emotional places and spaces, that most "rock music" (specially in the boring same 4 instruments and worse ... a lousy drummer that can only do the same thing!) is now showing how aged it is, to the point that folks have to say that they wanted to create something with this feeling or that feeling, instead of concentrating on its own design and feelings ... you end up thinking that you are being "original" because you mixed this with that ... when right from the start, it had been about mixing it all.

Interesting article, and falls into place with a lot of others ... "I dream of Wires" is one, and there are a few other synthesizer stories, up to and including the really early experiments in the 1950's some of which was associated with Sci-Fi, thus giving it the original "space music" because it was so different that our ears could assimilate with the idea of the music being from outer space.