Entertainment For Lively Minds
40 Noises that Built Pop Music: Part 2
Posted by Cadabra on 15 June 2011 - 12:27am.
After reading part 1 today I started wondering what might appear in next month's sequel feature.
The "teaser" blurb at the end of Part 1 mentions scratching, acid house bass, and disco toms, but what else could there be?
I humbly suggest:
The rim-click - reggae and rock ballads would be lost without it.
Wah-wah guitar (yes you already mentioned wah-wah clav, but surely the guitar version deserves it's own mention, if only for it's contribution to the "mucky industries")
Roland TR-808
The "Amen break"
The donk
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Surely the vocoder?
(ok, Sparky isn't exactly popular music)
Flanging.
Oo-er missus. A sound without which no 60's record is complete. Please don't tell me Rhodri mentioned it in the original article..
Anyway. The effect was originally created by slowing down one of two tape machines by applying one's finger to the flange of the tape reel and recording the resulting whooshy swooshy effect. It's now done by a wee box. George Martin apparently referred to all studio effects as "flanging".
Demonstrated thusly how to do it in the traditional manner:
ORCH5
AKA "Orchestra Hit", the sound of the 80s in half a second.
(skip to 0:55 to actually hear the thing)
Is there a demand for vintage digital synths?
Everyone gets terribly excited about the old analogue ones but I'm assuming that there's now an app for the iPhone which does everything a Fairlight CMI used to do and then some..
Would an old Fairlight be worth anything? There aren't any on eBay at the moment. And doing a swift Google shows none on the 2nd hand market so, presumably, there's scarcity value.
Frankly, I dunno
I think there's a market for DX7s and the like, but by their definition there's little difference between an original digi synth and a software simulation of it. And Fairlights could also be huge, slow and prone to crashing (there's a great clip of an early Pet Shop Boys tv performance floating around youtube where one of the sequencers crashes right near the end of the song), so most folks would probably be happy with a much more reliable and user-friendly plug-in version for Logic/Cubase/etc.
But I may well be utterly wrong on the matter. I await correction with bated breath.
I quite like them. And I don't think it's just me.
I've got most of the samples from a Fairlight in my computer - and a few computer recreations older digital synths. Others are definitely using them as I've heard them on various pop songs - mostly the ones recreating sounds from the 80s.
Fairlights that still work sell for good money, but most of them are in need of some repair around now if they haven't been kept in good condition - mostly the tubes in the screen go after a while, and the lightpen will often stop working. There was a company that was fitting old Fairlights with 2GB hard drives and VGA cards for output to modern monitor screens.
That said, some of the people involved in the original Fairlight recently started making new ones, and there's an iOS app as well. The app isn't cheap in iPhone/ iPod app terms, but much cheaper than either a new or vintage Fairlight CMI.
Please, not the wah-wah....
Always hated those bloody things - and I'm in good company.
An aprocryphal story has it, that, at the end of a day recording some tracks for "Electric Mud", Mudddy Waters, who was somewhat unwillingly going along with proceedings, told the (presumably longhair) guitarist that "on his way back from the barbers, you should throw that thing in the river".
Nuff said!
Except for this one
George at Bangla Desh concert: