2010
This is from some old "Synths Are Frakkin' Awesome" video of the sort that crop up now and again. Dude's name is Don Muro, and he's got a Korg DS-8 and something I can't quite make out under it, and the whole rig is set up like a dual manual organ with foot pedals. He obviously puts the rig to the test with one of the harder fugues in the Bach cannon (see what I did there? Double pun!), The Gigue Fugue.
I'm a passable keyboard player, but seeing this sort of thing makes me feel like I just started to toddle about. (To preempt the obvious comments that are about to be typed, yeah, it's 80s-tastic. Yeah, we all looked like tards back then. Yeah, the synth sounds are weak. Deal with it.)
EDIT: Interestingly, the video was removed due to the fact that it said "Played in the style of Wendy Carlos" in the description. Serendip, LLC, which is the company that controls Carlos' copyrights, is extremely aggressive in sending out takedown notices to YouTube, eBay, et al, as a simple Google search of their name will show.
As I mentioned in the comments, while I certainly understand aggressively protecting your copyright, as that's your prerogative as a creator, this company (although I think "company" may be a loose term, as it appears to be either Carlos alone, or one dude that works for her) is completely ludicrous in some of its actions. It seems that any mention in the description of a video of her name is grounds for a takedown notice, which is simply silly at best, and at worst a complete and total misunderstanding of what copyright actually means.
In any event, that's why the video is gone, as far as I can tell. They never contacted me, and honestly, I'd just ignore them if they did, as I'm not the sort that is going to go running to the hills from a stupid nastygram that has no legal basis, but I'm just curious as to what end this serves. It seems to defy logic, as far as I can tell.
posted March 11, 2010 by Justin McGrath
I didn't mind the synth sounds at all. Exactly what I would expect from the man's style of dress! Ha.
Great post.
posted March 11, 2010 by MrMZ
posted March 12, 2010 by space_monkey
posted March 12, 2010 by johan
*shrug* They didn't write me. But Wendy nee Walter wasn't mentioned until this point.
EDIT: The plot thickens. A simple Google search for Serendip, LLC shows that they _aggressively_ go after virtually any mention in the public sites of Ms. Carlos. Apparently you can't even list a Walter Carlos album on eBay without a takedown notice following shortly thereafter. (Which is interesting, since it says on the cover "Walter Carlos." I have several of that vintage myself.)
I'm all for protecting your copyright, if that's your bag, but that's completely fucking ridiculous.
-CR
posted March 12, 2010 by Chris Randall
posted March 12, 2010 by valis
BTW, a super old website of mine is mentioned on Wendy's site. I take some nerdy pride in this:
"Things are confused by another name for this all-pass filter audio tool, the "Hilbert Transformer" (a fine, if technical description, in this case implemented digitally (with C-Sound) can be found at this link)."
posted March 12, 2010 by seancostello
No kidding. In particular, that brief TR-808 section of the second video you posted has to be the most uninspiring use of that machine *ever*.
Re: Wendy Carlos...perhaps the most famous example of her litigiousness was her lawsuit against Momus for the song "Walter Carlos" on his album The Little Red Songbook. Ironic, really, considering the album was in many ways an obvious homage to Carlos, dripping as it was in synthesized baroque music.
I can see how the song in question pushed Carlos' buttons, but when you consider that the song "Everyone I Have Ever Slept With" name-checks a variety of art-world stars and hipsters he admittedly never slept with, you start to see that being skewered by Momus on that record is a token of affection. He kids because he loves.
As he said later in an interview about his follow-up album (in which he wrote commissioned songs for $1000 to repay his label's legal bills): "...in a way, making an unauthorized portrait of Walter Carlos led to me making thirty authorized portraits of all these people who gave me 30,000 dollars combined to write a song about them. That gave me a huge amount of material as a writer to celebrate their diversity, their otherness, and their difference from me. Sometimes you get bored with your own personality as a writing subject. It was great to have other people give you the details."
Though I'm sure Wendy doesn't see it that way, "celebrate [her] diversity, [her] otherness, and [her] difference from me" was exactly how I interpreted the song about her when I first bought the album.
Anyway, lyrics of the song are here for the curious: link [www.nndb.com]
posted March 19, 2010 by Meteren
Some people just have nothing else better to do.
posted March 20, 2010 by Computer Controlled
