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The history of electronic music within European pop
Part 7: "Where did it all go wrong "
As many of you already have gathered by now the synthesizer as an instrument plays an important role in European popular music. It’s an instrument you will encounter in the European art scene, the (progressive rock scene) and entering the main stage in the eighties with the development of new wave and hi-nrg disco. But did this tradition came falling from the sky? In the coming months we will try to recreate a small history of the use of electronic music and the use of the synthesizer within the European popscene...This is part 7
‘Where did it al go wrong’ is the question we are asking ourselves in this episode. We left of where the synthesizer gave an enormous creative push to the European music scene at the start of the eighties. Mid eighties the synthesizer was so imbedded in the music scene that producers where choosing it as the key instruments in their studio dismissing traditional instruments like guitar, bass and drums into a supporting role or less. It was cheap, the possibilities where endless and you didn’t have to argue with all kinds of musicians. The machine did it all. So in this episode we're getting a bit technical with the machines that would leave a definite mark on the musicscene of the late eighties and early nineties.
Fairlight CMI
On one side you had the Fairlight CMI. This was a development of an earlier synthesizer called the Qasar M8, an attempt to create sound by modeling all of the parameters of a waveform in real time. Unfortunately, this was beyond the available processing power of the day, and the results were disappointing. In an attempt to make something of it, Vogel and Ryrie decided to see what it would do with a naturally recorded sound wave as a starting point.
To their surprise the effect was remarkable, and the digital sampler was born. (Note that analog sample-playback units using tape had been around since the 1950s). Although many artists swore to the possibilities the machine had it was very expensive. Still artists like Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Jean Michel Jarre welcomed the machine. Although later models, adjusting for inflation, were getting comparatively less expensive as the relevant technology was getting cheaper, competitors with similar performance and lower prices started to multiply. Fairlight managed to survive until the mid-1980s, mainly bidding on its legendary name and its cult status, sought after by those that could afford its prices.
Meanwhile the competition in the form of New England Digital wasn’t sitting still. Several generations of the Synclavier were already produced but in 1980, the "Synclavier II" hit the market which was far more commercially packaged. The basic configuration had an on-off keyboard (known as the Original Keyboard), and 8 to 32 voices of FM sound generation. Over the next six years, Synclavier II became the most commonly sold configuration, and a number of options were introduced. In the late 1980s, the company introduced configurations of the basic electronics, the V-P keyboard, the polyphonic sampling voices, and large disk storage to create different systems that were focused on movie production, on sound effects, on studio recording, and on live performance. These realized the concept of the tapeless studio, and were marketed as the Synclavier 3200, 6400, and 9600 models. New England Digital went out of business in 1991, and the Synclavier is no longer manufactured. In the eighties artists like the Laurie Anderson, Eurythmics, A-ha and Depeche Mode worked with the Synclavier. And Stock, Aitken and Waterman wouldn't use anything else. It is still in use in the recording industry, particularly among soundtrack composers and sound designers.
Now, all these technological improvements were wonderful of course. But placed in the hands of people who were more technicians then musicians and a record industry out on reducing costs the whole concept of electronic music went terribly wrong. Especially artists (mainly singers) that were used to interpret material that was written for them fell (in our opinion) victim to this trend. Artists from the fifties, sixties and seventies, who were used to an orchestra or at least a band present when they entered a recording studio were suddenly confronted with a technician somewhere behind the glass that fidgeted the entire music out of a control panel. We are getting maybe a bit subjective here but not every vocalist’s voice is made to sing over electronic music and with these productions a lot of ‘soul’ got lost.
The cheap sounding result gave the synthesizer such a bad name amongst ‘serious’ music lovers that it would take a decade to restore some of its former credibility. But also artists rerecording their old material were in fact devastating their own archive. One of the saddest examples of this is Frank Zappa who ruined his entire catalogue by redoing it on the Synclavier. Listen to the LP version of his classic ‘we’ re only in it for the money’ and then to the cd-reissue to hear what I mean.
Some synthesizer wizards even dismissed the vocalist all together and began dedicating themselves to recording entire soundtracks, Broadway material, evergreens and recent hits on a Fairlight or Synclavier (or worse a lesser clone of these two). Remember cd’s made by the London Starlight Orchestra, London Studio Orchestra or the Broadway Stage Orchestra? Responsible for all these productions was Dutchman Ed Starink. Educated as a classical pianist and inspired by Walter Carlos (see part three for info on him) he released his first synthesizer album named “Cristallin” in 1981.
After this he started his own Star Inc. studio (1982) and label (1986), which he released more than 100 CDs from. In 1989 he signed a contract with Arcade which resulted in the release of about 30 albums, most prominently “Synthesizer Greatest” and “Synthétiseur” series, locally adapted for various European markets. He sold millions of these projects. What you may think of Ed’s work, he definetly left his mark on the European music scene, still has fans and his albums sold really well. See also the Starink fanpage for more info.
Listen what the London Starlight Orchestra makes of Madonna's 'Into the groove' (fragment courtesy of muziekweb)
The turnaround came again due to another technical step in this case the adaptation of the Roland TB-303 synthesizer. Manufactured by the Japanese Roland corporation from 1982 to 1984 that had a defining role in the development of electronic music in the nineties. The TB-303 (named for "Transistor Bass") was originally marketed to guitarists for bass accompaniment while practicing alone. Production lasted approximately 18 months, resulting in only 10,000 units.
It was not until the mid- to late-1980s that DJs and electronic musicians in Chicago found a use for the machine in the context of the newly developing house music genre. In 1987, Steve 'Silk' Hurley's ‘Jack Your Body’ was the first house track to reach No.1 in the UK Top 40 pop chart. Other hits were M/A/R/R/S' ‘Pump Up The Volume’, S'Express's ‘Theme from S'Express’ (1988), Black Box – ‘Ride on time’ (1989), Technotronic's ‘Pump Up the Jam’ (1989) and Snap with ‘The Power’ (1989). In the early 90's, as new Acid styles emerged, the TB-303 was often overdriven, producing a harsher sound. But it was with the genre dubbed by the media Intelligent Dance Music or IDM that the synthesizer finally became an artistic valued instrument again.
