BassTractor

Delia Derbyshire must've written some of the first electronic music I heard as a boy, but I thought they were sound effects, not music. However, being the sensitive and inquisitive lad back then, I thought about it for a minute and told Mum that one could write music like this. That's when I learned that I'm crazy and need to be in a ward somewhere. Hm. She probably still thinks that, so BC is not alone! 😄

If you haven't seen it yet: watch "Tina Live" from 2009 and be impressed. She was 69 at the time! And a half! RIP

Exciting times they were, with all kinds of ideas being developed by lab coaters and composers alike, the composers also starting to wear lab coats and the lab coaters getting wild hair and a possible beret 😊 ( ... based on a misunderstanding, as only painters, sculptors, actors and architects use berets; everyone knows that). Díck Raaijmakers, a Dutch composer, worked at some technical plant and was not allowed to use the equipment for personal pleasure, so he'd clock out at the end of the work day and pop back into the nat. lab, carefully locking the door, to make his music (basically simple linear, tonical music set to electronic sound), and in order to remain under the radar, took his moniker at work, Díck Nat. Lab, and changed it into the composer's name Kid Baltan. Me, coming in a whole generation behind these guys, I always thought I invented stuff, and I never did. They'd already done it, and better. BTW, certain aspects of Daphne Oram's drawing system (how ultra cool so early in the development!) also returned in Xenakis' UPIC machine a lot later.

Nice! I remember that footage and even remember his sweater, but must admit I'd forgotten about the Kaleidophon up to now, so I guess nothing ever came of it. Many people did stuff like that with simple means, and, whilst absolutely commendable, most of the time nothing came of it. BTW 1, he's product placing his album White Noise 2. IMS it was a nice album. Must revisit and check. BTW 2, I just love that you can buy an EMS VCS3 for less than the price of a piece of plastic pipe. Count me in. 😀

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Aye, in general terms you must be right. I was only thinking of our bass playing friend Mick Mason (who has a whole thread dedicated to him and his many years of scamming people), as several BassChatters have predicted that somebody at some point will give him his comeuppance - - not that they condone it.

If only this could happen somewhere in Leicester ... One can live in hope. 😉

Didn't even manage to get through this exact song. Sound is not composition. BUT the other song they'd published a few weeks ago gave me some hope, and I was in fact ready to buy it so as to give it a chance. Don't remember its title though.

I liked it. Would have preferred a different mix (lower solo voice) and less live antics, but at the core I liked it.

Oh yeah, Coffee Grindr is a great app!

I only clicked the link to this thread in order to pay my 250 quid in administration fees before cashing in the 1,000 quid. Disappointed.

It's a thing of beauty. Well done!

He can't. He'd have to spill the liquid.

We had a thread, but I can't find it right now, so ... "Tractor" means "player". Etymology: Latin "trahere" ("to pull") to English "to treat", "a treat" and "a treaty". More should be said better here. I'm also the BassTractor coz when working at a farming school I got a call from a farmer whose tractor was stuck in the mud on a bad field. Found the largest, heaviest 4WD tractor I could find, spent time taking off equipment and re-equipping it with snow chains and towing cable and whatnot ... Arrived at the field and was to engage the 4WD and ... no lever! Flabbergasted, and it took time before I understood we had two versions of the same model, and I'd taken the 2WD. No way that thing would pull out the farmer's one. Sigh. Back to the garage, time-consumingly de-equip the 2WD and de-equip and re-equip the 4WD, and back to the field ... Story came out, and one of my pupils drily called me BassTractor as opposed to BaritoneTractor etc. It stuck.

One of my composition teachers, who shall remain nameless, doesn't want to discuss or even mention one of his older compositions, as it caused dizziness and nausea in the audience. This was probably not due to frequencies though, but possibly due to the tiny frequency changes that were central to the piece. IOW, Mick's list is entirely correct if you just change the frequencies a little ... and also remove the claimed effects. 😀

Similar stuff in French high-brow authors' circles in the 60s and 70s - - some of these people having terrible practises and spreading nauseating ideas through their texts. In that case it's not even about discerning between creator and work, as one can with instrumental music.

My broken 3D printer is full of the stuff. Works a treat.

Commemorating bass player Ray Shulman, who died last week, here's one of GG's (to me) most tantalising songs:

Thanks! Your googolplex is larger than my googol. 😃 It again shows that my local record store was quite special. Another example is the guy offering me a copy of "Boris" by Yezda Urfa - rarer than hens' teeth chewing on rocking horse poo, and also more hygienic, I assume.

These messers were nearly wholly forgotten by me. Listening to the album right now. Thanks for posting! Does anyone remember this record label and its use of the Yes space glider? I do remember one or more musicassettes having been released like this, but have no idea about YESS or what they've put out.

I don't know the guy, but did a picture search, and it's probably guitar and bass player Heinz Fröhling, who also played Mellotron. Apparently, he was in prog trio Schicke Führs Fröhling.

The stuff as presented in that vid is, I believe, well-represented in their middle period - say albums from Octopus to Free Hand or Interview, so you might wish to start there.

When the Shulman brothers disbanded Simon Dupree and the Big Sound to form Gentle Giant, I somehow didn't catch up despite liking SD&tBS, and despite looking forward to the announced project, which was worded much like the later liner notes of Acquiring the Taste (in short they were gonna change the face of pop music - - "Pretentious - for the sake of it!" as they'd later say). Much later, when The Power and the Glory had just been released, I listened to the first few tracks of that and Octopus, and told the shop lady: "Just sell me Octopus; the other one is way above me head". Later that same day I'd regained trust in my brain, and went back to the shop to buy it anyway. I'll try and re-tell Ray's account of the story about how Elton John didn't become a member of Gentle Giant, but not today. The story was online, but didn't follow the rest during a site move. I guess you haven't seen it.

Personal, telling little about Ray: In the beginning, to me personally, Ray first and foremost was a great composer, then one of the people who provided the bridge I needed between my childhood's classical music and rock and jazz music. Much later I realised that he also was a bass monster. Gentle Giant's music has been central in my life for nearly 50 years, and the band's tightly knit group of fans and friends for nearly 30. We started meeting up in the mid 90s, later alternating between continents, and eventually band members joined and would become highly respected friends - not objects of adoration. Two decades ago, also Ray wanted to join, but his health prevented him. The news of his death hit me harder than imagined, and harder than similar deaths have done previously. Non-personal: Some of you may know that Ray and his then girlfriend are behind the smart lettering on the front cover of "Civilian", where the album's title is visible in red within the words "Gentle Giant" in yellow. This showed yet another side of Ray's ingeniousness (and it took many fans years or decades to discover this bit). A man has gone. Requiescat in pace.

Oh, the memories! You guys reminded me of the first record-player-with-built-in-speaker amp, and as we of course were advanced electronics designers at age 12, we understood that we'd better put a resistance on both plus and minus sides of the mono lead, as ... ... one could never tell from which side the sound really came!