Interview with Paul D. Lehrman on The Celtic Macintosh

[roope]

Just stumbled upon this sympathetic shortish interview with Paul D. Lehrman on "The Celtic Macintosh" CD (TIM 18)! A nice little story about the gear of the time, and about a storytelling background music demo tape (phew)'s way into the Themes International Music library.

hxxp://retromaccast.libsyn.com/episode_45_the_celtic_macintosh (starting at about 10:50)

[Mr]

Wow. great find! Thanks for sharing. Lots of info here I was never aware of.
Great story of how this ended up as a library release! Especially dig how Keith Mansfield is framed as something of a 'library superstar', haha. Also nice to have some more context on Richard Elen.
Library has often been at the forefront of music technology (particularly for electronics), this being yet another early innovation. Cool.

[roope]

Here's actually a more detailed description of the technical side of the project:
muzines.co.uk/articles/the-celtic-macintosh/1646

What would be the other albums to point out among electronic libraries, that could be considered pioneering and innovative?

[FictionOfColours]

Serge Bulot's work seems pretty popular.

I'm not sure if BBC Radiophonic Workshop's records count as library releases, but they were quite revered and innovative too.
Delia Derbyshire's Electrosonic was a KPM album.

Bernard Fevre perhaps?

Cecil Leuter, maybe, along with 'Kinetics/Vision' by Alan Hawkshaw and Trevor Bastow.
(I know of a lot of records like those that have gotten quite a bit of attention with collectors, but I do have to say that what's 'innovative' is something harder to pin down.)

[Mr]

What would be the other albums to point out among electronic libraries, that could be considered pioneering and innovative?

Library is surprisingly ripe with historic and influential characters! In electronic music, some off the top of my head:
Eric Siday was the first to buy a modular synth system from Robert Moog. You can hear it employed on his recordings for Conroy and his two "Sounds of Now" LPs. I've read he put it to good use - he ran a business in New York employing jingles and music for commercials for various companies.

I'm fairly certain that on all of his library work, Oskar Sala employs the 'Mixtur-Trautonium', his revision of the "Trautonium", a synthesizer predecessor contemporary to the Theremin and Ondes martenot.

Pietro Grossi's numerous library LPs employ an early (like, 1960's early!) computer to generate and manipulate sounds for the compositions.

Andrés Lewin-Richter worked at the pioneering Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in the 60's, assisting and working with the likes of Edgar Varèse. Some of his first released works were for the CAM library.

It's not an instrument I'm very familiar with, but Francis Monkman was an early adopter of the CMI Fairlight - not sure if he used it for his work with Bruton, but it might be the "advanced recording techniques" some of the descriptive notes refer to.

I'm not sure if BBC Radiophonic Workshop's records count as library releases, but they were quite revered and innovative too.
Delia Derbyshire's Electrosonic was a KPM album.

Brian Hodgson and Delia Derbyshire also did work for the Standard Music Library. Lots of odd tape manipulation sounds on all of them!

[FictionOfColours]

The fairlight CMI's something I'm pretty familiar with myself, Mr - totally adore certain records that utilized it, like 'The Dreaming' by Kate Bush, various 80s pop music, and also a Mars Lasar track for Parry Music called 'Exotica', one of the most beautiful library tracks I know. It's an early digital sampler and was pretty revolutionary for the time, capable of some interesting samples & sounds, usually pretty crystalline sounds or big industrial rhythms, sound effects, etc...
Honestly wish I could find more library that used it. I'll look up this Francis Monkman though.

Back to innovators, though... Would David Vorhaus count? I read he was part of the group White Noise, which is pretty cult and acclaimed, and according to Discogs, he invented the 'Kaleidophon' - 'an electronic double-bass-like instrument that he uses on some of his recordings'. [Interestingly, he started out playing classical bass and also made some straight up MIDI/PC-game sorts of records later on.]

[roope]

Thanks Mr. for these details - that was the stuff I was looking for.

And thanks f_o_f too! True about Bernard Fevre, I remember reading about the making of Black Devil Disco Club being very innovative. They use long tape loops to create the beats etc. And BBC recordings for sure!

And of course - Piero Umiliani was one of the first to purchase a Moog, right? And he sure found a lot of use for it.

I think I have something else almost on my mind, I'll maybe remember it later.

[Mr]

The fairlight CMI's something I'm pretty familiar with myself, Mr - totally adore certain records that utilized it, like 'The Dreaming' by Kate Bush, various 80s pop music, and also a Mars Lasar track for Parry Music called 'Exotica', one of the most beautiful library tracks I know. It's an early digital sampler and was pretty revolutionary for the time, capable of some interesting samples & sounds, usually pretty crystalline sounds or big industrial rhythms, sound effects, etc...
Honestly wish I could find more library that used it. I'll look up this Francis Monkman though.

I thought I remembered seeing a clip of Monkman demo the Fairlight, but whilst searching I stumbled upon a little clip featuring a young Mars Lasar at the keyboard/computer:

And of course - Piero Umiliani was one of the first to purchase a Moog, right? And he sure found a lot of use for it.

Allegedly one of the first to get one in Italy, at least. He also had an E.M.S. Synthi at the Sound Work-Shop studio, which he featured a lot.

[Lord Thames]

Back to innovators, though... Would David Vorhaus count? I read he was part of the group White Noise, which is pretty cult and acclaimed, and according to Discogs, he invented the 'Kaleidophon' - 'an electronic double-bass-like instrument that he uses on some of his recordings'. [Interestingly, he started out playing classical bass and also made some straight up MIDI/PC-game sorts of records later on.]

I would say so, yes - I'm pretty sure he uses the Kaleidophon on 'The Vorhaus Sound Experiments', and his later KPM work has got loads of Fairlight on it.

'Handplayed By Robots' by George Fenton and Ken Freeman on KPM is recognised as quite a groundbreaking electronic album these days too.

It's interesting how many experimental and avant-garde musicians dabbled in library music - perhaps because it was one of they few ways they could make money out of what they did!

[FictionOfColours]

Thanks for sharing that Lasar video, Mr! I figured I'd never find such a thing, so I didn't really bother searching.

I still need to hear The Vorhaus Sound Experiments, then. I only happen to have heard "The Great Chip Takeover" before and a bunch of his later material.

[Mr]

Had the feeling I had forgotten something 'obvious'... just remembered another;
A much older technology than most people assume, the vocoder actually has its origins way back in the 1920's - though not originally intended for musical purposes.
It first had its 'proper' commercial breakthrough in the late 70's with (I think) the Korg VC-10, but it did see some use prior, Peter Thomas being one of the first on the ball, employing one he had available at the Siemens-Studio für elektronische Musik in Munich for his 1966 score to "Raumpatrouille"... which I've heard first saw release on Sam Fox (SF 1019). Not sure if it's true, but I've heard it's the first instance of its use in film music.

[xeenmusic]

On a side note -- There was intended to be a "Celtic Macintosh II" which was never released.  The only tracks which may have been finished were:

Beggerman
Bridget
Lamentation - Dawning
Trotto