Robert Palmer (singer)
Robert Allen Palmer was an English singer-songwriter and record producer. He was known for combining soul, rock, pop and blues. Palmer's involvement in the music industry began in the 1960s, covered four decades and included a spell with the band Vinegar Joe, he found success both in his solo career and with the Power Station, had Top 10 songs in both the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Two of his hit singles, "Addicted to Love" and “Simply Irresistible”, were accompanied with stylish music videos directed by British fashion photographer Terence Donovan. Palmer received a number of awards throughout his career, including two Grammy Awards for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, an MTV Video Music Award, two Brit Award nominations for Best British Male Solo Artist. Palmer died aged 54 following a heart attack on 26 September 2003. Palmer's father was a British naval intelligence officer stationed in Malta. In 1949, Palmer moved with his family from Batley. Influenced as a child by blues and jazz music on American Forces Radio, Robert Palmer joined his first band, The Mandrakes, at the age of 15 whilst still at Scarborough High School for Boys.
His first major break came with the departure of singer Jess Roden from the band The Alan Bown Set in 1969, after which Palmer was invited to London to sing on their single "Gypsy Girl". The vocals for the album The Alan Bown Set! recorded by Roden, were re-recorded by Palmer after the success of the single. According to music journalist Paul Lester, Palmer rose from northern clubs in England to become "elegant and sophisticated" and the master of several styles. In 1970 Palmer joined the 12-piece jazz-rock fusion band Dada, which featured singer Elkie Brooks and her husband Pete Gage. After a year, Palmer and Gage formed soul/rock band Vinegar Joe. Palmer played rhythm guitar in the band, shared lead vocals with Brooks. Signed to the Island Records label, they released three albums: Vinegar Joe, Rock'n' Roll Gypsies and Six Star General, before disbanding in March 1974. Brooks said that Palmer "was a good-looking guy", that female fans were happy to find that Brooks and Palmer were not romantically linked.
Island Records signed Palmer to a solo deal in 1974. His first solo album Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley recorded in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1974, was influenced by the music of Little Feat and the funk fusion of the Meters who acted as backing band along with producer/guitarist Lowell George of Little Feat. Although unsuccessful in the UK, both the album and single reached the Top 100 in the US. Notably, "Sailin' Shoes", Palmer's own "Hey Julia" and the Allen Toussaint-penned title track carry the same rhythm, were packaged on the album as a "trilogy" without a pause between them. After relocating with his wife to New York City, Palmer released Pressure Drop, named for the cover version of the reggae hit by Toots and the Maytals, in November 1975, he toured with Little Feat to promote the reggae- and rock-infused album. With the failure of follow-up album Some People Can Do What They Like, Palmer decided to move to Nassau, directly across the street from Compass Point Studios. In 1978, he released Double Fun, a collection of Caribbean-influenced rock, including a cover of "You Really Got Me".
The album reached the Top 50 on the US Billboard chart and scored a Top 20 single with the Andy Fraser-penned "Every Kinda People". The song has been covered by other artists including Chaka Demus and Pliers, Randy Crawford and Amy Grant, it reached number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100. Palmer's next album was an artistic departure. 1979's Secrets produced his second Top 20 single with Moon Martin's "Bad Case of Loving You". The number 14 hit gave Palmer his second Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart hit; the 1980s saw. The album Clues, produced by Palmer and featuring Chris Frantz and Gary Numan, generated hits on both sides of the Atlantic, first with the radio-friendly single "Johnny and Mary" and "Looking for Clues". Catchy music videos matching the synth-pop stylings of new wave gave him much needed exposure to a younger audience; the success was repeated with the 1982 EP release of Some Guys Have All the Luck. In April 1983 Pride was released, while not as commercially successful as Clues, did feature the title song and Palmer's cover of The System's "You Are in My System", with The System's David Frank contributing keyboard tracks to the latter song.
On 31 May 1983, Palmer's concert at the Hammersmith Palais was recorded and broadcast on BBC Radio 1. On 23 July 1983, Palmer performed at Duran Duran's charity concert at Aston Villa football ground, where he struck up friendships with members of Duran Duran that would spawn the supergroup the Power Station; when Duran Duran went on hiatus, guitarist Andy Taylor and bassist John Taylor joined former Chic drummer Tony Thompson and Palmer to form the Power Station. Their eponymous album, recorded at the New York recording studio for which the band was named, with overdubs and mixing at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, reached the Top 20 in the UK and the Top 10 in the US, it spawned two hit singles with "Some Like It Hot" and a cover of the T. Rex song "Get It On", which peaked one position higher than the original at US number 9. Palmer performed live with the band only once that year, on Saturday Night Live; the band toured, played Live Aid, with singer Michael Des Barres after Palmer bowed out
On Broadway (song)
"On Broadway" is a song written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil in collaboration with the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Weil and Mann were based at Aldon Music, located at 1650 Broadway, New York City, the song as written by Mann/Weil was recorded by the Cookies and featured an upbeat lyric in which the protagonist is still on her way to Broadway and sings "I got to get there soon, or I'll just die"; the song was played as a shuffle. When Leiber/Stoller let it be known that the Drifters had booked studio time for the following day and were a song short, Mann/Weil forwarded "On Broadway". Leiber and Stoller felt that it was not quite right. A young Phil Spector played the distinctive lead guitar solo on The Drifters' recording; the personnel for the Drifters recording were Ernie Royal -- trumpets. The instrumental arrangement was written by noted arranger Garry Sherman; the recording by the Drifters was a hit, reaching No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963. The Drifters' version of the song was featured in a 1971 television public service announcement for Radio Free Europe.
The Hungarian expatriate announcer is shown entering the RFE studio announcing "On Broadvay", after which young Hungarians are shown listening to the "In sound from Outside". George Benson's version of "On Broadway", from his 1978 album Weekend in L. A. hit No. 7 on No. 2 on the soul chart. Benson's version has had substantial adult contemporary and smooth jazz radio airplay since, it won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Vocal Performance. Benson's performance of the song was used in the 1979 film All That Jazz in a sequence that featured dancers on stage auditioning for a musical similar to Chicago. Benson performed "On Broadway" with Clifford and the Rhythm Rats for the 1994 Muppets album Kermit Unpigged. Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes released a version of the song on their 1977 album A Piece of the Rock. British electro pioneer Gary Numan began performing the song on his 1979 tour, released on the live album Living Ornaments'79. Neil Young recorded a version of the song on his 1989 album Freedom.
American composer and producer Kramer covered the song on his 2012 album The Brill Building. The Buddy Rich Big Band recorded a jazz version of this song on the Big Band Machine album on the Groove Merchant Record label in1975The song has been recorded by many other artis ts, including the Coasters, the Dave Clark Five, Bobby Darin, Percy Faith, Tom Jones, Eric Carmen, Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, James Taylor and Livingston Taylor. An instrumental version of the song was used in the film American Beauty during the Spartanettes dance scene. Paul Shaffer presented a music video with the song on one of the final episodes of the Late Show with David Letterman; the video featured cameos from Lorne Michaels, Martin Short, Andrea Martin, David Sanborn and Darlene Love. Jennifer Hudson and Katharine McPhee performed the song in 2013 for the season two premiere of the television series Smash called "On Broadway". During an episode of Living Single, Synclaire sang the song to Overton's Uncle Tibby after the three of them returned home from showing him around New York City.
The song was included in the musical revue Smokey Joe's Cafe. It is featured in the Carole King musical Beautiful, because Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann are characters in the show. British progressive rock group Genesis referenced the song's lyrics and melody in their song "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway", the eponymous title track from their 1974 concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Argentinian group Serú Girán referenced the song's melody — played by the fretless bass — in their track "Canción de Hollywood" from their 1979 album, La Grasa de las Capitales. Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics
Stephin Merritt
Stephin Raymond Merritt is an American singer-lyricist, best known as the songwriter and principal singer of the bands The Magnetic Fields, The Gothic Archies, Future Bible Heroes. He is known for his untrained bass voice. Merritt created and plays principal roles in the bands The Magnetic Fields, The 6ths, The Gothic Archies and Future Bible Heroes, he used the name The Baudelaire Memorial Orchestra as an attribution for a song written for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, entitled "Scream and Run Away". Further music was recorded for the audiobook versions of the series and is attributed to The Gothic Archies; the Tragic Treasury was released by Nonesuch Records in October 2006 along with the 13th and final book of the series. Under his own name, he recorded and released the soundtracks to the films Eban and Charley and Pieces of April; the soundtrack to the Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Pete featured many of his songs. He and director Chen Shi-Zheng have collaborated on three pieces of musical theatre.
Selected tracks from these works have been released on Nonesuch Records under the title Showtunes. Additionally, he is one-third of the infrequent, live-only ensemble the Three Terrors, whose other principal members include 69 Love Songs's Dudley Klute and LD Beghtol. Past themes of these performances have included French pop music, movie themes and New York City. Kenny Mellman, James Jacobs, Daniel Handler, Jon DeRosa and others have performed with The Three Terrors at these sporadic gala events. Merritt wrote and sang "I'm in a Lonely Way" in a television commercial for Volvo that aired in the summer and fall of 2007, he performed "The Wheels on the Car". Merritt penned the music and lyrics for a 2009 Off-Broadway stage musical adaptation of Coraline, a novel by Neil Gaiman. In the MCC Theater production, his music will be performed by a piano "orchestra" – complete with a traditional piano, a toy piano and a prepared piano, he produced a score for the silent film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, performed at the Castro Theatre, San Francisco on May 4, 2010 as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival.
Growing up, Merritt used different spellings of his name for different purposes. "Stephin" was one such pseudonym that he used to sort his junk mail, that became the spelling he used as a musician. Prior to 2013, Merritt had never met his biological father, folk singer Scott Fagan, who had a brief affair with Merritt's mother, Alix Merritt; the three met at a screening of the film AKA Doc Pomus in 2013. Merritt's relationship with his father is described in the song "'99 Fathers in the Clouds", on the Magnetic Fields album 50 Song Memoir. Merritt attended Massachusetts high school The Cambridge School of Weston and attended NYU before moving back to Boston, he has worked as an editor for Time Out New York. Merritt is known for having a dry personality, embracing a persona and life, different from the traditional rock star image. In September 2005, an interviewer quoted an anonymous reviewer to Bob Mould that Mould was "the most depressed man in rock." Mould's response was "He's never met Stephin Merritt, obviously."Merritt suffers from a hearing condition known as hyperacusis, which he refers to in the songs "'79: Rock n' Roll Will Ruin Your Life" and "'92: Weird Diseases" on the Magnetic Fields album 50 Song Memoir.
Any sound heard louder than normal begins to "feedback" in his left ear at louder volumes. This has influenced the reserved live setup of The Magnetic Fields, which consists of acoustic instruments and little to no percussion. Merritt wears earplugs during performances, covers his left ear when the audience applauds. Merritt is the subject of a documentary, Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, which premiered in March 2010. Merritt is an atheist, wears only brown clothing, is gay and a vegan, saying, "I ain't eat an animal since 1983." Eban and Charley Pieces of April Showtunes Obscurities The House of Tomorrow – The official site of Stephin Merritt, The Magnetic Fields, Future Bible Heroes, The 6ths, The Gothic Archies Stephin Merritt biography Aging Spinsters: A Stephin Merritt Fan-Blog The Distant Plastic Treehouse - "a hangout for Stephin Merritt fans" Stephin Songs – The music and lyrics of Stephin Merritt
Album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued as a collection on compact disc, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78-rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photograph album. Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in the 21st-century have focused on CD and MP3 formats; the audio cassette was a format used alongside vinyl from the 1970s into the first decade of the 2000s. An album may be recorded in a recording studio, in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places; the time frame for recording an album varies between a few hours to several years. This process requires several takes with different parts recorded separately, brought or "mixed" together. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed "live" when done in a studio. Studios are built to absorb sound, eliminating reverberation, so as to assist in mixing different takes. Recordings, including live, may contain sound effects, voice adjustments, etc..
With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at separate times while listening to the other parts using headphones. Album covers and liner notes are used, sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, lyrics or librettos; the term "album" was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage the word was used for collections of short pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums; when long-playing records were introduced, a collection of pieces on a single record was called an album. An album, in ancient Rome, was a board chalked or painted white, on which decrees and other public notices were inscribed in black, it was from this that in medieval and modern times album came to denote a book of blank pages in which verses, sketches and the like are collected. Which in turn led to the modern meaning of an album as a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item.
In the early nineteenth century "album" was used in the titles of some classical music sets, such as Schumann's Album for the Young Opus 68, a set of 43 short pieces. When 78rpm records came out, the popular 10-inch disc could only hold about three minutes of sound per side, so all popular recordings were limited to around three minutes in length. Classical-music and spoken-word items were released on the longer 12-inch 78s, about 4–5 minutes per side. For example, in 1924, George Gershwin recorded a drastically shortened version of the seventeen-minute Rhapsody in Blue with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, it ran for 8m 59s. Deutsche Grammophon had produced an album for its complete recording of the opera Carmen in 1908. German record company Odeon released the Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky in 1909 on 4 double-sided discs in a specially designed package; this practice of issuing albums does not seem to have been taken up by other record companies for many years. By about 1910, bound collections of empty sleeves with a paperboard or leather cover, similar to a photograph album, were sold as record albums that customers could use to store their records.
These albums came in both 12-inch sizes. The covers of these bound books were wider and taller than the records inside, allowing the record album to be placed on a shelf upright, like a book, suspending the fragile records above the shelf and protecting them. In the 1930s, record companies began issuing collections of 78 rpm records by one performer or of one type of music in specially assembled albums with artwork on the front cover and liner notes on the back or inside cover. Most albums included three or four records, with two sides each, making six or eight compositions per album; the 12-inch LP record, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. A single LP record had the same or similar number of tunes as a typical album of 78s, it was adopted by the record industry as a standard format for the "album". Apart from minor refinements and the important addition of stereophonic sound capability, it has remained the standard format for vinyl albums.
The term "album" was extended to other recording media such as Compact audio cassette, compact disc, MiniDisc, digital albums, as they were introduced. As part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some observers feel that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album. While an album may contain as many or as few tracks as required, in the United States, The Recording Academy's rules for Grammy Awards state that an album must comprise a minimum total playing time of 15 minutes with at least five distinct tracks or a minimum total playing time of 30 minutes with no minimum track requirement. In the United Kingdom, the criteria for the UK Albums Chart is that a recording counts as an "album" i
Spin (magazine)
Spin is an American music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione, Jr. The magazine stopped running in print in 2012 and runs as a webzine, owned by the Billboard-Hollywood Reporter Media Group division of Valence Media. Spin was established in 1985. In its early years, the magazine was known for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college rock, indie rock, the ongoing emergence of hip-hop; the magazine was bold, if sometimes haphazard. It pointedly provided a national alternative to Rolling Stone's more establishment-oriented style. Spin prominently placed newer artists such as R. E. M. Prince, Run-D. M. C. Eurythmics, Beastie Boys, Talking Heads on its covers and did lengthy features on established figures such as Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Miles Davis, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, John Lee Hooker—Bart Bull's article on Hooker won the magazine its first major award. On a cultural level, the magazine devoted significant coverage to punk, alternative country, electronica and world music, experimental rock, jazz of the most adventurous sort, burgeoning underground music scenes, a variety of fringe styles.
Artists such as the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, X, Black Flag, the former members of the Sex Pistols, The Clash, the early punk and New Wave movements were featured in Spin's editorial mix. Spin's extensive coverage of hip-hop music and culture that of contributing editor John Leland, was notable at the time. Editorial contributions by musical and cultural figures included Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins, David Lee Roth and Dwight Yoakam; the magazine reported on cities such as Austin, Texas, or Glasgow, Scotland, as cultural incubators in the independent music scene. A 1990 article on the contemporary country blues scene brought R. L. Burnside to national attention for the first time. Coverage of American cartoonists, Japanese manga, monster trucks, the AIDS crisis, outsider artists, Twin Peaks, other non-mainstream cultural phenomena distinguished the magazine's dynamic early years. In late 1987, publisher Bob Guccione Jr.'s father, Bob Guccione Sr. abruptly shut the magazine down despite the fact that the two-year-old magazine was considered a success, with a newsstand circulation of 150,000.
Guccione Jr. was able to rally much of his staff, partner with former MTV president and David H. Horowitz, locate additional new investors and offices and after missing a month's publication, returned with a combined November–December issue. During this time, it was published by Camouflage Associates. In 1997, Guccione sold Spin to Miller Publishing. In 1994, two journalists working for the magazine were killed by a landmine while reporting on the Bosnian War in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A third, William T. Vollmann, was injured. In February 2006, Miller Publishing sold the magazine to a San Francisco-based company called the McEvoy Group LLC, the owner of Chronicle Books; that company formed Spin Media LLC as a holding company. The new owners replaced editor-in-chief Sia Michel with a former editor at Blender; the first issue to be published under his brief command was the July 2006 issue—sent to the printer in May 2006—which featured Beyoncé on the cover. Pemberton and Spin parted ways the next month, in June 2006.
The following editor, Doug Brod, was executive editor during Michel's tenure. For Spin's 20th anniversary, it published a book chronicling the prior two decades in music; the book has essays on grunge and emo, among other genres of music, as well as pieces on musical acts including Marilyn Manson, Tupac Shakur, R. E. M. Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Limp Bizkit, the Smashing Pumpkins. In February 2012, Spin relaunched the magazine in a larger, bi-monthly format and expanded its online presence, which covered reviews, extended editorials and features on up-and-coming talent. In July 2012, Spin was sold to Buzzmedia, which renamed itself SpinMedia; the September/October 2012 issue of Spin was the magazine's last print edition. In December 2016, Eldridge Industries acquired SpinMedia via the Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group for an undisclosed amount. In 1995, Spin produced its first book, entitled Spin Alternative Record Guide, it compiled writings by 64 music critics on recording artists and bands relevant to the alternative music movement, with each artist's entry featuring their discography and albums reviewed and rated a score between one and ten.
According to Pitchfork Media's Matthew Perpetua, the book featured "the best and brightest writers of the 80s and 90s, many of whom started off in zines but have since become major figures in music criticism," including Rob Sheffield, Byron Coley, Ann Powers, Simon Reynolds, Alex Ross. Although the book was not a sales success, "it inspired a disproportionate number of young readers to pursue music criticism." After the book was published, its entry on 1960s folk artist John Fahey, written by Byron Coley, helped renew interest in Fahey's music, leading to interest from record labels and the alternative music scene. Contributors to Spin have included: SPIN began compiling year-end lists in 1990. Note: The 2000 album of the year was awarded to "your hard drive", acknowledging the impact that filesharing had on the music listening experience in 2000. Kid A was listed as the highest ranking given to an actual album. 1994 roadside attack on Spin magazine journalists Anon.. "Bibliography". In Ray, Michael.
Alternative, Hip-Hop and More: Music from the 1980s to Today. Britannica Educational Publishing. ISBN 1615309101. Mazmanian, Adam. "Library Journal". In White, William. Buyer's Guide. Bowker. Johnston, Maura. "Never Mind The Anglophilia, Here's The Queens Brothers". Idolator. Retrieved Jul
Roland Jupiter-4
The Roland Jupiter-4 was an analog synthesizer manufactured by the Roland Corporation between 1978 and 1981. It was notable as the company's first self-contained polyphonic synthesizer, for containing digital control of analog circuits, allowing for such features as programmable memories and voice assignment modes. Priced at US$2,895, it was cheaper than polyphonic machines from its competitors. However, it did not sell well in comparison; the Jupiter-4's basic architecture consisted of four identical voice cards, each with a VCO, resonant low pass VCF IC, which could self-oscillate, variable-gain amplifier. Modulation included an Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release envelope for the filter, another for the voltage-control amplifier and a final level output with an overload LED, as well as a separate unmemorized master volume control; the filter ADSR could be inverted. The final VCA level setting could be memorized in user presets, was prior to the overall master stereo output volume; the LFO, routable to oscillator pitch, pulse width, filter cutoff and amplifier, was notable for being able to reach audio frequencies, allowing for crude FM and AM synthesis.
Those settings were memorized in the user presets but a adjustable depth remained independently configurable through the pitch wheel to combinations of VCO, VCF and VCA, as well as a bend range. The VCOs can garner unstable tuning if low-quality electrolytic capacitors are used. Synthesizer repair shops can replace these tuning capacitors with stable polystyrene capacitors for an instant perfect tune. Individual oscillator card VCO tuning is accessed by four capped holes in the middle of the back of the case, but the unit should be allowed to warm up before adjusting for at least 20 to 40 minutes prior to adjustment; the Jupiter 4's two most distinctive features were provided by virtue of its "compuphonic" digital control of the four voice cards, made possible by two Intel 8048 chips: An arpeggiator, with a choice of up, down, up/down, or random mode. The arpeggiator can be prominently heard in Duran Duran's 1982 hit single "Rio." Switches on the far left select between the internal rate, adjustable, or an external source, such as the clock out of its contemporary, the Roland CR-78—a programmable analog drum machine.
A hold button on the lower front panel allows users to latch or set a running arpeggiator pattern, useful when playing leads on another machine over a JP-4 pattern. Otherwise the arpeggiation only responds; this allows for a less rigid timing in live situations when playing with others. Left-hand modulation from the keyboard is unusual; the polyphonic portamento or glide feature can be used effectively with in conjunction with the arpeggiator and any preset. An octave down switch by the modulation wheel is available independent of memorized settings. Unlike Moog or Sequential, the Roland modulation wheel goes left to right, is spring-loaded. A short spike on top of the spring-loaded modulation wheel allows for an unusual rapid fanning, but risks damage to this out of production part. Knobs allow depth of pitch bend or LFO modulation, in addition to the amounts assigned and memorized. Toggle switches select bend or LFO to the wheel and onto any combination of VCO/VCF/VCA in an unusual selection pattern, all controlled by a single wheel motion.
Four voice assignment modes, which, as well as simple one-VCO-per-voice polyphony, included the ability to affect four-VCO unison when one key was pressed, two VCOs per voice when two keys were pressed, one VCO per voice when three or four keys were pressed. This effect can be heard on tracks such as "Seconds" by The Human League and "I Dream of Wires" by Gary Numan; the final signal path included a simple high-pass filter and a lush stereo chorus effect based on two, now rare, MN3004 ICs. The chorus circuit board is located underneath the modulation wheel, has one control: a front button for enabling/disabling the effect, it is wide, supplying a pseudo stereo effect when both outputs are used. This filter, as well as other parts of the machine use the BA662 VCA chips, which are rare. Despite evidence against its alleged sonic magic, the BA662 remains sought by many x0xb0x builders, a clone DIY kit of the Roland TB-303. Numerous such chips are used in the early JP-4 circuits and the Roland TB-303.
The Jupiter 4 had ten preset sounds and featured eight memory locations for user-created patches. Saving to those locations requires two separated write record buttons to be held, to protect against accidental writing. A battery located deep between the chorus and power supply preserves the contents of the memory ICs. A quirk that catches many first-time users is that the lower right preset and user memory buttons disengage most programmable controls to the right of the arpeggiator section when a user or factory preset is used; the controls to the right of the arpeggiator are only live when the yellow manual button is selected. The controls do not adjust the synth cards directly, they are supplied with 0 -- 5 volt voltages. Multiplexers and analog to digital converters read the settings send them in digital form to the CPU; the CPU converts these parameters to analog control voltages, sends them to the analog voice cards and envelope gates. It is a remarkably stable hybri
Erik Satie
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie, who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. Satie was an influential artist in the late 19th- and early 20th-century Parisian avant-garde, his work was a precursor to artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, the Theatre of the Absurd. An eccentric, Satie was introduced as a "gymnopedist" in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies, he referred to himself as a "phonometrician", preferring this designation to that of "musician", after having been called "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911. In addition to his body of music, Satie was "a thinker with a gift of eloquence" who left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the dadaist 391 to the American culture chronicle Vanity Fair. Although in life he prided himself on publishing his work under his own name, in the late 19th century he appears to have used pseudonyms such as Virginie Lebeau and François de Paule in some of his published writings.
Erik Satie was born on 17 May 1866, the son of Alfred Satie and his wife Jane Leslie, born in London to Scottish parents. Erik was born at Honfleur in Normandy; when Satie was four years old, his family moved to Paris, his father having been offered a translator's job in the capital. After his mother's death in 1872, he was sent, together with his younger brother, back to Honfleur to live with his paternal grandparents. There he received his first music lessons from a local organist. In 1878, when he was 12 years old, his grandmother died, the two brothers were reunited in Paris with their father, who remarried shortly afterwards. From the early 1880s onwards, Satie started publishing salon compositions by his step-mother and himself, among others. In 1879, Satie entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he was soon labelled untalented by his teachers. Georges Mathias, his professor of piano at the Conservatoire, described his pupil's piano technique in flatly negative terms, "insignificant and laborious" and "worthless".
Émile Decombes called him "the laziest student in the Conservatoire". Years Satie related that Mathias, with great insistence, had told him that his real talent lay in composing. After being sent home for two and a half years, he was readmitted to the Conservatoire at the end of 1885, but was unable to make a much more favourable impression on his teachers than he had before, and, as a result, resolved to take up military service a year later. However, Satie's military career did not last long. Satie moved from his father's residence to lodgings in Montmartre in 1887, when he became 21. By this time he had started what was to be an enduring friendship with the romantic poet Patrice Contamine, had his first compositions published by his father, he soon integrated with the artistic clientele of the Le Chat Noir Café-cabaret, started publishing his Gymnopédies. Publication of compositions in the same vein followed. In the same period he befriended Claude Debussy, he moved to a smaller room, still in Montmartre, in 1890.
By 1891 he was the official composer and chapel-master of the Rosicrucian Order "Ordre de la Rose-Croix Catholique, du Temple et du Graal", led by Sâr Joséphin Péladan, which led to compositions such as Salut drapeau!, Le Fils des étoiles, the Sonneries de la Rose+Croix. Satie gave performances at the Salon de la Rose + Croix, organized by Péladan. By mid-1892, Satie had composed the first pieces in a compositional system of his own making, provided incidental music to a chivalric esoteric play, had his first hoax published, broken from Péladan, starting that autumn with the Uspud project, a "Christian Ballet", in collaboration with Contamine de Latour. While the comrades from both the Chat Noir and Miguel Utrillo's Auberge du Clou sympathised, a promotional brochure was produced for the project, which reads as a pamphlet for a new esoteric sect. Satie and Suzanne Valadon began an affair early in 1893. After their first night together, he proposed marriage; the two did not marry. Satie became obsessed with her, calling her his Biqui and writing impassioned notes about "her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, tiny feet".
During their relationship, Satie composed the Danses gothiques as a means of calming his mind, Valadon painted a portrait of Satie, which she gave to him. After six months she moved away. Afterwards, he said that he was left with "nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness", it is believed this was the only intimate relationship Satie had. In 1893, Satie met the young Maurice Ravel for the first time, Satie's style emerging in the first compositions of the youngster. One of Satie's own compositions of that period, was to remain undisclosed until after his death. By the end of the year he had founded the Église Métropolitaine d'Art de Jésus Conducteur; as its only member, in the role of "Parcier et Maître de Chapelle", he started
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