A Hyperborean wrote:24db wrote:Btw kraftwerk's compostions are so strong they're bullet proof...you can transpose them into any style (Mexican, easy listening, string quartet) and the strength of the writing shines out...TD's does not...because it is about timbre, and the blending of sounds...more than melodies....I refer readers to Edgar's comments about TD from the Mixing It 'Berlin Special' from several years back or as Paul Morley said...it's 'chromatically respendant'. This is why if you want to copy TD 'exactly' it is so hard...so many have tried and so few have succeeded. Kraftwerk is like telling a certain story...most of use can do it and by and large you can recognise the tale, TD are like doing it an a certain accent...it's harder to do
Yes, sorry, I was supporting Michael's view, but I'm sure he could do it himself. I like the point about TD's music being less strong melodically and more about timbre. It agrees with Edgar's occasional statements about TD being "Painters with sound"; they certainly create emotional pictures in sound. Having said that, I think that when Johannes Schmoelling joined TD he added a strong melodic element that was missing before (and sometimes since) and this is why I prefer this period of TD's musical output. JS's solo music is often very quirky, almost eccentric with very 'catchy' phrases and it has some beautiful single crying sound lines. At least that's how I like to understand it!
I can see where you are coming from, but when Chris Franke says that (in the early 80's) that most of the melodies came from Edgar then it (for me anyway) makes me respect Johannes's work even more. As the 80's progressed all three musicians should be seen as 'complete composers', able to come up with almost complete tracks that the others could add ideas to or suggest ways to improve them:
Chris Franke:
TANGERINE DREAM
THE ORIGINAL SULTANS OF SYNTH BRING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY TO THE SILVER SCREEN
"Many conventional composers have to repeat themselves. But for a scene we have all seen hundreds of times before in other films, we don't do the same old cliché." Christoph Franke
by Gerald Seligman
A jet thunders across the sky. A bounding major-key melody soars after it, straddling a pulsing synth beat and the measured thud of a Simmons drum. All are requisite phrases in the electronic vocabulary, and all stem from the only group that can claim the sound as their own, the German trio Tangerine Dream. "I guess we've reached the public," says founding member (sic) Christoph Franke. "In 1970, we started as pioneers. We also created our own style. Later, people found that electronics can extend the possibilities of other styles, through jazz and avant-garde music, and finally to disco and pop music. It just spread out. "Over the course of a 20-year existence, the trio's influence has indeed circled the globe. Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, Kraftwerk and virtually all the English synth bands are only the most obvious.
Through their scores for films like Sorcerer, Thief, Firestarter, and Ridley Scott's Legend, Tangerine Dream have altered the sound of cinema as well. Giorgio Moroder's numerous electronic soundtracks and Maurice Jarre's score for Witness are almost acts of plagiarism."It's unusual for a team to score films," Franke says, "so we work a little differently, and much faster than an ordinary composer." With their compositions stored on floppy disk, Franke, Edgar Froese and Johannes Schmoelling can alter, rearrange and rescore passages at will, giving directors like Ridley Scott great input into the final product. "Instead of an orchestral score where they have to buy what they get, we can make fast changes ...Every film is a little bit different. Legend is in a state where there is a final cut already existing. So we watch the video, and we have group discussions with the director and the sound editor. Then we make a cue sheet with all the different cues and accents we want to do. We try to score by teamwork, where first one person, then another, develops the style and melody. Finally, we put our tapes together and mix them with the director, who always does have influence in the process."What attracts many film directors to Tangerine Dream-besides their ability to score a film in three weeks-is the band's ability to undermine predictable musical moments.
Composers like John Williams reach back into collective experience, plucking out useful musical bits and pieces which tickle the filmgoer's memory. But Tangerine Dream, who come out of a different tradition and have had to learn the trade from scratch, have an approach directors often find refreshing. "Many conventional composers have to repeat themselves," comments Franke. "But for a scene we have all seen hundreds of times before in other films, we don't do the same old cliché. We can try something else, sometimes a counterpoint to the action, instead of going with the film ...Sometimes you need a second line which goes a bit differently."From the film work," adds Franke, "we sometimes get ideas for our own records. We find, by accident, structures which we can use somewhere else." Their latest album, Le Parc, is a case in point. As in a film score, "we wanted to have a lot of different composition cells, which we first wanted to bring into one long piece. But then we saw the pieces we had in mind were a lot different. Some have a pretty strong rhythm, and others are very Japanese-ish." As a result, the trio opted for separate tracks. "But it still sounds like one long piece, because they are selected in a way that are like symphonic movements."The idea for Le Parc germinated through the band's many years of traveling. They began noting the role parks play in the lives of cities and their inhabitants. The tracks are titled after parks the world over, from Paris' Bois de Boulogne to Barcelona's Gaudi to Kyoto's Zen Garden.
Each group member contributed to the final composition."For `Central Park,' Johannes did a lot of basic material first," says Franke. "We always found that in a too-fast rhythm, it sounds hectic, yet somehow almost too happy. And then when we had it too slow, it was never hectic enough. So a couple of times we changed the rhythm, and a lot of the instrumentation ...There was a 'B' part-the 'A' theme was there from the beginning, we all liked it-but we kept changing the `B` part, because it somehow sounded too classical. It went through three or four changes."Usually, we start off with each of us doing our demos for the different pieces, so there are already basic tracks. And everybody has pretty much the same equipment, which is quite a big help since computer memory is used to store all the sound colors and virtually everything we play on the keyboard. Some are even stored before they get onto the tape recorder. This way we can exchange floppy disks to hear the compositions ...From our different rehearsal rooms, we can even play over the phone the latest tunes we've come up with. "The work then becomes collaborative as the demos are altered by a free exchange of compositional ideas. At other times, a given piece is entirely collaborative, from inception onward. So the earlier role of "Edgar playing melody, Johannes chords, and me [Franke] percussion" has given way to an integrated trio of composer-musicians alternating roles as the moment may require.
This is, after all, a group that began synthesizing music way back in the stone age of the computer era. But the wealth of technological advancement since the early Seventies has not significantly altered their sound. "Electronics is not the main thing," says Franke. "Instead, it's the expression. The outcome is important, that's all, and it's just much easier to shape sounds this way. All the instruments with all the memory help you not think so much about technology anymore-they leave more space for creativity."New developments, especially digital samplers and polyphonic synthesizers, have simply made their electronic palette more colorful and, better still, more accessible. "Our music started to be very monophonic and very simple in texture," says Franke. "Today, we have a much wider spectrum and dynamic range when we use polyphonic, multi-timbre instruments." Where once Tangerine Dream used a varied assortment of untreated acoustic instruments-guitars, woodwinds, drums, human voice-sampling is now the rule of the day. "Through sampling machines, you can use acoustic material in different ways without hearing much that's different in the sound color.
You just play them a different way ...Now it blends together with everything else. Only yesterday there was a sitar player here [in Berlin]. First I sampled it through a computer and then later, had him play the whole part after I had composed it. On the song `Yellowstone Park,' I used some vocal fragments of a female singer [Clare Torry] who is able to improvise very spontaneously. She sang on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. I used it more like an effect. And I still might use a 12-string guitar or a celeste. We have sampled a lot of guitar sounds on Roland synthesizers. It sounds even more aggressive."Sampling has added other dimensions the trio would never have thought possible five or more years ago, particularly in the area of live performance. Some of the credit for this should go to Tangerine Dream themselves. Since they undertook live performance, they've worked closely with scores of international engineers and companies to develop stage-worthy electronic instruments. "Our first involvement with engineers was when we wanted to do all these tours," says Franke. "Because most electronic musicians have stayed in their studios, they didn't have problems.
They start, technically, when you go on stage-all the mechanical problems, keeping everything in tune, all the temperature changes on stage. So we started to modify it all, and to make it possible to have a lot of different sound colors in easy access. We couldn't play around with a lot of the patch cords of our earlier days, and the power supplies were much too weak. This all had to change."According to Franke, the expertise inherent in even being able to suggest these modifications came catch as catch can. "We aren't engineers, so we can't repair any instruments or read diagrams. We all have musical backgrounds and just use the technique like somebody who plays the piano. We're coming more from the musical side and have learned slowly about the technical dealings."
Their first engineering, contact was Robert Moog, followed by among others, the German company PPG, a forerunner in digital synthesis. The trio continue to work with unaffiliated engineers and companies who design to the band's own specifications, ones not often associated with instrument manufacturing. Their touring setup consists of "only five or six keyboards each and a couple of rhythm machines and sequencers. Some instruments we have are similar, but we always make sure each setup is a little different so that we don't have one particular keyboard three times. In the mixture we have, pretty much, all keyboards available."Every module is a complete polyphonic synthesizer. It's all much more compact, much easier to transport and service, and has many more sound varieties. It's really hundreds of setups." In addition, each concert doesn't require a team of "stage engineers," as it used to. "You don't have to bring your home studio onto the stage."The band is now gearing up for their first American tour since 1977, which should kick off by early spring.
They approach each tour the same way they approach a new recording: "We have this idea," comments Frank, "that every concert tour should have a new program. We don't repeat music from our records. We compose new pieces. First, we compose the major themes, working pretty much from rough to fine. We have an overall dynamic curve for the whole concert, and then we go into the more detailed work like filling this gap of five minutes out and then that one. We have months of rehearsals where the composition and the place for improvisation will be practiced."At this stage, we can draw a piece and then put it in a different order. It's still flexible, so the composition too is somehow modular," he adds with a laugh. "Then we try out how it fits and go into a rehearsal cinema where we play the concert for two weeks." Then there's some final shaping, ending with "one or two performance concerts, which we tape. With the tape, the light crew starts to develop their light show."
They also design film, laser, and even computer graphics shows for accompaniment."The potential for sinking into improvisational chaos is a pressing concern to Tangerine Dream. It's one they've somewhat resolved by composing structures in much the same way as a jazz trio. "We went through a couple of years, since 1979 maybe, where our structure for a live performance changed from 70 percent improvisation to the reverse. Today, maybe 60 or 70 percent is actually composed and arranged. Just by having contact on stage, we can shorten or lengthen improvisation. If it's running quite well, one night we can do it much longer, 20 minutes. On another night, if it's falling into chaos, we can go into the next fragment after only 10 minutes. "The approach adds an element of disciplined composition you may not normally expect from groundbreakers like Tangerine Dream. But as Franke comments, "If you do the long tours and bigger halls, and not just the experimental halls like when we started in '70, you just cannot take the risk anymore."Because of this, he adds, "Some people from the old days think we don't take many risks anymore. On the other hand, they like it, because the music is much more colorful. They get a lot more musical surprises."
Music Sound Output. DECEMBER 1985
We love you really, the Scots even support you in some football matches 
