11 thoughts on “Keith Richards’s Modular Synth Jam (1969)”

1. The modular that would end up in the hands of Tangerine Dream, who were obviously way more capable of getting actual music out of it.

2. aAAAAaargh! All that smoke getting into that beautiful device 🙁

3. Great factoid!

4. Am I the only one that gets the sense that he has no idea what the hell he's doing? heh

5. That was not good.

   Yer Pal,
   Gel-Sol

6. You must note that in those days most synthesizers were supplied without simple manuals to refer to.

7. I can see why he stuck with the guitar.

8. Of course he does not know what he's doing. At least, it's a genuine ignorance but with an interest in finding new ways to express his art. He didn't find it with a synth though.

   What gets me is that you can find plenty of guys, and it's always males, doing demonstrations on youtube or what-have-you who are constantly twisting knobs, or maybe just fingering them, making extremely subtle and non-preceptual adjustments, and/or other magical ritualistic motions that have no relation to the sounds you are hearing.

   Synths are not new devices and there is plenty of instruction on how to make sounds with them now. I wonder– are we really seeing a synth demonstration or some kind of electronic masturbation resulting in a filter swept square wave orgasm??? Or could it be that they just don't know what the hell they are doing? 😉

   Could be both!

9. Ahhh, those were the days, when you could smoke while you patched your $40,000 modular synthesizer.

   Interesting that he plays it laying flat – was that more common back then?

10. You can see the same machine in the film Performance with Mick Jagger … http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066214/

11. if it wasn't laying down he couldn't do lines of coke off it…duh!!