Vintage footage of Isao Tomita performing When You Wish Upon A Star, on his Moog modular synthesizer.
Tomita is the Japanese counterpart to Wendy Carlos, a 70’s electronic music pioneer that made his name creating synthesized arrangements of classical works.
His performance starts at about 1:10 in.
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GEMINI CRICKET! This made my morning!
The classic Tomita synth voice – that lazy whistle sound. Fantastic.
If there are any of you out there in synthland who have never heard his classics of Debussy (“Snowflakes Are Dancing”), Holst (“The Planets”) or Stravinsky (“Firebird”), get them – you owe it to yourselves.
Snowflakes Are Dancing was his first album and it was his best. Completely different than Wendy Carlos, who’s always more ‘proper’, but also less lush.
Back when I was just starting out, I bought the Casio CZ-101 just so I could have this iconic whistle sound which they nailed in a factory preset.
I used to play his albums ad infinitum when i was a kid, especially ‘The Planets’. The track “Mars” still is a compilation favourite. Also, he is a really geeky nerd himself, seeing as he always had a little gear list on his albums…
he gets so much expression from what is a fairly basic patch. I wish I knew what he was saying. Probably something about an imminent attack from Mothra or Godzilla.