Sunday Synth Jam: Synthesist Mike Hough (Koboto Music on YouTube) shared this modular take on J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
Here’s what he has to say about his arrangement:
“I was always curious as to how my MakeNoise Modular would sound as a “Polyphonic” Synth.
For this video, I edited the infamous J.S. Bach masterpiece for organ, placing the notes on separated tracks so no notes overlap and then recorded each pass one by one. It took a total of 15 tracks to cover all the notes. In the video I alternate between the Session screen and the Piano Roll so you can see how the piece was divided up.
All tracks were recorded with the patch shown in the video, with slight variations for expression.”
Seriously impressive work on this… awesome arrangement !
hmmm.. Lovely as this piece is, It’s very obvious this was a “performance” that is driven by a merciless clock. I know it may be unrealistic, but I can’t help but compare this to Wendy (Walter?) Carlos… The thing about Wendy’s work was that even though it was all performed on a Moog Modular system.. I believe she physically played each part … by hand! At the time of Wendy’s creation, a “Piano roll” on a computer … was not a thing … (Ok.. they actually did have piano rolls, but it was the kind of double scroll you would queue up into a player piano). And they certainly did not have a system that could read scored notes. So she had to painstakingly perform each part, on a keyboard… And from what i’ve heard she was not an accomplished master of Bach…. like say, Glenn Gould for example, so she must have spent countless hours getting the phrases right… measure by measure. Nevertheless… you can hear how her work breathed, like a human. My ear can tell the difference…..
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Nice work. However – when sequencing classical music it’s vital to keep an eye on the tempo. Vary it ever so slightly throughout the piece according to the “feel” of the muscial content. Actually – the method useful in most cases of music making. Tempo is a vital dimension in music, so why stick to only one per tune? Obviously you will need to adjust the tempo before embalming the music into an audio track. MIDI is your friend.