Composer, engineer and former nuclear weapons specialist Don Lewis shared this live performance of Silent Night.
Lewis performs on his Live Electronic Orchestra (LEO), a custom plexiglass monster synth that he created in the 1970’s. It incorporates organ, multiple synthesizers, drum machines, a vocoder and more:
Lewis is the subject of a new indie documentary, The Ballad of Don Lewis, which is available on DVD.
Black & White Photo: Ned Augustenborg
W o w.
love it
Great performance!
So beautiful!
Cool starship!
I recommend his documentary highly. LEO is like a knockout sideways version of the legendary TONTO. Don is great fun in general. Check out his YouTube demos for Roland, like the fine showoff pieces for the VP-550. That’s still a ‘vocoder to beat’ because of the Vocal Designer. Its a sort of SuperNatural section, apart from classic robot voices. Don leaves no doubt about how deep it goes.
http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/vp550.php
Most beautiful thing I have heard all season. Thank You.
I realize this is just a peculiar pet peeve of mine but, I have to express it anyway; I absolutely, passionately HATE when classic music such as Christmas carols get all ‘jazzed up.’ To my ears, it completely ruins the song. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that I cannot stand jazz in the first place. I know that puts me in a small minority but, it is just how my musical ear reacts on a very deep, gut level. Every time I hear somebody ‘destroying’ a classic tune by not playing the actual notes as originally written or using odd timings with a bunch of extra notes jumping all over the place in out-of-tune scales, I just want to scream and cram ear protection in my ears to make the pain go away.