Customer Reviews

Secrets of Synthesis

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This album taught a lot of intresting things about synthetic compostion, but at it's heart, all it consists of is Wendy Carlos describing the "Secrets of Synthesis" and using small music clips to accentuate her points. If that doesn't sound like it will interest you, then I wouldn't recommend it.

Wendy starts this program by pointing out the general characteristics of the sine, square analog white noise and builds from there. Envelopes and filters are covered extensively and she makes use of her own library of recordings as examples. I enjoyed her talk on the early development and use of vocoders and of her work with the Late Robert Moog. Many changes of early synth development were a direct result of the artists Bob Moog encountered such as Wendy. Wendy was instrumental in bringing the touch sensitivity and velocity to the electronic keyboard. I enjoyed this recording and have re-played it numerous times.

This CD is an audio documentary - written and narrated by Wendy Carlos. It is also a "hypertext-enhanced" CD (i.e., there is web content on the CD as well as Audio). The included web site contains a lot of supplemental material - such as her program notes and some other material.
I found it very interesting to learn how some of the music I have enjoyed over the years came to be and how it was created.

Wendy lectures on how she composes etc. Probably a must for any musician. But not much here for the casual music lover. If I had known that before I bought it . . .