Customer Reviews

Switched-On Bach

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After Bob Moog's death one week ago, I found myself listening to everything I have in my collection that was performed on a Moog synthesizer. This includes all of the Carlos stuff, all of Hans Wurmans's material (commercially released and otherwise) that I am lucky to have..it's harder to find..., and that of other artists and non-so-artistic performers. I even listened to my own opus from college electronic music lab and my own subsequent multi-track home studio work with my two MiniMoogs + MicroMoog.

In all of this, there is no way to get around the fact that the original Switched-On-Bach is the paramount of analog synthesizer performances known to me. I estimate that since a grade school music teacher first played the opening track for us when SOB first came out, and I begged my very reluctant, classically trained, serious-musician parents to buy me the LP, that I have listened to the album almost 2000 times.

I am a classical musician, recording engineer, and hear tons of music daily. I never get tired of J.S. Bach's music, and the amazing performances of Walter/Wendy Carlos do not wear thin. I have a pretty good idea of how Carlos put these tracks together, and why, and over what time period and under what conditions. I know how hard it is to pay Bach's complex music well, and I am very familiar with the huge difficulties in even approximating those performance values on multi-tracked synthesizer without MIDI, computer assistance, or sequencers. I also know that Carlos did this work at home using a very limited home-built multi-track recorder and mixer, on an instrument that was not at all refined, even for an early synth. And yet the music sings, and jumps out of the speakers, and dances and lives.

The work of others is simple organ playing by comparison. Carlos did the impossible, and the results are still marvelous today.

I fondly remember wearing out the original LP version of this recording when it came out, I listened to it so much. (Actually, one of the best things about having this CD is that it doesn't have the skips and clicks that I memorized as if they were part of Bach's music...) Having it back in my listenable collection is a treat.

Granted, these performances do not compete with the kinds of things that people can do with synths and computers nowadays. But it certainly was VERY different when it originally came out. It opened whole new vistas that Carlos and others have been exploring ever since. The VERY free rendering of the second movement of the 3rd Brandenburg can still hold its own with some of the latest synth stuff.

The last track ("Initial Experiments") is an added bonus. It consists of Carlos explaining some of the ideas that were originally tried when doing the recording, along with some of those cast-off takes. For the technically inclined, something that's especially interesting is an explanation of "tuned white noise", which is one of the timbres that I could not figure out how to reproduce when I had an electronic music class in college (in the late 70's), and had to fight with a Moog similar to what Carlos used. The instrument was a beast -- getting one sound just right could take hours.

Do you absolutely HAVE to own this recording? Not unless you're a music history professor, or a collector of historic recordings. But it's still just as much fun as it was back then.

When I was a kid, my parents had a turntable. (The kind that
plays the black round things they used to call records.) They
had probably fifty records; this is the only one I remember.
I've since looked through the old boxes of records, and there's
quite a variety of stuff: everything from Messiah to Ray
Stevens. I'm told I listened to all of it (until the turntable
broke when I was in elementary school), but this is the album
I never forgot. It is probably the bulk of the reason that
today I like baroque music in general and J.S. Bach in
particular more than any other music.

Played this way, Bach really *moves*. It makes you want to
move, too. You can't get it out of your head, and you don't
want to. Now that I know it's still available I'm getting
the boxed set, but if you only get one album, get this one.

Any discussion that gets hung up on the instrumentation of this record misses that, here, Carlos gets the feeling of Bach's music nailed, track after track. This is a player on a mission. Note how the material is cleverly sequenced for maximum liveliness and variety. Then, mysteriously, after this album was a left-field hit, Carlos did the amusing, spooky "Clockwork Orange" soundtrack and that was about it for quality performances. The rest is sacred only to her cult. But the original Switched-On is far more than a nostalgia item. It documents one human's passion overcoming the technological limitations of that era's crude synths.

I memorized every note of the music on the original "LP" in the late 60's. I am thrilled to have the music again in audio CD format. I was bitterly disappointed in the S-O Bach 2000 CD - the music is muddy and dreary. This CD, true to the first recording is crisp and classic. I highly recommend this edition for a unique addition to your Bach musical library.

Having owned this album on vinyl since it came out in 1968, and Wendy Carlos was Walter Carlos, I am pleased it has been released on CD. I still consider it one of the best examples of early Moog synthesizer music ever put together. Wendy's technique is excellent throughout the album. And digitizing has clarified the sounds even more. This is an excellent album to start your electronic music collection.

After reading a couple of the reviews here, I wanted to clarify something for people unfamiliar with the history of electronic music....Wendy Carlos's "Switched-On Bach" was innovative in the sense that she was able to reproduce Bach's music with a synthesizer....by hand. This was accomplished excrutiatingly...note by note. This wasn't played on a Casio. Wendy Carlos is one of electronica's true founders, and although today it sounds quaint, it is a truly remarkable musical achievement. I'm a proud owner of this classic! For anyone interested in listening to early electronic music, this is a must-have for any collection.

I can honestly say that I've never heard another album or song in my life that transports the listener to such an alien realm. The music is so byzantine, layered, precise, fast....its a trip. I jokingly told my son that this is the music that robots listen to. Its more like what robots might dream. Amazing and breathtaking in its complexity, heightened by the precision of programming and machinery. Maybe its heresy, but there's NOTHING else out there like this...at least that I know of.

Back in the days of LPs, this was what started me on electronic music (moog). I'd go so far as to call this the grand daddy of all electronica. From Bach to Euphoria... what a trip.

Back in 1971, at the University Of Kentucky in Lexington, a music major Bruce somebody introduced me to this album. Yes, album - the black round things called LPs. This album got me hooked on Bach's music lock, stock, and barrel.

I recall many music officinados critized this work as being virtual blasphemy towards Bach. Word was that the great organist and Bach scholar, E. Power Biggs, was extremely pained to witness the Master's work being so desecrated.

I distinctly remember at a usual Friday night beer bash, Bruce and a calculus teaching assistant (Wirjadi??); almost got into a fist fight over whether this was genuine music or a coarse mechanical device imitating art and making a fast buck for the artist. But when one listens to this album (now on CD) there is no doubt that this is great stuff. Listen to track 5 - the Two Part Invention in D Minor. You will be convinced that this is beautiful music albeit NOT note for note but truly fascinating. This work was done by an outstanding artist at a time when few had heard of a Moog Synthesizer.

This is an excellent album that gave me untold hours of enjoyment but more importantly introduced me to Bach's music. Thank you Walter Carlos (now Wendy Carlos). Excellent work!