Synth Harmony

Angels of the Dark Clouds, eight minutes and fifty three seconds of music video meditation.  Might be good for your home theater.  These are music pieces from our 2017 season set to natural visuals by my talented friend Isaac Wilson who influenced me as a visual artist.  

A slow walk downwards, you feet covered with mist.  Soft as a pillow.

Video: 1984  Audio: 2004  I rediscovered this piece recently and thought to share it here.  The visuals I made back in my video studio in 1984: Chromaton 14 Analog Video Synthesizer, NTSC Chromascope Analog Video Synthesizer, Modified Apple II+ Computer with genlock board running the CEEMAC visual composition language, Modified Commodore C64 Computer running Microflix, lots of video feedback.  The audio is my live performance on the Kurzweil K2600, part of the webcast series "Art Music Coffeehouse" that I produced at that time.  That much said, none of this stuff matters much.  Is it art that can still be enjoyed today, even as a very small low resolution video file?  It might work on a phone.  Probably look awful on a big TV.  No matter.  Those that like this sort of thing will find "Rising Crimson Tide" the sort of thing they like.

This is a performance of Jean-Marc Matos & Company in front of a large crowd at the Festival de la Rochelle in the south of France, July 1983.  I performed the video live during the live dance presentation using the Chromaton 14 Analog Video Synthesizer, the Adwar Special Effect Keyer, and my homemade camera-monitor chain for video feedback.  It was sponsored by the French Ministry of Culture.  I created the music with the EML 400/401 Analog Sequencer, my Creatronics modified Casio M10, Harald Bode's Barberpole phaser, and one of the very first Linn Drum machines programmed by the famous blues guitarist Dave Fields at the remarkably precocious age of 14. Consider it "Techno" style EDM anticipated long before the genre emerged.

This is a performance from Spring 1981, forty years ago.  I was hired by Digital Keyboards to modify the GDS Synergy synthesizer.  I used a piece of white felt to make the instrument presentable while it was disassembled.  It was a very early FM synthesizer that used the digital oscillator design from the Alles machine at Bell Labs.  It is a credit to Mercer 'Stoney' Stockell, Tom Piggott,  Dennis Breifel (RIP) and the crew at MTI Crumar.  I offer this music as a credit to their work. 

This is in memory of my long lost friend, talented animator and visual artist Charlie Case, who set my music to his visions of alien worlds and golden symbols.  We made this work together back in 2010.  Wishing him well where ever his spirit may be. 

My music partner Stuart Diamond created this excellent video using our piece "Painted Clouds" from our Electric Diamond release to celebrate the beginning of 2021.  

Walking in the woods in a finger-picking guitarist sort of way.  Melodic nostalgia for Hawaiian slack-key guitar.  In the last minute, minute #4 of 5, we emerge with frosted string piano sounds to fly in ethereal flight over a beautiful landscape.  Was it a dreamscape?  Shapes of keyboard and keyboardist ebb and flow in perspective-altered fluid patterns amidst pretty natural trees and such.  Like it was all drawn on the back of one of Salvador Dali's napkins.    

Longer than most of our episodes, a ten minute rhythmic musical romp with talented visual performer Andrei Jay on the Waaave Pool video synthesizer.  

Cold winds of December sweep into January as the skies grow dark and the snow storms gather force.  Out the end of one year and into the birth of another.