gordon rapheal v wendy carlos - pop cross-over issue 1

You are connected with Wendy Carlos, who scored The Clockwork Orange flick amongst others - how did that connection come about?

I was mesmerized and trasformed the first time I saw A Clockwork Orange in the movie theatre. I was 16 and on LSD combined with Mecaline, tripping my balls off, and that film put me into an orbit that I've never really come down from. It was the brilliant music, electronic synthesizers singing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in German that really did it to me. That and the fact that I'd never seen a naked lady on screen before! Wendy's synthesizer explorations and discoveries combined with her incredible musical ability as a keyboard player and historian, really changed my thoughts and direction of my life. From then on anything Moog or Arp in the synthesizer world of music was capturing my attention and showing me a new way to direct my life's energies.

I was kicked out of many music shops because I would go there to try out the blessed machines that would later become my greatest musical strength. I had no money and looked a sight with my long curly hair and spaced out hallucinogenic eyes, "Out you go boy", "Come back when you get a job,lad"- that sort of thing.

A friend of mine Serge, from Seattle sent me in 1997 to meet Tom O'Horgan (Classic Broadway director and genius behind Hair, and Jesus Christ Superstar in the 1960's). Tom's apartment, which is an entire floor of a building on Broadway, downtown in NYC, is filled with about 2000 musical instruments from around the world and back in time. He has a Glass Harmonicas, a keyboard invented for Mozart whcih plays spinning glass bowls submeged in water!!. A Hallway of Gongs in varios sizes, wooden frogs from Polynesian islands whcih are percussion instruments, 3 pipe organs and on and on. I was hypntotized by his home, and the man is a true sweetheart.

He told me that his neighbor was named Wendy, who also played electronic music (I had told him about my musical skills). My ears burned and I said.."Is that Wendy Carlos??!!", he answered yes, and that she's been after him for a while to come and visit to discuss something related to sounds. I begged him to set up a coffee datewith me, him and Wendy, and he set about doing just that.

On the night that Tom, myself, Wendy and her girlfriend AnneMarie were walking towards a Jamaican restaurant in Manhattan, Tom introduced me to Wendy, I had been rehersaing all of the questions from my entire life that I needed to know the secrets of: The German voices, the huge Moog's custom made for her, the hows and why's of her knowledge.

"Wendy, this is Gordon - he's from Seattle and also plays Synthesizers" said Tom. "Well, dont come to me with your problems!" retorted Wendy Carlos. She said it rather irradiately and as if to say "Back off son!".

I didnt like that at all and noticed that all through dinner she was just interested in Tom, and probably wished I hadn't tagged along. I hear her talking about how she travels everywhere in the world she can to photograph Solar and Lunar eclipses. She had just returned from the Sahara Desert, and was in fact wearing an " Eclipse-T-Shirt" with her skirt. I tried to make a joke about not thinking the electrical power in the Sahara was stable enough to run her synthesizers, and she shot me a look that could have frozen hell! I was crestfallen and felt like I was never going to connect with this person and learn all I wanted to about her work.

After dinner Tom and I were invited back to her apartment and studio. I walked into a space laborotory like I've never seen or imagined. She designed and built it herself, and all the historic Moogs were there, and a C3 organ and 4 giant handmade speakers in the air , surround sound stylee. A hand built mixing board and more keboards than I could count, some with Peacock feather in them, and some with strange looking beautiful exotic cats lazing about on top. Her mission was to ask Ton O'Horgan to help her identify sounds in a computerized library that someone had given her. Tom, being an expert in world instruments and a historian himself was the perfect choice for this, and I sat in the "back of the class" while they went to work. I recognized many of the sounds from my extensive sampling work in Seattle with Sky Cries Mary. I knew that these were mostly normal drum sounds, Tom-Toms, snares, etc, slowed down and played lower in pitch. I spoke up a few times to identify the noises, and sometime during my third correct answer, it was as if bells were going off, in a magical fairy tale way.....Wendy looked at me for the first time, and said "Well, Gordon, your really do seem to know your stuff!".

Tom made an excuse to leave and I stayed with Wendy in her space-lab studio. I pointed to everything I could see in the room and asked "What is that?". She graciously explained many things and seemed to enjoy our conversations.

I saw a Russian Dragon, a machine that tells you with lights if you are speeding up or slowing down your rhythm!, I saw a keyboard that she invented that automatically re-tunes all the keyboards in her studio to ancient and exotic tuning systems, like the ones Bach used. I saw her hand built Theremin that has a cortoller shaped like a circular keyboard so she can pinpoint exact pitches while controlling that ethereal Theramin sound.

Now here's the really magic part, pay attention please.

I saw a Kurzweil advanced Sampling Keyboard laying against a wall. I asked her what that was. She said it was a gift from the Kurzweil company because she had designed a Wendy Carlos tuning system for them. She said she had never used it, and said that she believed that Sampling was pretty much a non-musical gimmick. After all, real instruments and expression and variations, and sound a whole lot better than any simple sampling device.

I told her that I wanted to check it out and see how good the Kurzweil was. I wanted to impress her witrh my knowledge of samplers, and I tried to turn it on. Well, I couldn't figure that machine out, and I was a bit frustrated.

So I asked if I could borrow the manual and return the next evening to give her a demonstration of that keyboard.

It was only a matter of a few minutes of page turning and I found out how to operate the Kurzweil, and sure enough I went back to her place to try it out.

Wendy had set up an Autoharp with a good microphone to send into the sampler. I quickly started it up and we recorded ONE STRUM of the Autoharp.

When we pressed the Kurzweil's keys and played back the sample, she was very quiet, and said "Oh, my god, I had no idea they'd taken it this far!"

She noticed the clear overtones and wonderful full sound with which the Kurzweil had captured the Autoharp. We were on the way to becoming friends then, and I sent her a sample library that my friend Scott Levitin in Los Angeles had created using the finest orchestral instruments from around the world. Wendy showed me large books filled with scientific printouts of different instrument's overtone series when played at different volumes. She then proceeded to spend 4 years creating a digital orchestra in her Kurzweil that could mimick as closely as possible the behaviour of real ones. She added choir voices, Priestly orations, and theremin sounds to this and released " Tales of Heaven and Hell" as her CD around the year 2000.

Much to my delight and suprise, she put my name in the credits as a thank you for the original night with the Kurzweil. My dreams had come full circle, and i was positively misty about it!

And what is that person like?

Wendy has been remastering and polishing up her many master recordings that she's made in her life, releasing them in expanded and new versions one by one, sometimes in sets, like the Bach Box. She has a work aesthetic that is maniacal, and impressive- spending almost every night from 6 pm til 6 am working away like crazy on her music and inventions. This has been her pace for most of her adult life!

The last time I visited with her, about a year ago- she had invented a multi layered pipe organ and theatre organ based on multiple kurzweil samplers running in tandem and some sort of stunning old Organ footpedalks retrofitted with midi controllers under each one. No one has ever doen anything like this before, and she performed for me several pieces she was writing for this new thing. She just keeps on going and breaking new ground at every turn. Wendy has an extensive website WendyCarlos.com for those truly interested in more.

Would you ever work with her?

In my dreams!!

I have asked her before about collaborating with me, and she has said that if the right project came along, she would not rule it out!

Do you think this pioneer would ever release something again?

As I said she is working on new songs, and simultaneously preparing her entire back catalogue for release to the public. Many titles are already out there, check it out, for sure.

Any comment on the Momus lawsuit that Wendy brought against him?

Yes, as an inventor and genius and originator of so many musical things, Wendy detests the act of stealing part of her soul and identity by those who lack the imagination to make interesting things by themselves! period. Also its stealing money from her, from performances that she laboured over in earnest and inspiration.

The full interview is here...

http://www.poptones.co.uk/news/2004/09/09/qod_gordon_rapheal_2.htm