Albums Not Runined By Prominent Use of the Synclavier

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Hard to think of many, but there's Hounds of Love, Graceland, Various Positions, and maybe So -- whereas Tunnel of Love and Idlewild, among many others, could have been good records.

― Eazy (Eazy), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 21:54 (twenty years ago)

Runined = Ruined

― Eazy (Eazy), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 21:55 (twenty years ago)

Jazz From Hell
...Nothing Like The Sun

― baht habit, Wednesday, 17 May 2006 23:01 (twenty years ago)

Is there a particular passage on HoL that you could point to as an example? I don't know the sound offhand, and have always wanted to identify it.

― derrick (derrick), Thursday, 18 May 2006 01:21 (twenty years ago)

Ditto please for Graceland. I realized recently that I keep seeing Synclavier referred to but have no actual idea what it signifies beyond "early sampler/keyboard/computer....thing." I just scanned through a lengthy webpage about the wondrous awes of the machine that still left me with no clue as to what it was.

― Doctor Casino (Doctor Casino), Thursday, 18 May 2006 02:38 (twenty years ago)

http://images.industryclick.com/files/141/synclavier.jpg
the synclavier.

― derrick (derrick), Thursday, 18 May 2006 03:22 (twenty years ago)

Mister Heartbreak - Laurie Anderson

― Jack Battery-Pack (Jack Battery-Pack), Thursday, 18 May 2006 05:22 (twenty years ago)

OK, so....what is it about it that runined so many albums? What are some of the ruined ones? What are some definitive "Synclavier Sound" tracks? These album names feel like pointers, but there are a LOT of sounds in play on Graceland, Mr. Heartbreak, etc....

― Doctor Casino (Doctor Casino), Thursday, 18 May 2006 05:27 (twenty years ago)

I feel like Tunnel of Love is the epitome of bad Synclavier. Jesus that album is so awful.

― trees (treesessplode), Thursday, 18 May 2006 05:32 (twenty years ago)

Did Lexicon of Love by ABC have Synclavier?

― Disco Nihilist (mjt), Thursday, 18 May 2006 17:11 (twenty years ago)

the replacements' pleased to meet me. not that i've actually been able to hear the synclavier in it, but it's in the credits.

― Lawrence the Looter (Lawrence the Looter), Thursday, 18 May 2006 17:35 (twenty years ago)

Boris Grebenshikov's Radio Silence is a classic (in some circles) example of a decent folk-rock album ruined when Dave Stewart and Olle Romo slathered Synclavier over every song on it.

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Thursday, 18 May 2006 17:45 (twenty years ago)

didn't Stevie Wonder love the Synclavier?

― bernard snow (sixteen sergeants), Thursday, 18 May 2006 18:00 (twenty years ago)

okay, a quick google search reveals that he did own and use a synclavier, but I was thinking of the clavinet. my bad.

― bernard snow (sixteen sergeants), Thursday, 18 May 2006 18:02 (twenty years ago)

Kraftwerk - Electric Cafe

― JohnFoxxsJuno (JohnFoxxsJuno), Friday, 19 May 2006 08:56 (twenty years ago)

Prefab Sprout used a lot of synclavier, didn't they? Anyway, they did in an unusually tasteful way.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 19 May 2006 08:57 (twenty years ago)

"Hounds of Love" was a big Fairlight album, surely?

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 19 May 2006 09:01 (twenty years ago)

IIRC, a couple of decent dep mode albums have a lot of synclavier on them, but I forget which specific ones. I bid on one in a musical instrument auction in the pre-ebay days, I dropped out at 1300 quid, iirc it eventually went for 1600-1700. Quite a drop from list, eh?

The most recognisable '80's megasynth textures I hear when listening to older records are PPG ones, I don't recall a signature synclavier timbre, like the fairlight's "arr1" or orch hit.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 19 May 2006 09:05 (twenty years ago)

(xpost) Pashmina's right. I don't think Kate Bush ever went near a Synclavier on her albums.

― Jay Vee's Return (Manon_69), Friday, 19 May 2006 10:15 (twenty years ago)

Stoopidest thread ever. There is no signature Synclavier sound. The Synclavier was used first and foremost as a workstation for sequencing, sampling and arranging. It did also offer an FM synthesis facility, but I've only ever seen one citation for its use on a mass-market record: the aggressive, metallic sound that introduces Michael Jackson's Beat It.
Anyway, if you dislike an album's production values, you have to blame the people who made it, not the tools they used.

> I feel like Tunnel of Love is the epitome of bad Synclavier.

Tunnel of Love sucks because the songwriting is (mostly) uninspired and the arrangements are bland. The fact that there was a Synclavier in the studio is irrelevant.

― Palomino (Palomino), Friday, 19 May 2006 17:22 (twenty years ago)

"Tunnel of Love" is the last great Springsteen album. I'd argue it's in fact one of his most clearly "inspired" album. The synths (synclavier or not) are what hurts it, not the songs. Which shows how dangerous synths can be in the wrong hands.

― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Friday, 19 May 2006 17:42 (twenty years ago)

Frank Zappa did a couple of albums of synclavier stuff, to kind of push the limit at that point of how many notes you can fit into a second.
This is where g-spot torando came from.

― andrew b (klik99), Friday, 19 May 2006 17:44 (twenty years ago)

i suspect that the synclavier is taking a lot of secondary heat for the DX7 here

― bangelo (bangelo), Friday, 19 May 2006 18:01 (twenty years ago)

Agreed. What y'all are really hating on is ersatz electric piano and sequenced slap-bass.

― Palomino (Palomino), Friday, 19 May 2006 18:28 (twenty years ago)

T/S: "Syn-cla-veer" vs "Syn-cla-vee-ay".

The manufacturers insisted on the former, but it sounds so lumpen to my ears.

― Palomino (Palomino), Friday, 19 May 2006 18:32 (twenty years ago)

No-one made the obvious type of joke yet? OK, Glenn Gould's legendary 1955 recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations is in no way ruined by prominent use of the Synclavier.

― The Vintner's Lipogram (OleM), Friday, 19 May 2006 20:10 (twenty years ago)

I think people may also be confusing the Synclavier with the Fairlight. Which was similar. It was the Fairlight that Trevor Horn used on ABC etc.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 19 May 2006 20:18 (twenty years ago)

Jazz from Hell is an apt title and that is not a compliment. I'm a Zappa and a jazz fan (AND I'm going to hell)! I am happy to say, however, that FZ is one of my favorite guitarists. But Jazz from Hell is shit.

― MadMaryWilliams (MadMaryWilliams), Friday, 19 May 2006 21:04 (twenty years ago)

But it's one of the few instrumental albums ever slapped with a parental advisory sticker!

― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Friday, 19 May 2006 21:50 (twenty years ago)

hey! the synclavier is so expensive sounding. much more than the low-budget fairlight. synclavier is (was)the sound of quality!

― jon person, Saturday, 20 May 2006 00:15 (twenty years ago)

i suspect that the synclavier is taking a lot of secondary heat for the DX7 here

The entire second half of the 80s, plus the first couple of years of the 90s, were ruined by prominent use of DX7, Synclavier and all other kinds of early digital synths filled with bad samples.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Saturday, 20 May 2006 00:31 (twenty years ago)

I think people may also be confusing the Synclavier with the Fairlight. Which was similar. It was the Fairlight that Trevor Horn used on ABC etc.

Dan's right about this - after I started the thread, I found out that Kate Bush used the Fairlight for both composing and recording Hounds of Love. And Geir clears things up even more. A broader question (too broad) would be: of the records that exemplify the digital sound of the "entire second half of the 80s, plus the first couple of years of the 90s," which ones transcend their production? Especially in the instances of artists who recorded prior to this period and embraced the digital programming: Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Miles Davis, Sting, Genesis, Lou Reed, etc.

And the bias in the question implies that most of them - Mistrial, Tunnel of Love, Invisible Touch - are records that were damaged if not ruined by the production (especially disappointing in the cases of Born in the U.S.A., Land of Dreams, and parts of I'm Your Man because the artists did some of their best songwriting on these records).

― Eazy (Eazy), Saturday, 20 May 2006 02:20 (twenty years ago)

Mike Thorne producing Soft Cell:

My Synclavier, the sixth unit to be made of this first commercially-available digital synthesizer, was in London for a film score I was making, Memoirs Of A Survivor (directed by David Gladwell, starring Julie Christie, after the book by Doris Lessing). This remarkable and rather large computer instrument made the distinctive piano rhythm sounds, the orchestral swells, the big French horn sound in the middle of the club 12" and more besides.

― naus (Robert T), Saturday, 20 May 2006 02:58 (twenty years ago)

Mister Heartbreak owns the Synclavier.

― Myke. (Myke Weiskopf), Saturday, 20 May 2006 14:26 (twenty years ago)

To my knowledge, *The Ramones* is not ruined by the prominent use of synclavier.

― xhuxk, Saturday, 20 May 2006 16:36 (twenty years ago)

And now, after the topic has been broadened a bit, I would say the following acts all used digital synths/sampling in a tasteful and creative way during the 80s:

Depeche Mode, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Prefab Sprout, Scritti Politti, Yello, Art Of Noise and Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Saturday, 20 May 2006 16:56 (twenty years ago)

And Daniel Lanois, in his productions for Bob Dylan and Neville Brothers among others.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Saturday, 20 May 2006 16:57 (twenty years ago)

Dan is OTM re the fairlight.

I saw a documentary on Zappa that mentioned that he was really into composing classical music on these towards the end of his life. He used it for scoring.

― Disco Nihilist (mjt), Sunday, 21 May 2006 02:30 (twenty years ago)

Wow so this is a keyboard/synth thing? I thought it was like some kind of fuckin' ancient harp-type instrument or something. Fuck me.

― Twitchety Twitch Manic Toy System (Bimble...), Sunday, 21 May 2006 03:14 (twenty years ago)

low-budget Fairlight? They STILL go for thousands of dollars.

The most innovate and awesome fairlight stuff, imho, is the stuff Thomas Leer produced in the mid-80s.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Sunday, 21 May 2006 08:54 (twenty years ago)

Synclavier was the high-budget equivalent of the fairlight! I forget the specifics price-wise, but it was a _lot_ more expensive, especially if you got it fully loaded (it had more options than the fairlight, and the base model IIRC didn't even have sampling)

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Sunday, 21 May 2006 10:25 (twenty years ago)

I seem to recall Fairlights going for the equivalent of a nice down-payment on a house.

The best Fairlight album ever = Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise.

― Myke. (Myke Weiskopf), Sunday, 21 May 2006 22:16 (twenty years ago)

(xx post)

I haven't heard the Leer stuff but I'd say for me it's a tie between The Dreaming and Sylvian/Sakamoto's "Bamboo Muisc/Bamboo Houses" single for most evocative use of the Fairlight.

― Jay Vee's Return (Manon_69), Monday, 22 May 2006 02:30 (twenty years ago)

Someone once told me they knew of Duran Duran purchasing a Fairlight back in the early 80s because "they thought it looked great", but even Nick Rhodes was baffled as to how to use the thing. It supposedly just sat there untouched, forever...

― Jay Vee's Return (Manon_69), Monday, 22 May 2006 02:33 (twenty years ago)

but even Nick Rhodes was baffled as to how to use the thing. It supposedly just sat there untouched, forever...

Must have been the light pen.

― Myke. (Myke Weiskopf), Monday, 22 May 2006 09:20 (twenty years ago)

Nick has a Fairlight on stage in The Reflex video, not sure ho much it was actually used in the concerts though.

― JohnFoxxsJuno (JohnFoxxsJuno), Monday, 22 May 2006 10:52 (twenty years ago)

why did the synclavier/fairlight/trevor horn thing sort of end with the '80s? what happened next to high-tech pop?

― Enrique IX: The Mediator (Enrique), Monday, 22 May 2006 12:39 (twenty years ago)

I feel like Tunnel of Love is the epitome of bad Synclavier. Jesus that album is so awful.

Indicate on which songs a Synclavier is used. All I hear is the usual synthesizer, and it's deployed well (I'm thinking of the intro to the title track and the outro of "Valentine's Day").

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Monday, 22 May 2006 12:46 (twenty years ago)

Enrique - the appliance of science, more stand alone samplers/advanced synths came on to the market and things like Akai's MPC series meant folk could afford Synclavier/Fairlight type technology at a fraction of the price. Also - being able to compose on yer early-mid 90's Ataris.

― JohnFoxxsJuno (JohnFoxxsJuno), Monday, 22 May 2006 12:59 (twenty years ago)

but it's interesting that the really insane trevor horn-type superproductions went out of style at the same time -- even though they were (presumably) easier to produce on the new technology.

― Enrique IX: The Mediator (Enrique), Monday, 22 May 2006 13:02 (twenty years ago)

Heeere's Trevor!

― Jay Vee's Return (Manon_69), Monday, 22 May 2006 13:13 (twenty years ago)

"If there was one piece of gear that cost the most and was the least useful it would definitely be the Synclavier. It cost well over a quarter of a million dollars and it's still there in a cupboard."

― Enrique IX: The Mediator (Enrique), Monday, 22 May 2006 13:53 (twenty years ago)

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