I don’t think classical composers routinely started the compositional process with a “sound” in mind. Rather, they started with an abstract music idea, a set of notes, a motive, a melody, a formal outline. Choices about instrumentation came later in the compositional process and were more governed by the practical considerations of orchestration and texture.
Much of the music of this community, by contrast, starts out with a “sound” or “sounds” and builds compositions out of them. My personal attitude is that this method typically results in an incoherent end-product.
Thats very well put. I know its my downfall as i do it the latter way. But back in those days as Beethoven as an example, was nearly deaf composition was what he must have put more emphasis on than choice of instruments.
I mostly agree with your statement about them composing with abstract idea rather than a specific sound in mind… but they definitely thought about which instrument sections should play which part, which is somewhat related to sound.
But nowehere near as in depth as nowadays music production is concerned with sound/timbre.
Yep, a single VCS3. The only modification was the ability to do portamento. It’s quite amazing that he pulled all of those sounds out of it. It must have been quite difficult, and he sensibly added a 2600 for the next record.
He has a bunch of other classical versions on the Model Cycles - Debussy, Ravel, Bach, Mussorgsky and loads others… I’ve not seen him complain about a lack of song mode though…
Beethoven, when he wrote a symphony, started with sketchbooks. I took a grad-level course on Beethoven. We studied his sketchbooks, and to my memory, information about specific instruments was not present in them.
Before producing an orchestral score, Beethoven made a piano four-hands version of the symphony. There was a practical reason for this. Most people in Beethoven’s time might not get to hear an orchestra play, but they could appreciate the work played on the piano in someone’s living room.
I’m no Bach scholar, but I think of him as an early synth nerd, with pipe organs functioning as additive synthesizers. Once you conceptualist things this way, it’s clear that a whole symphony orchestra is also an additive synth.
Bach was also a synth organ tech before he became famous as a performer and composer. He was just trying to show off the quality of his repair and upgrade work. Bach would absolutely be a synth demo youtuber if he was alive today.
I recently made a cover of a Philip Glass piece (Mishima / Closing) on the Syntakt. It’s really nothing too special, and wouldn’t hold a candle to any of the acoustic performances I’ve listened to, but I had fun making it. Took me longer than I’d care to admit! I feel like I’ve learned a lot of workflow and sound design by working on things like this
Wow this was super nice! I love this piece, and the whole soundtrack. How was your workflow here, did you copy the sheets into a DAW and sequence from there?
