RIP Isao Tomita

Damn I just bought one of his albums last month :(

http://pitchfork.com/news/65344-isao-tomita-has-died/

rip :(

Gearlists! synth master! RIP

RIP

Pioneer and visionary, this guy is a legend as a musician and synthesizer composer/innovator. The work and time he put into his recordings was nothing less of incredible: meticulous overdubbing, mixing, editing, etc. all before DAWs and MIDI.

Wonderful and insightful interview with him here.

  Quote

 

 

What was the concept behind Snowflakes Are Dancing?

Isao Tomita: Through recreating Debussy's "Clair de Lune," I wanted to add a different color to his composition by focusing on the tone of the sound more than the melody itself. So at first, I started recording with an 8 channel recorder but decided to switch to AMPEX's 16 channel recorder because I wanted to make the whole thing more intricate. On top of Moog costing around ten million yen, I paid about 30 million yen for other equipment—including the recorder and mixer. But it was still cheaper than making a studio. I used a 30-inch analog tape that didn't need noise reduction, but a reel of that tape was very expensive, plus it could only record up to 15 minutes. So, that's the recording environment I was working in. I brought in a sleeping bag in the studio, and just worked and worked on that album for 16 months.

  On 5/9/2016 at 11:39 PM, joshuatx said:

 

Pioneer and visionary, this guy is a legend as a musician and synthesizer composer/innovator. The work and time he put into his recordings was nothing less of incredible: meticulous overdubbing, mixing, editing, etc. all before DAWs and MIDI.

 

Wonderful and insightful interview with him here.

 

 

  Quote

 

 

What was the concept behind Snowflakes Are Dancing?

Isao Tomita: Through recreating Debussy's "Clair de Lune," I wanted to add a different color to his composition by focusing on the tone of the sound more than the melody itself. So at first, I started recording with an 8 channel recorder but decided to switch to AMPEX's 16 channel recorder because I wanted to make the whole thing more intricate. On top of Moog costing around ten million yen, I paid about 30 million yen for other equipment—including the recorder and mixer. But it was still cheaper than making a studio. I used a 30-inch analog tape that didn't need noise reduction, but a reel of that tape was very expensive, plus it could only record up to 15 minutes. So, that's the recording environment I was working in. I brought in a sleeping bag in the studio, and just worked and worked on that album for 16 months.

 

Yeah that rendition of Claire De Lune is lush as fuck. That portion between 0:40 and 1:20... O__O

RIP FSOL

Damn. I love his take on Pictures at an Exhibition. He was definitely among the lords of synth.

So sad, and so gutting. I don't think he ever had the recognition he truly deserved. Everyone here should listen to this:

  On 5/11/2016 at 10:14 PM, futureimage said:

So sad, and so gutting. I don't think he ever had the recognition he truly deserved.

I think he was being recognized more and more but yeah, he seemed overshadowed by Wendy Carlos and Moog before him and then overlooked once Kraftwerk, YMO, and all the synthpop groups began to emerge.

I had been aware of him fairly early in my listening of electronic music, he's name-checked a lot by producers I like and he's been sampled a fair bit. I've always thought his music was beautiful by itself but it wasn't for awhile that I really appreciated how significant his work was. On the surface he's doing what sound novel renditions of classical music but this I realized was a perspective I had as someone who grew up after the era of new age and synthpop music, and long after the conveniences of digital sampling and recording. In reality he his peers bridged the gap between a synth being a novelty instrument or purely experimental/avant-garde sound makers and it's greater use of synths in pop music and more mainstream songs. Something I must point out, even though I mentioned it earlier, is how fucking incredible the process in making this music was back in the early 70s. There was no digital recorders. No MIDI. Very few people even knew how to operate a synth, let alone maximize it's abilities through the days and weeks of meticulous patching and adjusting settings. Moogs back then were monophonic, so chords had to be created via overdubs and mixing volume levels upon playback, a tedious task with tape. He literally made an orchestra sound by dubbing over and over again and stitching it altogether with a 16 track mixer. His breakthrough album Snowflakes Are Dancing took over a year to make and that's with no breaks beyond sleep and eating, he literally went broke and slept in his studio to record it, betting on the hope it'd sell.

yeah, it's really a remarkable body of work when you think about it. was it popular in Japan upon release do you know?

EDIT: turns out it wasn't even released in Japan until after RCA picked it up and released it in the States. He couldn't get Japanese labels to release it.

  Quote

 

 

So, after all that time, you completed this critically acclaimed album that got nominated for four Grammys in 1974. But initially it didn't get released in Japan.

Isao Tomita: I had a few record producers and directors hear what I was working on, and they liked what they were hearing. So, I thought getting a release from somewhere wouldn't be too difficult. But when it was finished, all these record companies were saying, "Now, where are we supposed to put an album like this in the record store?" They didn't know what to do with my music. Switched-On Bach was sold in the sound effects section, and I didn't want that. It was hard for me to find out about America back when we didn't have the internet, but I got a hold of the producer of Switched-On Bach and I flew to the States to meet him, carrying my heavy master tape. Upon listening, he liked my album right away, and a month later I was in a press conference announcing its release.

There was a niche built in audience for moog and synth albums of classical music, as Wendy Carlos had kicked off with Switched On Bach. It was akin to the exotica fad of the late 50s/early 60s. If you search around you'll find other "switched on" albums from the early 70s which had the same novelty formula of popular songs rendered on Moog, in fact I found out that Tomita recorded one of these before Snowflakes

Damn that's sad news. Hugely innovative and inspirational. His Debussy was one of the few vinyls I kept after getting rid of all my wax a long time ago

very cool release by him is Sound Creature
he breaks down a few of his tracks/only released in japan

"The listener is taken from the raw oscillator tones, through the filtering and envelope-shaping and manipulating of the sounds, until they resemble the familiar parts and lines from the final pieces. No detail is omitted, down to the effects processing and stereo placement of the completed examples."

http://www.isaotomita.net/recordings/sound_one.html