"This may be of interest to folks who like old-school analog synthesis, I have completed a CD of Christmas carols performed entirely on an ARP Odyssey synthesizer. The individual tracks were originally recorded in 1976.
This CD is called "An ARP Odyssey Christmas" and is a set of 20 Christmas carols in (mostly) classic arrangements. It is available on CD Baby and iTunes; information on how I made the recordings may be found on the CD Baby web site (cdbaby.com/cd/stephenalcorn) under "Album Notes".
The Odyssey is a monophonic synth, capable of amazing sounds, but only capable of playing one note at a time on its short keyboard, no chords or harmonies. (It is actually considered 'duophonic', but the second voice has limitations.) Because of this, each carol is a multi-track recording made up of several parts (up to seven) in which each part was actually played and recorded individually, in real-time sync with the other recorded parts.
This to me is really a bit of music history that might be of interest to anyone who remembers, or is curious about, some of what was happening with electronic music in pre-digital times (back when one had to compete with the brontosaurus for the use of the only quarter-track tape deck).
The album notes from the CD Baby web page, below, list the Christmas carols and "orchestration", and which go into some detail about how I did the recording. (I might mention that the professional results possible for 21st century home-brew recordists were not possible in the 1970s, as signal processing equipment was not available to folks without substantial trust funds.)
If you do take a look at this CD (and a listen), I hope you like it. If you have any questions about what this is and how I did it, I'd love to share my experience."
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