Old Danish Christmas Songs Played on the Roland SH-2000

Published on Dec 24, 2018 organfairy

1. Old Danish Christmas song #1 played on Roland SH-2000

"Børn og voksne i kærlig krans" is a well known (at least by people of a certain age) Danish Christmas song. It comes from an old theatrical play called "Nøddebo Præstegård" and was written by J.P.E. Hartmann in 1862.

I got it out of an old piano book and purists will probably demand that I play it on piano. However, I don't play piano very well and I actually don't have a piano.

But I have for quite a while been wanting to try and make music on synthesizer the way they did back in the days where synthesizers were always monophonic: One note at a time building up harmonies with a multitrack recorder.

So I split the piano arrangement into bass, string 1, string 2, and melody, and played the whole pile on my old monophonic Roland SH-2000 synthesizer. I added some reverberation in post production. But apart from that everything is made on the Roland synth.

2. Old Danish Christmas song #2 played on Roland SH-2000

"'Kimer i Klokker' (~Bells are chiming) is an old Danish Christmas song. Just like the one last week I play this solely on Roland SH-2000 analog synthesizer using only the VIBRAPHONE preset - because this was what came closest to a bell. However, I do use an extra gadget: I thought the vibraphone didn't have enough bass. So I used my old Boss OC-2 octave pedal to give the bottom voice some more........well, bottom.

And with this video I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas!"