"Beautiful shots of old computers in a Wired gallery today... Brain was
there with one of his two Con Brio systems"
"Behold, the Con Brio Digital Synthesizer! Only four of these babies were ever made, explained Brian Kehew, who is now the proud owner of two of them. Despite their unique design and formidable musical abilities, the units never attained commercial success.
Con Brio synthesizers were originally designed during the late 1970s and housed five 6502 microprocessors. The innovate interface provide a CRT display with both graphics and text to allow composing and editing down to the waveform."
OK, I'm stretching it with this one, but this is truly bizarre. YMO's Behind the Mask with Eric Clapton and others. For reference see these posts. Spot the synths.
"Prince's Trust circa '87 - Clapton, Collins, Midge Ure, various others... Behind the Mask"
Update via tim in the comments:
"Clapton's cover came about because of Greg Philliganes being his keyboardist at the time. He did a version on his 1984 album Pulse, with uncredited backing vocals and added lyrics by Michael Jackson. And I think Jackson had considered doing it on Thriller after Quincy Jones pointed out the original to him."
And some fascinating info from the AH list:
"I don't think anyone's spoken up about lyricist or how that song got to Clapton;-)
Okay. First off Yellow Magic Orchestra was meant to be a more or less one-off concept project in Japan (1978) it was meant to be as if Martin Denny's music was played by Kraftwerk. In other words taking the West's notion of inauthentic but cool "Oriental" music and give it the edge of modern technology (the impression Westerners had of Japan).
A&M Records liked what they heard, moderately remixed it to their tastes and YMO were ready to tour and promote the album. They did a lot of promotion in LA, then swung by NYC, London and Paris. The year was 1979. Back in Japan they were doing well though not chart topping. They eventually did gain real chart success in Japan. Their success was more moderate in the US though their use of video games and electronic beats was influential. They took 1982 off for Sakamoto to work on "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" and then reformed in 1983 with the understanding that they'd disband at the end of the year. They really did want to go their own ways but it was a great marketing tool to really make them iconic in Japan. They reformed 10 years later for a one-off album and concert.
They started to work together again on and off in the 2000s. They have a show next weekend in London. Definitely a one off thing. I guess they were asked nicely by Massive Attack to do a show. They aren't promoting anything new or doing more shows. I sort of wish I could go.
As for gear, it's ironic that they played maybe 90% American synths. Early on - lots of Moog Modular. Later on lots of Prophet. Always: Arp Odyssey. They do sound very different in 1983 versus 1978.
Okay now for the weird part of the Clapton story -- Michael Jackson took an interest in high tech music in the early 80s. He was trying to get Kraftwerk to work with him but nothing came of it. What did happen was YMO's song "Behind the Mask" originally only had "chorus" vocals so he wrote new lead lyrics and kept the chorus. I assume he wrote the song for himself to sing, but he had lots of (all original) material then so it was offered to Clapton. It did quite well in terms of Clapton's career. Sakamoto, who wrote the melody (Chris Mosdel did the chorus lyrics) liked the new lyrics and the then prestige of Michael Jackson' additions. There is a mid 80s EP of Sakamoto's solo band doing it. He was trying to do a more contemporary R&B sound back then (not intended to be ironic). YMO's label commissioned Human League to do a remix version in the early 90s, instead (apparently) they did a cover version.
YouTube via bigcitymusic "Here is a little spaz out with the Dave Smith Prophet '08, Korg KP3 and the Metasonix TM-7 Scrotum Smasher!
The Prophet '08 was sampled with he Kaoss Pad, then run into the TM-7.
In the stereo version, one side of the audio is coming direct from the output of the TM-7. The other side is coming from the SM-57 miking the little Fender Champ amp.
Some More Information There are 4 octaves on the keyboard. The inclined desk is divided into the following functional sections: Modulator, Generator #1, Generator #2, Mixer and Amplifier.
There are 3 internal audible signal sources in the instrument: to broad-ranged of the Generators with changed form of oscillations and a noise generator for creating a non-musical sounds such as wind, surf, whine, etc. Possibility to connect an external audible signal sources to the synthesizer is provided for (e.g. guitars, electropianos and electroorgans). Sounds of different external sources are combined separatly in the mixer in any ratio. There is a filter in the synthesizer with cutoff frequency control and resonance to change colour of timbre of audilble signal over a wide range."
"My new Access Virus was defective (and I had a bad experience with their support department) so I replaced it with a Nord Stage Compact instead.
One of the cool things I’ve done so far is split the keyboard with the Left playing Organ AND my Moog LP, and the right hand side playing Rhodes. With the Moog’s new firmware, it can arpeggiate bass over the chords, which is really spiffy. If you bring in the drawbars slowly from nothing it kind of sounds like the intro to the original Star Trek.
