Optigan

In December 2010 we plan to release an experimental Optigan disc called “Musique Concrète,” which will essentially be a collage of 57 sound loops in the tradition of early electronic studio tape music. We’re completely disregarding the Optigan paradigm of chords and keys, and simply assigning a different abstract sound loop to each chord button and key. We thought that the most interesting approach for this disc would be to invite Optigoners everywhere to submit sound loops of their own making (please, no samples from commercial or copyrighted sources), from which we’ll choose the best for inclusion on the disc. All sounds chosen for inclusion on the disc will fall under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Unused sounds will revert back to their respective creators. We are unable to pay for submissions, but folks whose work appears on the disc will get a special discount off the retail price, and they will be credited on the disc jacket (most likely we will have a graphic depiction of the button/key layout with the artist identified for each).

So get to work! The deadline is Nov. 1st, 2010. You can submit as many loops as you like, the only real rules being that the loops must be exactly 2 seconds long (or we’ll alter them to fit that length) and in mono. Any sort of common file format (wav, mp3, aif, etc) will work. The final disc should have a nice balance of rhythmic, ambient, tonal and non-tonal loops to choose from. Keep in mind that the Optigan’s frequency response tops out at 5kH, and there’s a significant inherent noise floor, so it’s best to avoid subtle/quiet things or sounds that rely heavily on high frequencies. We will not be able to offer any sort of previews of the final sonic results for artist approval.

So, there’s this new car commercial going around…

…and for some reason it seems folks are fairly interested in the music. It’s been pointed out that it comes from an Optigan (possibly from my sample set), but apparently some folks don’t believe it (?) I’m not sure why this has become some contentious issue, but I spent a couple minutes re-creating the ad music (sans the heavy reverb & slight time compression in the ad version- theirs is lower in pitch, but faster in tempo, mine is at the original unaltered pitch/tempo):

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…and here’s the same thing reconstructed using loops from the original Optigan studio master tapes (and thus much higher fidelity):

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After originally posting all of this, some folks inexplicably remained unconvinced or confused, so I made one final attempt to explain the whole thing with this video:

The working title for “Swing It” was “Tommy Dorsey.” It was arranged & conducted by Art DePew, and played by members of the Lawrence Welk Orchestra. Here’s a demo they made of the arrangement during the recording session, strictly for in-house demo purposes to show how the chords should work together musically:

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Note that in this demo, many of the chords are an alternate arrangement than the one that ended up on the final disc. Often they would record variations like this and choose the ones that worked best at a later time. Oh, and for those of you unfamiliar with the Optigan, the reason why this demo sounds so clear and the ad music sounds so lo-fi is simply due to the nature of transferring the studio quality music onto the optical discs and playing them back on a cheap piece of equipment. Optigan discs are inherently lo-fi, muddy and scratchy sounding. There’s no extra effects needed to make them sound that way.

Well anyway, hope that clears things up a little!

UPDATE:

Robert spotted this Woolite commercial that uses a time-stretched riff from the Optigan “Big Band Beat” disc at the beginning.

OY is playing w/ JP Inc. & Neil Hamburger on 1/27/10 at the Casbah in San Diego. Come on out!!

MELLODRAMA, the Mellotron documentary, has just been released on DVD. Pea appears briefly in the film, discussing the Optigan. Many other Optigan pals appear in the film too, including Mattias Olsson, Zac Rae, Brian Kehew (honorary Optigan fan- he won’t admit it himself), Woody Jackson, etc.

Thanks to all who ordered the Optigan Archives samples in 2009, optigan.com has donated $364.50 to the American Cancer Society in memory of Mike LeDoux!

Happy New Decade everyone, and watch this space soon for announcements about our plans for new Optigan & Orchestron discs in 2010!

See the auction results here. Looks like the only two discs missing from the set were Polka & Mazurka.

While perusing the Feb. 1981 issue of Keyboard Magazine, I came across this letter to the editor:

We’re proud to announce the latest in our series of new Optigan discs: MINIMALISM! This is a special release for us, since it marks our first musical collaboration with the fabulous Tara Busch of AnalogSuicide.com. Tara sang the vocal solfege scale for the keyboard, a haunting sound that you’re sure to find plenty of uses for. Here’s a demo of the disc, featuring some rather mindless jam from yours truly:

Be sure to pre-order your copy today!

Hi all-

Head over to Shoptigan to place your pre-orders for Orchestron Marimba and Optigan Radioaktivox!

Howdy folks, been outta town for a bit, but now I’m back and working on two new discs: “Minimalism” for the Optigan, and “Marimba” for the Orchestron.

“Minimalism” is sort of a generic working title. It’s very specifically and shamelessly Philip Glass Ensemble (circa late 70s / early 80s) style chord patterns. But I don’t want to call it “Philip Glass” for potential legal reasons. Maybe I’ll call it something a little more clever like “MNMLSM” or “Half Full” or “Fill Up Glass” ok stop me before it’s too late… if anyone has any title suggestions, send ‘em my way! This disc is intended to be more versatile than simply for churning out fake Glass riffs. Set at a slower speed, it can be used in a more ambient way, and I’ve specifically worked out the voicings and special effects tabs to allow for good sounding extended chords when you press more than one button (ie, Cmaj + Emin = Cmaj7). Also, the rhythms are varied enough that you can get some cool polyrhythmic effects, etc. At this point, the keyboard sound is going to be a solo female voice, singing vowels from the various solfege syllables. I haven’t recorded this yet, though, so we’ll see how it sounds.

The next Orchestron disc will also be the first NEW Orchestron sound since, oh, 1975 or thereabouts: “Marimba.” This is a sound from the Optigan tape archives. Note that this is an actual recording of a REAL marimba, not the fake Lowery Organ “marimba” sound found on various Optigan discs. This marimba has never appeared on any disc until now, and I thought it’d be great for the Orchestron.

As soon as I have satisfactory test discs of both of these titles, I’ll make demo recordings and start the pre-ordering!