Berlin School Patchin' | Make Noise
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- Опубликовано: 6 авг 2024
- One of the questions I got from various folks over the years has been “Can you do a Berlin School tutorial on the channel?”
And my first thought is “sure!” And then my next thought is, wait, do I even really know what that means?
Patch begins at 9:14
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An Analysis of Rubycon by Karl Dallas with comments by Christoph Franke taken from the 1975 LET IT ROCK SPECIAL Tour Programme
Rubycon Part I
The beginning is Baumann on Fender Rhodes piano, “playing very lonely notes”, with bell-like Moog tones from Franke, joined by an oboe sound from Froese’s (M400) Mellotron. All three lines come closer and closer together, but there are quiet spaces between the notes. “It’s the first time we have put breaks between the notes, but it’s very important, so you can get your brain clear for what’s coming.”
RUBYCON
A very high melody line on Franke’s Moog comes over the long, slow notes, is joined by tapes of mixed voices on the Mellotron with glissandi from Baumann. The Moog melody returns and Froese changes to strings tapes for a brief section of trumpet-like tune and strings. “Peter has some very nice voltage-controlled bits with the synthi. Sometimes he comes very near with his glissandi, through the well-tempered melody line. I like it very much if there are two scales of notes together -- a well-tempered scale and a not-tempered scale producing, like birds, quarter notes, like Schoenberg. “This part gives me the impression of a very big river, at the end of the river coming into a big sea, the ocean. It’s very liquid.” Wind noise is followed by a cymbal-like tone created by a cluster of 20 or 30 notes very close together and a very low bass, with feelings of fuzz in it. “It’s a little meditation tone.”
After a rhythm sequence, Froese plays the main theme on the strings followed by a remarkable duet between Baumann’s Fender Rhodes and Froese’s oboe-tapes, in which they swap phrases and half phrases. The rhythm continues, very ostinato, “a repetitive rhythm like the Negroes make it, very often”, Baumann switches to organ and the duet continues. The rhythm doubles and Franke adds an overdubbed piano tape loop: a backwards tape is joined to a forwards tape so that the sound comes to its attack and then dies away. The rhythm becomes very complex, with Moog tones and snare-drum sounds, plus overdubbed piano, “prepared” with pieces of wood stuck between the strings to give a more percussive effect. Over this Froese plays chords and Baumann plays a very high melody line on organ.
A change in the rhythm is overlaid by clashing sounds from Baumann’s voltage controlled oscillator, played over a very fast-running Leslie speaker and very long echo delay. Froese plays a reprise of the original oboe melody while the decay of the snare drum sound becomes longer and longer so that the beat disappears. Later Baumann plays grand piano over a Leslie. “In this piece I think all the melodies, rhythms and all the sounds are much, much more complex and much better than on Phaedra. I think it is a step forward, this record.” The piece ends with a long sitar-like sound created by scraping the strings of a grand piano with a piece of metal, recording it, cutting off the attack at the beginning of the note, and playing it back on multi-track at different speeds, giving several different pitches. The rhythm becomes simpler and simpler, moving from three to two to one single tone, and the piano loops are faded across to each other, making chords, slowly shifting.
Rubycon Part II
“The second side is beginning with the sound of contemporary music, a mixture of a gong sound and very complex glissandi sounds made with several synthi’s, about seven different glissandi, three synchronised on the Moog which is very easy to do, and other made with other generators going up and down at different speeds and between different intervals. So it is like the pile of a carpet, a carpet of glissandi. “I like this beginning because it is very different from everything we’ve made before. It is really a piece of timbre music with lines so close together that you cannot separate them.” The glissandi section is followed by Moog sounds recorded on Mellotron tapes and played by Froese. Baumann’s Leslie organ goes to a fundamental major C chord which is picked up by a very fast, almost subsonic bass rhythm.
The very percussive rhythm is in fact two sequencers, and Franke is switching from one to the other, changing notes in each sequencer as he changes. “I make accents on several notes by playing the filter which makes the timbre higher.” Over “clouds of chords” on the Mellotron and Leslie organ and synthi and Moog rhythm, Froese overdubs a backwards tape of guitar played with echo. The rhythm has changed to a deep heartbeat tempo, which fades and then returns at a higher pitch, more prominently, under Baumann’s fast, staccato organ. A twittering sound is created by oscillators controlling other oscillators. “It is frequency modulation, controlling one tone with the wave of another. That’s what the birds can do with their voice, changing the tone so quickly that you get a noise sound from it.”
The side moves towards its end with concrete sounds of sea recorded on the South coast of England, played on two tape machines with varying speeds so there is phasing, changing the location of the sound. “This technique is important for the work that Edgar did with the artificial head on his solo album, ‘Aqua’, because with phasing you can change where the sound comes from, not only from side to side, like ordinary stereo, but also from front to back. “You have only two channels for hearing, so with stereo you can hear everything. Quadrophonics is only a game. It’s not really good, only pseudo-space.”
The piece ends with a relaxed sequence for three organs and flute Mellotron, long, gentle chords with the flute flying at almost stratospheric level, fading like the flute in Debussy’s “Afternoon of a Faun”. “This is music that we would like to perform in churches, all evening, without rhythms. Maybe each one of us is playing in a different place in the church, and the natural reverb makes it a very smooth sound. “We bought a generator to make power so that we can make that music outside, in total silence, in forests maybe.”
Pinning this comment to read while listening and compare to our own more ignorant analyses! Thanks for sharing :)
this comment was a lot of fun, listening and reading, thanks!
Greetings from synthesizer oriented corners of the internet!
GREETINGS
Wonderful. It still sounds "make noisy" yet it brings up completely different sound/land scapes to enjoy. I love the approach as well.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Awesome performance! And I really appreciate the way you took us on a listening journey first. It really demonstrates a great approach for analyzing and creating music.
Glad to hear it was enjoyable!
Great patch, reminds me of my youth listening to Tangerine Dream in my bedroom sitting in the dark dreaming of worlds yet to be travelled.
Thanks for watching! Glad to hear it worked :)
I like the verbal analysis you do before patching. Being able to put in words what one hears is an important step in patching. The end result is nice, but is too resonant / filters are opened too much. One feature of the Tangerine Dream sound (and much of "Berlin School" music) is its "muffled" character, which is the result of heavy lowpass filtering and zero filter resonance. But hey, you're called "Make Noise" for a reason... 😉 Anyway: wonderful video even for non-customers. Thank you! Keep on making noise!!
Good discussion/analysis & sweet patching! Always appreciate your content
Klaus Schulze uses a very different technique with his sequences. With TD they would change the sequence live as it ran (as there were three of them). Obviously, Klaus would find it harder to do that (on his own), so he used to run a note sequence of say 8 notes, against a filter sequence of 7 notes which generated a changing sequence of many bars. He could then play over this. His approach is very different from TD in the '70s although both he and Chris Franke were drummers (he was rock, whereas Chris was more jazz-influenced and had studied Indian and African drumming - so perhaps that influenced their approach to sequencing?)
_"he used to run a note sequence of say 8 notes, against a filter sequence of 7 notes"_ * * * What's a filter sequence"?
@@mpingo91 sequencers don’t just control note value, they can also control a filter cutoff per step or VCA per step. Moog 960 sequential controllers (step sequencers can do this). If you ran 8 tones against 7, then gives a sequence that appears to be far longer because it takes 7 bars to repeat again. If you had 8 notes with 8 filter control voltages then it repeats every bar and never changes. I’m not a massive fan of Klaus’s stuff but I’d be surprised if he didn’t run several sequences at the same time of 7, 5 and 3 notes, filter cutoffs or VCA volumes - it just keeps things interesting for far longer - it’s just maths. TD did something similar and came up with the idea of changing the entire program for each note (a bit like a Wave sequence before it was invented)
@mping091 a couple videos on our channel explore related ideas using multiple channels of René:
ruclips.net/video/e1ZdDAGDAhk/видео.htmlsi=qgrjRAiyi3TwZRkU
ruclips.net/video/aNPnC0ME6k8/видео.htmlsi=-YZVwLFGNoDfJxFq
Walker, IMHO you nailed it. Both the analysis and recreating the vibe of Rubicon with your patch and playing! Thanks! Rubicon is my favourite TD album. My favourite moments are when on rubicon 1 that reversed piano chord swells and the moment it drops to silence the same chord is played on an E-piano blasted through a leslie speaker. The second awesome moment is on Rubicon 2 when these seasick drone sounds from the beginning resolve into a beautiful chord and then the Moog bass swells in with just a two step sequence jumping octaves. I think if I had to describe TD´s Rubicon with just one word it would be "majestic".
Somehow haven't knowingly listened to any Tangerine Dream, but clearly I need to. 110% my vibe.
Walker you did bring to my mind here some of Schulze/Namlook's "Dark Side of the Moog" recordings. Really great stuff, thankyou!
It's good stuff! Majestic is an appropriate word :)
@@jsleeio DSOTM uses the same MOOG IIIP modular that was used on Tangerine Dream's 1972 album ZEIT. Originally owned by Florian Fricke in 1970. He then sold it to Klaus Schulze who in turn sold it to Pete Namlook. Klaus was briefly a member of TD (9 months 1969-1970)
Ahhh! Totally amazing, I grew up with TD, Klaus Schulz etc- my father would bring home albums when they released and being under 5 yrs old- these sounds glued themselves to my psyche. Beyond exciting that MN covered one of my favs = Rubycon!! In the late 80's I was fortunate to experience TD play in the SF Bay Area several times and this October I will experience them in Toronto! When my partner and I jam we both set-up Shades (MI) into a quantizer which goes into a Doepfer A184-1 out to whatever Osc sounds right (going into a Erica Synths Black Phaser) play with Slew and by turning the Shade's knob we solo. Similarly to what you did with the Keystep. Also (sorry, I am excited here) I believe another aspect to Berlin School is known as the Motorik - like Neu and Can, driving force. Thank you SO much for this inspiration and wonderful blast from the past Make Noise style. 🍊✨🎇
Thanks for the comment and sharing your history with the music! Yes that's a great point, the Motorik rhythm is often cited as a defining feature of both Berlin School and "Krautrock" and of course there's no small amount of overlap there.
string machine = Mellotron!
The current lineup is fantastic. They are fulfilling Edgar's wish to go back to a more sequencer 'symphonic' sound and they end each show with a 25-40 minute 'real-time composition' improvised in a more or less 70's style but with a modern stand. Loads of Mellotron sounds, deep Moog notes and ratcheting
Thorsten was wiring up his modular for the tour a few weeks back - you are in for a treat
Motrik (a term which Neu! and Michael Rother hated as a title) comes from Düsseldorf (Neu!) and Cologne (Can), and has little to nothing to do with Berlin School (Berlin being literally an 'island' in East Germany before the wall fell).
I’ve been waiting for a video like this for ages!
!WOW! What an awesome patch..... ❤it!
Glad to hear it! Thanks for watching!!
Ahhhh, wonderful. I like to flyyyy. You nailed it. Repeating fugue of analog seq, coupled w beautiful atmos is what I always considered a defining characteristic of that kind of music. I hope you Enjoyed making the patch :) Killer music analysis in the patching prelude. I liked that as much as the result of your garnered inspiration... vibes. I alaways think of fantastic voyages when absorbing stuff like this (and I must say I enjoyed the visuals as well!)
Glad you enjoyed the video! Thanks for watching :)
I enjoyed these splips - I'll go make some of my own now, thanks for the thoughts and inspiration.
Happy patching!!
Well, it sounds nothing like Berlin School.. Still great patching ideas.
Wow what a gorgeous patch! Thank you for sharing. 🙏🎶🎵
I agree, this is perfect... If a bit out-of-tune. ;) Love it. Please more of this stuff. Thank you!
Thanks for listening!
This sounds glorious!
your channel is awesome! each time i come, i find something inspirational
Glad to hear it!! Thanks for watching :)
Love this patch. Right on!
Thanks!
Wonderful summary of the "Berlin School" style, such as it is... The patch to "recreate" the style was inspiring! Thank you!
Thanks for watching!
Fantastic patch again! Inspired me to pull out my Keystep and plug it into the modular. Haven't done that for a while. 🎹🖤
Happy patching!
Super great tutorial, very inspiring🖤! Big thanx for sharing! Greetings 🖖☺️
Thanks for watching!
Wow Walker, just wow, this is what I want to learn, you have definitely now officially became my hero! I’ll be a while studying this video! Thank you so much for this amazing video 🙏🙏🙌
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for tuning in :)
@@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC I have all the modules apart from optomix. I'm trying to go through your patching, keep getting into other sounds and getting lost..so good :)
On Rubycon TD were also using a 'prepared piano'. EDGAR FROESE: "...Between the single strings (in a two, four, six and seven half tone distance) we’ve put some small pieces of gum, paper, metal or wood. The idea is to damp the normal sound of the piano string and to change all the parameters of the given tone, so at the same time you have an irregular scale"
you refered to some of the best albulms of all time. exacly the music that make me wonder what i can do with your modules right now... the jam in the end brougth instantanly old memorys, thx
Glad you enjoyed it!
Hey, great video! Clicked for some patches, but really enjoyed the whole story, and liked the real-time active listening sections too :)
Thanks!!
One key artist you missed making reference to was Kluster/Cluster. Of Berlin School in general Edgar Froese once remarked that it was about making music that sounded nothing like rock n roll.
Cluster was mentioned in the conversations that led to this video. The lines between/among Berlin School, "Krautrock," "Kosmiche" and other genre signifiers blurred more the more we talked about it!!
@@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC TD (well probably Edgar) came up with the term Kosmische Musik around 1971/72 - at the time it was only attached to TD, Popol Vuh, Ash Ra Tempel and Klaus Schulze (famously all appearing on a double LP of the same name in 1972). Sadly (and as per usual) the head of their record label (OHR) then started to use it for everything regardless of style as a marketing gimmick
Woaw, it's a great take ( and patch ) on those seminals albums Walker !
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed!
Ratcheting was part of the singularity, uniqueness of berlin school. I'm not sure but I think Tangerine Dream bring this technique.
You're definitely correct!
It is usually cited when people talk about Berlin School technique, but I did not hear it in my listen of the Rubycon record, and we've covered it on the channel before so I did not include it in the patch. They did include short-delays on the sequenced notes to add a sort of ratcheting vibe though, and I attempted to emulate that :)
@@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC The only really accurate reproduction of TDream ratchets I have heard come from those monster Doepfer old school sequencers.
@@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC TD (Chris Franke) didn't come up with ratcheting until some time later . Current Member Thorsten Quaeschning describes it as 'decoupling the note from the gate'. Basically ratcheting is firing off 3 triplet notes (or should I say triggers?). Before that, as you say they were using syncopated (dot note) echo, using Revox A-77 tape machines* for tape echo (they had these modified so they could be vari-sped to create any note length). *If you look at any photos of their shows you'll see them using Revox's on stage
The cycle input on Maths is ratchet city.
Well that was nice to watch. It looks like you were starting to get into it at the end. I have found that MN is really good for creating the pre-sequence section atmos noises but I find that examples like this go quite some way toward helping me establish my sequencer groove. Thank you very much.
Glad to hear it will be helpful! Thanks for watching
Masterful, Modular, Manipulation. So rare to hear someone dive into a rack on YT and actually sound good straight away.
Pretty sick 👍🏿
The sound you got at 12:03 is awesome!
Glad you dug it!
Genius At Work !
Very nice. Definately got the Tangerine Dream vibe going on.
Thanks!
Nicely performed!! Impressive right hand skills 🫱
Thanks!
That was very inspiring. Thanks!
Thanks for watching!
the earliest I've ever seen the term 'Berlin School' used was 1979 - since then it has also come to mean the actual BEAT ELECTRONIC STUDIO (sometimes just shorted to THE BEAT STUDIO) in Wilmerdorf, Berlin, run by the Swiss Avant-Garde composer Thomas Kessler in 1969. It was here that Tangerine Dream (Mark 2) met and was filmed for TV spot. Other bands using the studio were Agitation Free (with future TD members Chris Franke and Michael Hoenig) and Ash Ra Tempel
Ash Ra Tempel was an early favorite of mine when I was discovering this era of music. Will have to go revisit!
Rubycon marks the point where TD started to use a Moog 962CP Sequential Switch with two Moog 960 Sequential Controllers, so you could swap between sequences automatically (by 1976 they had programmers and new custom made modular from Projekt Elektronik and were on their way to having more structure in their music - see Stratosfear which was also edited down from improvisations). On Phaedra, the most noticeable change (while the sequencer is running) is the step length of the sequence (manually). Only half of Rubycon was recorded in 1975, the other side is leftover from 1974.
Thanks for this context. The changing of sequence length was definitely a significant element of the progression in both pieces.
Snap Tangerine Dreaming is my style thanks for introducing me to it
Amazing performance 🙂
Truly inspirational- great work. Though I don’t have any of the oscillators here, I’m sure I can get close to this with what I do have. Problem is that I’m currently on holiday 600 miles from my rig. Sigh…
Enjoy your holiday though!
Sure I was aware of schools in Berlin, but I was unaware of the Berlin School while my older nephews played Kraftwerk and Pink Floyd's On the Run and Welcome to the Machine. Can't believe Rubycon is from 1975 where I was still in elementary school (far away from Berlin). It's been great listening to Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 while listening to what you describe on headphones. Your render is amazing considering the gear you have to work with. Sure, it's a true MakeNoise flagship case, but TD probably had the whole studio stacked with gear. Just wondering from personal interest why you did not use the Morphagene to make the complex movements and then just add a nice sequence to glue it all together. I also feel I'd be missing the Erbe-Verb in this setup. But wow, Walker, you're amazing and a huge inspiration as always, but never predictable.
one side of Rubycon was recorded in 1974, which makes it even more remarkable
Using the Morphagene didn't occur to me based on what I heard ... this time. Who knows, maybe if I'd done the same exercise later in the day, or on a day with different weather, or in a different mood, I might have taken a different approach? But this is a great example of why I wanted to do this in the way that I did, based on attentive listening rather than on reading about the gear and techniques used.
Outstanding
Thanks!
Most of TD's work a this time used Schulte Compact Phasing ‘A’ phasers - years later it's been described as the 'Krautrock phaser' as so many of the musicians from the '70s used them
A very key ingredient in the sound of this era!
Have both Aqua and Phaedra … will have to give a listen again 👏🏼
Happy listening!
Tangerine Dream was still using analog gear well into the 1980s, but by then could afford to buy (or rent) the high-end digital synths of the time: PPG Waveterm A, CRUMAR GDS (general development system), and the NED Synclavier II. They could also sample things as early as 1978, and had a CORE MEMORY sampler up and running perhaps even earlier, but BELL LAB reportedly beat them to the patent. The late '70s also saw them moving from analog sequencers to using digital sequencers, like the MC-8 Microcomposer from Roland and by the mid 80's the QX-1 from Yamaha and then Atari computers
i want this board so badly.
I think the Morphagene might have added its magical flavor to the Berlin patch, but it sat feeling left out up in the corner...
Maybe next time!
The vocal arhs come from the Mellotron. You did it proud Walker. Edgar would approve I am sure. Great stuff, and btw, you could stop bullets with that hairline. 😎
Thanks for that context! That'll explain why they sound like they are played on a keyboard. I enjoy that "uncanny valley" aspect :)
M400s followed later in 1975 by the Mark V
1:21 WHAT? No _Ricochet_ on the TD list? 🤯
Your accent is deliciously transatlantic
My homie, this vid is making me want that exact config in a shared system. Please tell me you guys are working on it.
Cool!
This guy is like the Beethoven of Modular synths
Great first patch, add 909 kick for killer techno
hurry up and sell this set up as the new shared system so i can buy it.
yes❤
a m a z i n g
Here is Tangerine Dream (Mark 2) at the original 'Berlin School' in 1969: ruclips.net/video/UUR3I3PiXMc/видео.html
I found that was actually a pretty good verbal description of what you were hearing on Rubycon. Enjoyed the patching too, you were catching elements. IMHO it takes a lot of experimenting with multiple patches to catch that magic something that the best Berlin School pieces have. From Tangerine Dream's "Sorcerer" album, the piece "Search" is a quintessential Berlin School piece in my book: ruclips.net/video/iDkXhlxwLZU/видео.html
Sorcerer (the film) was already on my to-check-out shortlist considering the recent passing of William Friedkin. Will check out the record! Thanks for sharing
@@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC very little of TD's music is used in SORCERER and to add insult to injury what is used is sometimes mixed in with Keith Jarrett's Hymns/Spheres part 3. Great film nevertheless
Would love to see more genre/album deep dives like this on MN gear. things like: vaporwave, Sophie style hyperpop, tim hecker-esque ambient, arca, folktronica
Early black dog ;)
Must have inspired Berlin's minimal techno scene, in a conscient way 😉
I think most TD fans would say that Zeit isn't Berlin School
I did not mean to imply that it was - usually I have heard people call Phaedra the beginning point of "Berlin School" for TD.
You did it. Dare I say it, but I think I prefer that to TD. I doubted you’d be able, but you proved me wrong and I got a wonderful musical treat.
High praise! Thanks for watching :)
Interesting and you probably got about 55% there ...
I would have guessed 45% :)
Lot of ‘verb…
I have to wonder whether Berlin School goes even further back, to early 1950’s experiments with tape machines, found music and collage (tape mixes). All things which much later inspired Froese and Palm and other German synthesists in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. Your thoughts, Walker?
Genre signifiers are almost always established and encoded after the fact, and are often met with ambivalence at best by the artists they are applied to... I tend to struggle against the whole idea of genre. Taken to its logical conclusion, either every artist in a genre would make identical music, or each artist would be a genre unto themselves. I tend to prefer the latter :) Artistic development is an ongoing continuum, with many porous borders between explicit and implicit influence, and between what inspires vs what is appropriated, aped, stolen. I found it interesting that in the pinned comment above where TD's approach is fleshed out, the only artists explicitly mentioned by Franke as influences are one European composer (Schoenberg) and one very vague racial designation ("repetitive rhythm like the Negroes make it"). It's hard to imagine that they were not also influenced by the experiments you mention.
i am a make noise fan, but there is nothing that i hate more hearing " berlin school " wtf should that be??? its so damn silly...
Klaus Nomi?
Never heard of Berlin school Patching and what's demonstrated here is certainly not what I would imagine it would be. I think some people might think of what they hear at Berghain as somehow being Berlin school patched. This is just rehashing OLD German music.
can't believe people pay all this money for a machine to make the most basic of sounds.
Oh but there’s lots of nuance in that box 🙂