Microcompositions

I am glad to see YMO and related threads so frequently posted to the top of ILM. I know you guys seem to skew more towards 80s YMO, while I'm much more into the YMO of the 70s.

Usually, when someone asks for more like YMO, they're pointed toward the post-YMO solo work, the protégées, the Yen record and Monad stuff. But to me, that's veering away from the core of the YMO sound, which requires a very important piece of equipment: The Roland Micro-Composer.

I'm not sure what is about this machine that generates such a specific sound, but when it came on the scene, nothing had sounded like it before, and rarely has anything sounded like it since its obsolescence. It was the first programmable, digital sequencer, pre-MIDI.

Micro-composed music has a very videogame/chiptune sound to it, even though the music predates most videogames. One noticeable feature is the sound of fast, multi-octave, fairly complex arpeggio sweeps.

Another interested aspect of micro-compositions are the lack of repetition. Kraftwerk developed their own sequencers, and tended to play them on loops, setting the tone for later electronic musicions. Tangerine Dream used a simple, 8 or 16 note sequence through a track that was 8 minutes or longer. But the micro-composer must not lend itself to looping, because the compositions are often much more varied, melodic, and structured like classical pieces or production music.

Also, the Micro-composer predates most programmable drum machines, and probably all stereo drum machines. So when these records have electronic rhythm tracks, they're almost always using an early drum synth, like the Pollard SynDrum Quad, triggered by a MC-8 pr MC-4 Microcomposer.

Examples of microcompositions include:

* YMO's first two albums (of course)
* Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto, and parts of 'Summer Nerves' as well
* Hideki Matsutake's early albums. Matsutake programmed the Micro-Composer for YMO. Crucial recordings include 007 Digital Moon (1979), Logic by Logic System (1981) , and the demo tape for the very first Sony Walkman (1979)
* Osamu Shoji's early albums: Night Flight (1979), Jataka (1978), and Welcome To the S.F. World (1978)
* Mu by Kamiya (1981)
* Various Japanese tracks from that era, like "Gun-do" by Himekami (1981), "Living Satellite IO of Jupiter" by Yuji Ohno (1981), "Quark" by Jun Fukamachi (1980), "Soratobu Lum" by Fumitaka Anzai (1982), or "Giraffe Landscape" by Rajie (1979), which is basically a YMO track as all 3 members contributed to it, and Matsutake programmed the Micro-Composer.

Non-Japanese Microcompositions include:
* E-Mc2 by Giorgio Moroder (he even name drops the Roland Microcomposer at the end of the title track)
* Push Button by Rubba (The album cover shows an EMS Synthi Sequencer, but I'm sure this done with a Micro-Composer
* Most Claude Larson records from that era. High Tech (1980) is a good starting point, and reminds me a lot of early YMO-family recordings
* Astromusic by Marcello Giombini (1981). This one also invokes a lot of YMO feelings in me, especially 'Libra' which feels almost like a refrain of 'Tong Poo' to me.
* Communications by Andy Clarke (1979)

Then there's the granddaddy of the Micro-Composer, Ralph Dyck. I guess the machine is based on a home-made sequencer he built, and was using throughout the 70s. It's pretty hard to find Ralph Dyck recordings. I know CBC put out a record in the 70s with some of his stuff on it.

The Roland MC-8 blog has a lot of information on Ralph Dyck, including interviews and recordings.

I would like to find more records with this sound, so if anyone knows any leads, please add them to this thread. Thanks.

ilx poster frogbs is the man for this, but in his absence I will ask if Max Tundra applies here

Erasure's Chorus album (1991) was done with the Roland MC-4. Vince Clarke started using it again because he felt CV/Gate had tighter timing in comparison to MIDI.

Well, this thread was a flop. But I will post a recently-discovered microcomposition:

Honma Express - You See I... (Japan, 1980)

It has that very precise, highly programmed (non-repetitive) sound. The only track with vocals is the perfectly odd 'What the Magic is to try', which features a seemingly native English-speaking female singer, and a breathy vocoder with a British accent, singing lyrics likely translated from Japanese.

hah, sorry to see it, I remember opening this and only kinda being half-sure what this sound was. but I will be checking all this stuff out.

this is what your description makes me think of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qddMZSXGkk

although I don't think Vangelis ever actually used one. the machine there is the Juno-60 I believe. but the sound is kind of similar to my ears.

some of those tracks above remind me a bit of Jean-Michel Jarre, particularly the pre-Oxygene stuff like Deserted Palace. released 1973, perhaps before this thing even came out, but the sound is there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ANtk2yx0I&index=2&list=PLAC95B32592AAB8CB

just Googling this thing...I think you kinda got all the examples right here!!

Hi Frogbs, the second video isn't working. But the Vangelis record is definitely not a microcomposition. I guarantee it's an older, analog sequencer -- like a Moog 960. It's 24 steps, rooted to a key on the keyboard, and then he changes the key, transposing the note. Then, in the middle, he truncates the sequence to 12 steps.

And while the Roland MC-8 came out in '77, the year of that Vangelis album, the Juno 60 didn't debut until 1982. So it's not a Juno 60, either. Can't say I'm a Vangelis guy but my understanding is that he was the master of the Yamaha CS-80, and that this was his main synth. Not sure if that one has a sequencer on it.

Compare to 1978's Itoko Doshi By Moonriders. Everything is "sequenced" (except the vocals and steel drum) but it's "songy", not "sequencey". It moves around all over the place, changes up, but it's perfectly quantized. This wasn't possible until the advent of the Microcomposer.