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Vangelis Music Creation |
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djproject 
Age: 28
Joined: 17 Sep 2008
Posts: 82
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 Posted: 2010-02-12, 03:09
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| ILIAS wrote: | DJPROJECT, thank you very much interesting post , there is really what to think about and learn from it.
but particularly I got interested in the following:
| djproject wrote: |
5) if you hear reverb, that's always going to be case with him. his music, i think, has always sounded like it existed in the space of a room. (and yes i can hear this in my work as well ... so i blame vangelis with reverb as much as i do michael cretu =] )
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of course it because I saw Michael Cretu name there so It became 10 times even more interesting but not quite 100% did I understand. Could you please develope this opinion if it is possible and explain more, for example whats there wrong or good with Vangelis and MC and maybe give some examples in music?
It would be very interesting to learn what you think!
thank you ! |
i'll do my best =]
flushing out what i said earlier more
i grew up listening to vangelis a lot and from when i was a teenager, i listened to enigma a fair amount. what i noticed in both of them is their use of reverb and it's so prevalent in their work that it's hard to think of a case where you *don't* hear it. and as far as with me personally, you often make what you've heard. so naturally if i hear lots of reverb, then it's going to permeate in some way into my own work. when i first noticed it in my own work, i first attributed it to enigma because it was the most obvious. vangelis i assumed was a given until i made a very conscious connection in terms of reverb.
reverb based on personal experience
i like employing reverb on my work because it gives it a bit of vibrancy and life into something that could otherwise be dull and limp. a really good example of this is a song i'm working on called "an alternate thursday". it uses a repeated drum loop and no variation. one day, listening to the mixdown, i noticed that the drum loop felt too punchy and too prominent. it felt like it was just there and not doing much else. so i went back to the session and added just a kiss of reverb (10% wet). that little bit of reverb, i think, made the difference. there was still clarity since i didn't use all that much. but the decay of the snare is now a bit more alive than it was previously.
reverb is a very tricky effect and it's very easy to use it poorly (i'm guilty of this too in my past and i anticipate more so in the future). the obvious problem is it goes obscure the original source. so using it on vocals muddles the words. using it on certain parts of the kit also muddles it and makes it sound ghostly (obscures the attack and the decay if you put it at 100% wet). unless you can detect a human voice in it, i never (or hardly ever) use it on pad sounds since pad sounds already employ a wide stereo field and usually you use it to widen a monoaural - or at least very focused - sound. then lastly, there's the accusation that reverb disguises a bad recording. i find if it's a bad recording in the first place, it's going to sound worse with reverb (garbage in, garbage out). but i have noticed if the recording is for the most part fairly good except for the room conditions, it does smooth over the rough edges a bit in combination of compression and eq.
reverb and vangelis
vangelis uses reverb a plenty in his vast œuvre. in fact, it's one of those cases where it's hard not to think of something which doesn't use reverb in some way. and if it's not exactly reverb that's employed, some modulation effect to give something the illusion of depth and distance. (delay is a way of achieving it and sometimes is preferred over reverb because you get the depth effect without the muddiness of reverb).
one of his early uses is with an echo pedal (not the same thing as reverb ... echo is actually a type of delay). he used three echo pedals connected in series with his hammond organ to create that big drone sound that is often mistaken for a sound found in either the chamberlin or the mellotron (hell it threw me off too). the advantage this arrangement has over the mellotron is you are not limited to eight seconds (think "creation du monde" especially) and you have a unique sound. i remember reading he was into spring reverbs and those can be heard on the rca releases especially. and he was the first users of the lexicon reverbs and used those extensively throughout the 1980s.
reverb for vangelis' music does several things. the big thing it does is give the synthesized instruments more life but providing it with space. and as omissis said earlier, it does smooth out the harsh waveforms as well and rounds it out. i can hear this with heaven and hell for an example when the arp pro soloist brass plays. and finally i think it provides another factor vangelis can and does use to make his music.
the reverbs employed were not just the result of processing devices. there is of course natural reverb from the studio itself. i think this explains some of vangelis' earlier recordings when you have studios known for their sonic character. i think this also applies in his own studios especially nemo.
conclusion ... for now
at any rate, i hope this helps ... i'm sure i can write more somewhere but i think this is enough =] |
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ILIAS
Moderator
Age: 21
Joined: 09 Aug 2007
Posts: 752
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| Posted: 2010-02-12, 23:50
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it more than helped, and tought me some important things and that notice about studio acoustic reverb is just brillliant  It must be considered when we talk about early Vangelis.
thank you very much, appreciate your help! |
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PROFITIS ILIAS |
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Shepherd
Joined: 28 Mar 2008
Posts: 148
Location: Norway
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| Posted: 2010-03-02, 09:22
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| djproject wrote: |
6) while vangelis is not formally educated in orchestration, i really don't think that makes him a bad or insufficient orchestrator. in fact, orchestration as a compositional tool/technique is relatively new in the history of western music, coming about only with berlioz, mahler and ravel. i still think there's enough room for changing and reshaping "rules" of orchestration =]. same idea applies with his composition, both melodically and harmonically.
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That is not entirely right - you provide examples of people who have innovated the art of orchestration/instrumentation (I'd rather point out Berlioz, Debussy, Schoenberg and Varese as the most important contributors). But of course, the art as such goes further back and involves scientific knowledge about timbre, range and balancing of different instruments in relation to each other - i.e. how many violins you need when you have x number of clarinets and flutes to balance the sound, etc. Just imagine the complexities involved in a well-tempered tuning of a piano - it actually involves some sort of irregular tuning.
Debussy was one of the first composers to recognize the freedom of a composer to compose any way he wants to. Clearly, Vangelis belongs to this category of composers.
Heaven & Hell was orchestrated by combining diverse sources of instruments: synthesizer, percussion, choir, piano, etc., and the result was novel and interesting.
However, adventuring into romantic classical music using standard orchestral instruments - albeit sampled, without proper knowledge of orchestration he comes across as a novice rather than an innovator. After all, he is trying to sound like an orchestra now, but he doesn't really - and that is partly the result of the incomparable quality of acoustic instruments to samples, and partly lack of knowledge in orchestration. For starters - the way he uses reverb does not work well with orchestral sound, and it translates as a performance in a bad acoustic environment (there is another science for you: acoustics...) |
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djproject
Age: 28
Joined: 17 Sep 2008
Posts: 82
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| Posted: 2010-03-06, 02:18
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| Shepherd wrote: |
That is not entirely right - you provide examples of people who have innovated the art of orchestration/instrumentation (I'd rather point out Berlioz, Debussy, Schoenberg and Varese as the most important contributors). But of course, the art as such goes further back and involves scientific knowledge about timbre, range and balancing of different instruments in relation to each other - i.e. how many violins you need when you have x number of clarinets and flutes to balance the sound, etc. Just imagine the complexities involved in a well-tempered tuning of a piano - it actually involves some sort of irregular tuning.
Debussy was one of the first composers to recognize the freedom of a composer to compose any way he wants to. Clearly, Vangelis belongs to this category of composers.
Heaven & Hell was orchestrated by combining diverse sources of instruments: synthesizer, percussion, choir, piano, etc., and the result was novel and interesting.
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i stand corrected. in fact, when you brought it up, there is a long history of theory and practicum exchanging ideas and new inventions help to bring forth new ideas ... one example among many is large spaces influencing the idea of more polyphony and harmony in the western music tradition. thus orchestration is an ongoing evolution much like all the other aspects of music.
and i would agree with the association between vangelis and debussy as well.
| Shepherd wrote: |
However, adventuring into romantic classical music using standard orchestral instruments - albeit sampled, without proper knowledge of orchestration he comes across as a novice rather than an innovator. After all, he is trying to sound like an orchestra now, but he doesn't really - and that is partly the result of the incomparable quality of acoustic instruments to samples, and partly lack of knowledge in orchestration. For starters - the way he uses reverb does not work well with orchestral sound, and it translates as a performance in a bad acoustic environment (there is another science for you: acoustics...) |
i think something i should have made clear from the beginning is two things: 1) vangelis will do things his own way regardless of whether it goes against conventional wisdom or normal expectations and 2) if there is a comparison to something else, it's accomplished more as intuitive mimicking as oppose to deliberate copying. after all, i'm sure an ethnomusicologist would see pass vangelis' attempts to sound asian in his various projects: china, soundtrack to nankyoku monogatari [antarctica] and his anthem for the 2002 world cup.
i don't dispute that you notice this novice quality in vangelis' attempts at orchestration. i'm sure i'll notice it more if i pay attention to it with more scrutiny (and admittedly, refreshing myself to some of the principles of orchestration ... which i know vary considerably from composer to composer whoever bothered to articulate it). however, i'm not bothered by it in the end because it's still vangelis.
i'm sure more will follow in due time ... but this is enough for now =] |
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moviemaker
Administrator
Joined: 09 Aug 2007
Posts: 789
Location: HollywoodLAND, California
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| Posted: 2010-04-17, 05:33
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I moved this out of the Vangelis Documentary Topic and into its own thread.
continue... |
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Shepherd
Joined: 28 Mar 2008
Posts: 148
Location: Norway
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| Posted: 2010-04-17, 20:59
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| In Musiques au coeur the difference between his early analogue days and his contemporary digital soundscape is clearly heard when he plays a short piece following the segment of La Petit Fille de la Mer.... In comparison, the improvised piece with his digital setup sounds so cold.... |
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www.myspace.com/getonspace
www.hemmeligtempo.no |
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