The passing of a visionary: Alan R. Pearlman, founder of ARP

Alan R. Pearlman, founder of, and creative genius behind, ARP Instruments has died on 6 January, aged 93.

Even as a student, after the 2nd World War he was dreaming of electronic instruments that could be real musical instruments for musicians, instead of laboratory curiosities. When he founded ARP Instruments, he started to put his dream into practice - and the list of his patents is impressive to this day.

When Moog and ARP Instruments were rival companies, ARP being the second most known synthesizer brand, even Bob Moog recognised the technical merits of ARP 2500. First of all, unlike Moog synths of the day, the ARP had famously stable oscillators - so it didn't need the notorious frequent re-tunings due to oscillators drifting over time.

Unlike the modular Moog, this ARP legend has employed a matrix system and special pins to achieve the patching, instead of a mass of cables.

Illustrious names used the ARP 2500 and its more affordable successor, the ARP 2600: Pete Townshend, Jean-Michel Jarre, Jimmy Page, David Bowie, Herbie Hancock, Jerry Golsdsmith, Jeff Wayne... and many uses of the legendary synths are as famous as some of these artists.

In Star Wars, the R2-D2 robot's whistles and bleeps were made via ARP 2600, and a few years earlier, the musical communication with the UFO that landed in Close Encounters of the Third Kind was made on an ARP 2500...

Jean-Michel Jarre to this day possesses and uses an ARP 2500, and he employed it on the recent live revival of his classic Oxygene album, too.

As a masterstroke, ARP has also released a charming and eminently portable synth, too - the ARP Odyssey. It was a duophonic, compact and quite affordable powerhouse of a synth has become another sought-after legendary instrument, featured on countless records. Everybody from Klaus Schulze to Chick Corea to ABBA to Billy Currie has used this synths that was ultimately made in three versions.

What can illustrate better the longevity of A. R. Pearlman's ideas and innovations than the fact that mighty Korg in 2015 has resurrected the ARP Odyssey as something that some abbreviate fondly as the KARP Odyssey...

To quote Richard Boulanger, "even at 90 and beyond, Alan R Pearlman was still dreaming of new circuits, modules, and controllers! Undeniably, Alan R Pearlman was an engineering genius. Everyone recognizes that his synthesizers were beyond brilliant. But I truly believe that the heart and soul in his machines drew their spirit and life from Alan’s musical virtuosity on the piano, his truly deep musical knowledge, his passion and enthusiasm for “all” music, and his nurturing and generous support for young composers and performers, regardless of whether they were into classical, avantgarde, film, fusion, rock or pop."

Korg ARP Odyssey

It is extremely rare to have a brilliant engineer and innovator with deep musical sensitivity and understanding of what a musician needs. On top of that, Alan R. Pearlman had superlative feel for ergonomic design, for aesthetic considerations - therefore his creations were true gems of electronic instruments, in the fullest sense of that word.

It is not overstating his and his creations' significance if one says that his instruments had life-changing impact on many, on both technical minds and on great musicians who embraced technology.

Rest in peace, relentless innovator and dreamer...

Cosmic dialogues: Tangerine Dream's 'The Sessions III'

When recently the first live composition sounded at a Tangerine Dream concert, the new line-up immersed the audience in a sonic world they, and TD fans in general, have not had the chance to hear since the pioneering 1970s.

These structured improvisations, first unleashed on the wider audiences on the CDs Particles and then Sessions I,  have shown that yes, in the second decade of the 21st century, Tangerine Dream is still synonymous with a type of electronic music that is eminently human.

These live compositions are not only spirited jams one would traditionally expect to hear only in rock and jazz concerts, but also show that for TD, technology never became an all-dominating factor nor an end in itself.

Sessions III continues the series of CDs started by Sessions I and II, both covered on this blog, too. The listeners, who may not have had the chance to witness the live material in Hamburg or Berlin, are being treated to two lengthy live pieces again, the album totaling 77 minutes.

There is something rather poetic about the by now well-established titles, which always contain the exact time when the live pieces were born. The musical content is rather timeless, hence the timestamps even more poignantly suggest the ephemeral and one-off way in which the pieces were created...

Hanseatic Harbour Lights was recorded in February 2018 in Hamburg. It runs for a highly pleasing 35 minutes, and it is has everything old and new fans of TD like - most notably, the disciplined, never self-indulgent introduction of characteristic sequencer patterns and the floating meditative section. The presence of the violin in the vast electronic vista is sublime as usual, adding a very organic and intimate-sounding element...

One just knows, simply knows, that things will happen when the first metallic sequenced notes appear - and the track develops into a full-blown cosmic journey. That sentence may sound so 1970s - but the music is not a retro nostalgia exercise, far from it...

This is 21st century Tangerine Dream with the breadth and the trust in listeners' attention span that was characteristic of electronic acts of some heroic early decades. Once again, this track demands attention and it is a rewarding demand on the listener - as it takes us from the ethereal first drone through sequenced textures to gentle, meditative piano improvisations floating on top of the electronic ocean.

The energy is carefully dosed, never too abruptly, no rigid shapes, no harsh angles, just waves and swirls exist here. Same goes for the second track, recorded at the Synästhesie III Festival in Berlin...

A masterclass in Berlin School-style electronic music in... Berlin, it doesn't get more superlative than that. Although edgier and more heated than the first piece, it has its oases of quiet ambience, with the inevitably and achingly beautiful violin and Mellotron flutes.

One experiences that Ricochet-era feeling: it is perhaps satisfying to keep track, up to a point, of what is going on - but one can be absolutely sure, it will not be possible to catalogue every inter-twined sonic sequence and layers upon layers of textures... and then comes the best moment, when listener has to give up and just let him/herself float away on the currents of this electronic ocean.

As this track also demonstrates, in the TD sessions each section is important and never rushed - we know the expositions and the middle sections can be mind-bending and expansive, but so are their sonic constructs in the closing parts.

The trio, namely Thorsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss, and Hoshiko Yamane, have again delivered a pair of live compositions that, for the entire length allowed by the physical medium, take us on a spellbinding musical journey.

Sessions III continues the series that show: the new Tangerine Dream line-up remains absolutely connected with one of the core principles that has always characterised the band: make, even if channeling something from other galaxies, eminently living and pulsating rock music that happens to employ electronic instruments...

Clone wars and compromises

Behringer's Moog Model D clone

Last year's (in)famous announcement by Behringer, that it sets out to clone the legendary MiniMoog Model D, has driven social and specialist media into overdrive.

Purists, retro enthusiasts, gear heads, and countless other categories of people involved in any way in electronic instruments and electronic music have vented pros/cons (sometimes on the rational side) and everything from joy to outrage (on the emotional side).

This was followed by a "fake news" hiccup, when Behringer website announced a whole range of legendary synth clones, promptly taken off the website and, according to Behringer, it was merely a technical hiccup rather than an intentional marketing stunt.

Cue social and specialist media overdrive... again.

Now that we are counting the days until NAMM 2018, which undoubtedly will have its fair (or again overblown) share of retro technology in new robes as the nostalgy market is driving this insatiably, Behringer makes another announcement.

While the Model D clone is yet to turn up in shops, but pre-orders are made, the company announces not just an Oberheim OB-Xa clone, but also its estimated timeline.

Behringer UB-Xa clone of Oberheim OB-Xa

Cue social and specialist media overdrive... yet again. The OB-Xa's characteristic sound was present on myriad albums of artists ranging from Mike Oldfield to Jean-Michel Jarre to Depeche Mode and Gary Numan, to name just a few.

The repeated furore could be grouped essentially around the following topics:

• How dare they clone the legends, making considerably cheaper versions?
• The clones will not sound "good enough" compared to the originals
• The quality will be worse compared to the originals.

Well, while everything in life is a compromise, above main threads have one huge elephant in the room, as uncomfortable it may be.

The price point, objectively, to anyone in the electronics business who is not subjectively swayed by nostalgia, is not a scandalous one for Behringer, it is actually a scandalous one for the likes of Moog.

The production of Model D in today's world, even with using the retro components that were reportedly in short supply (if we believe the classic marketing stunt), is a fraction of what it was back then.

The price point, regardless of individual synth musicians' pocket sizes (and the snobbish threads that ensued due to this, discussing affordability and who would spend what on what), is an unrealistic one - the real central driver is the name, the legend and the emotional capital factored into it. Full stop.

The "good enough" sound is a perhaps eternal topic. Again, it comes down to motivations, priorities and... compromises.

Even if the clones approximate the originals, they are expected to be "better" than virtual analogue reincarnations of the originals. The elusive (and often subjective) difference may not matter in the final mix, and would not be (even in case of virtual analogue) detectable by vast numbers of people listening to the final mix on whatever sound equipment they have.

However, this just brings the traditional battle between virtual analogue and true analogue to another level, it is a battle between hearing the differences between true analogue original and clone.

The original and legendary Oberheim OB-Xa

Naturally, as with all such discussions, the central question remains whether the certain differences matter or not to the audience.

Famously, when Daft Punk recorded a track's narration with three different microphones belonging to three different eras talked about in the track, somebody asked: who will hear the difference? The sound engineer replied: Daft Punk will.

But then the big question is, if only the artist hears it, does it matter... and then we land in a stormy sea of heated debates that ultimately start regurgitating tenets of subjective vs. objective reality from age-old philosophy trends.

Regarding compromise, a certain difference then becomes also a matter of price difference vs. audible difference. This then becomes even more personal and tuned to the specifics of the music project. Therefore generalising takes on this lose all meaning, no matter how purists start sizzling in social media threads.

The quality point is also a self-defeating one. Sure, fundamentally it has to be "decent". Even at the price point of the clones, nobody wants it to fall apart within months or a few years. Considering how latest greatest offering from some of the biggest names is suffering of frankly outrageous quality issues nowadays, and there is a clear trend toward the negative, the picture is again a bit foggy.

A lot of anger was vented in threads about Behringer quality, endless sarcastic memes and posts circulated for months - but again the authors miss the central point.

Exactly as a hand-stitched leather seat in an Aston Martin does not alter the engine performance and "oomph" we feel driving it, in the same way the price-inflating claims of Moog about lovingly and individually hand-crafted parts do not alter the sound.

They may contribute to an overall feel of uniqueness and "made just for you" with a serial number we end up framing on the wall, but... the central logical phallacy in such takes is that the overall feel is not in any way related to the specific detail or difference in detail that is being argued.

It is impossible, due to human nature, to avoid such phallacies and their pitfalls when it comes to these topics. Especially when many look at their synths as things that define them as musicians instead of mere tools in their creative work.

However all purist thinking is by definition a deplorably self-limiting one. It is not a problem that one ends up limiting one's own choices (including the creative ones), but it is also human nature that the same psychology makes its possessor feel a desperate need to tell others to have the same self-limiting approaches to their creative processes and choices.

So instead, let's herald the superb OB-Xa reincarnation, if Behringer does produce it (frankly, credibility has taken a huge beating lately and some marketing or involuntary actions backfired).

As with the Model D clone, the UB-Xa (as it will be called) will naturally find its way into categories of sound designers and musicians' work places as Model D clone and virtual analogue imitations of true analogue originals have.

Everything is a compromise, and all synths are instruments - mere instruments in realising an imagined sound world.

How that instrument is used and whether it is "good enough" is down to, and only to, that creative musician.

As soon as the instrument becomes a tool for self-definition and therefore inevitably snobbery, it and its discussions are dead ends for the purists.