Grand Canyon remaster

Though it's not mentioned on the back cover (because the back cover reproduces the original Japanese vinyl) the just released cardboard cover remaster includes Leroy Anderson's "Syncopated Clock" - which was on the vinyl only U.S. LP and on previously only on one of the "best of" CD collections available worldwide.

The piece was symphonic poem style piece composed by Grofé in 1931. It's his best known piece, his other claim to fame was as orchestrator for Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue". It's surely the least well known music Tomita centered an album on. It's reputation probably suffered because it contained lighter American West sounding themes, something never onsidered part of "serious" music. The orchestration was very good, but then Gershwin's work broke ground with Jazz and Aaron Copland captured popular interest in classical music with his Americana-themed ballets a few years later.

Leroy Anderson specialized in writing light orchestral music, specificly short fun pieces for the Boston Pops. Other famous pieces of his have a typewriter for percussion and the sleighride piece they often play in the U.S. around Xmas with lots of sleighbells and a light whip crack sound. So this, his most famous piece from 1945 emulates the sound of a talking clock and was popular on old TV game shows when a contestant was given some on camera some time to think - so the piece became an audio cue for the answer being expected imediately after the conclusion of the piece

 

Thanks for the info, Nick.

BTW, how is the sound quality on these remasters? Any major differences/improvements?

Some remastered CDs (from other artists) that I have sound identical to the previous versions, while others have less noise, lower distortion, or sometimes the mix is slightly improved (though rare).

At least with DVD-Audio discs, they're forced to create a new mix. I sure hope other Tomita works will be released in the DVD-A format.

Actually, I wonder if that's worth a "sticky" at the top of this message board. Any Tomita fans just finding this message board might be very interested in buying the DVD-Audio version of the Planets. Maybe a sticky thread with info and a link to buy will help spur more sales of this disc, and ultimately give a reason for them to release additional DVD-As of Tomita's music.

 

Well it depends what you compare them to. I'd say on Daphnis, Dawn Chorus, Bermuda Triangle it's not a huge difference since they sounded okay in the 1990s Japanese pressings and I guess that's all you can compare them to... unless Europe released something different on those albums? Grand Canyon of course has the extra track. "Snowflakes" and "Pictures" probably benefit the most since for example the 2000 work done on "Snowflakes" in the U.S. was over aggressive and the Dolby ones were a somewhat mixed bag. I hear a certain amount of distortion on the first two but surely that's on the master. Firebird has still some tape noise but it's not annoying, certainly better than a heavy handed attempt to wipe the noice away.

Anyway JVC used their latest process on the tapes BMG Japan has in their vaults - which probably are dupes of what BMG USA owns, then again New York BMG didn't pull anything that spectacular off their tapes the last ime around (2000 on "Snowflakes") I had no problem at all with the later recorded Dolby Pro Logic ones (Kosmos & Planets) but the earlier albums in Pro Logic are so so.

JVC's 24 bit process though surely adds a bit of detail because it is technically better than what was available 10 years ago when the last CD masters seem to have all been donw.

I'm sure Tomita did a major dissassembly on "Planets" in 2003 and may have been working on parts of it for other uses over the years, like I'm sure he spent a lot of time submixing for the various sound cloud events. It's really unlikely he could quickly remix all his complex recordings so I wouldn't hold your breath for multichannel remixes, though I'm sure if they just wanted to release 96K/24 bit stereo versions they could do that any time they wanted (if of course a format existed that anyone would buy)

 

I was looking at the notes and I see that especially on some earlier tracks Tomita might only be using one sampled sound, so all in all this album is probably best thought of as only half digital, still the obvious use of samples makes it a bit ofa let down today. I'm impressed by the use of 36 Roland System 100M VCOs! (They usually came in pairs so that's at least 18 modules) - I remember seeing a studio shot where he had a row of System 100M modules the entire length of his studio. That's some sawtooth wave! Though in newer photos those modules are gone. It also seems that the 100M modules might have been replacements for the System 700 modules Tomita had in the 70s.

 

36 VCOs? Is this mentioned in the liner notes or something?

 

(P.S. the 1990s Japanese CD version has notes in Japanese but no gear list, unlike the US LP. )

http://www.isaotomita.net/recordings/grand.html#technology

It lists all the string instruments being done with :
Roland System 100m (oscillator saw-tooth x 36)

And of course I remember that studio pic in a Japanese book. Normally you make a "wall" of modular synths, but Tomita had 100M modules running the length of the room in just one row.

I'd think he wanted an esemble effect without using an effect!

that's not a mystery. I'm sure Roland asked him what he wanted that they made - read on for the mystery.



But here goes something strange. What's with "program" 1 to 8? At first before I knew synths very well I thought it might be the patch number, but he says "program #" regarding Modular Moogs which have no preset patches and he has no "program" for some synths that do have patches (Jupiter 4 for instance) - and of course if they were patches why only patch 1 through 8

...So it's obviously track numbers. Ive heard that term used in Japan ... but wait! The Japanese album only had 5 and U.S. version 6 tracks, so where are programs 7 and 8??

So that either means the album was going to be longer ( the plot thickens... it is shorter than his other albums). Or perhaps it was meant to be split up into more tracks and some were joined in the final version. The problem is the names just sound like single movements, not 2 movements playing without a break

 

That would be interesting to find extra unreleased Tomita tracks. Heck...I wish I could've been a fly on the wall in Tomita's studio back then. I'm still contemplating what he must have gone through patching up those 36 oscillators!

 

If you ever see the set lists on the Sound Cloud events you notice non-album classical compositions scattered between well known tracks. Even "Mind of the Universe" seems to have a Rimsky-Korsakov piece not on the album. "Back to the Earth" was much longer live, though no non-album tracks "got away".

As for 36 VCOs, it is of course quite a number but it sounds to me like something anyone trying to simulate a big string section would want to try, after all in an orchestra you might have that many string players. I guess it would compouns things if he wanted to use an LFO for vibrato but he could get away with mixing them and feeding the mix into one synth patch.