He couldnt read music. Played everything by ear. Amazing!
That scene and the opener are always my first associations with Vangelis⌠unsurpassed. Such a loss.
Im sure Rutger Hauer is meeting him at the pearly gates
Bodies leave, sounds stay forever, RIP.
This is a big one. RIP EvĂĄngelos.
Yannis of Dreadbox will raise an Ouzo to him tonight, no doubt.
Man this one hurts a bit. Blade Runner is my all time favorite movie. I was in rock bands during college and saw that movie and loved those synth sounds so much. There were other concurrent influences at the time as well but it was certainly a part of what turned me into the synth nerd I am now.
I donât have much to say. Just that, itâs absurd really, but as a kid, I thought synth music was made by computers. Like, they had computers do it instead of people. It wasnât until I encountered Vangelis as, like, a personality in interviews and such (undoubtedly through my love of the Blade Runner soundtrack, but I honestly donât remember now) that I realized it was still people who made electronic music. And that, by extension, I could, too.
So thereâs a lot of great music, and weâll always have the music, and thank god for that. But we lost the person and thatâs sad.
Not on the official soundtrack, this version of âHymneâ was always one of my favorites in that film. The tone feels appropriate for the moment.
Demis Roussos
Rip
One of my first contacts with synth music as a kid. Had this one on a mix tape I used to listen to over and over
That chorusâŚ
Here in Paris with Demis (bassist, singer) and Lukas (drummer)
I already miss him infinitely
That whole series (Synthesizer greatest) was my introduction to Vangelis, Jarre, Kitaro etc. as a kid. Rented from videostore, taped, listened to it endlessly. RIP to a legend.
An interesting article which collates various NPR programmes about Vangelis reveals that:
GREIVING: Vangelis began experimenting with synthesizers early on, and they came to define his sound as a solo recording artist and particularly his work as a film composer.
VANGELIS: Iâve been using synthesizers for so many years, but theyâve never been designed properly. They create a lot of problems. The computers have completely different logic than the human logic.
GREIVING: So Vangelis built his own elaborate synthesizer system which allows him to perform it like a full orchestra all by himself in real time.
VANGELIS: I prefer to have the music as pure as possible. Most of the time, you have the first take. You donât have even overdubs because I donât want to say, oh, yes, this good, this is not good, you have to do it again. I donât want to do it again. I want to do it once. Itâs no good, I do another one.
No overdubs.
Probably not but would be cool if we all made our version of a CS-80 type synth on Modulargrid and share it here.
Ciao Bella
Haha. Same here - got mine from the local library and taped it.
I just had this weird feeling today - I remember back then when this stuff was around. It felt like the future. Like wayyy out in the future. As a kid that is everything. For us pre-millennials, the feeling leading up to 2000 had that feeling about it. But the synthesiser was wound up in all that.
But somehow the synthesiser was like this primordial thing, eternal and cosmic. The past but also the future. The universe really.
Itâs so weird to think this small span of time we live in, this tiny tiny little fragment of time where all this culture and tech has exploded from. Something we take so dearly, like synthesisers, even though they feel immortal and timeless, are so minute on the cosmic scale.
Anyway thatâs where this all sent me today haha
Artists from this era really felt like synthesiser Gods. I like how it was just called âSynthesiser Musicâ