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| September-October 2008: The last few months have been spent working on various projects, both technical and those not even related to Synergy music. My broadcast roots have been evident with work widely heard creating music logos and sonic beds for a major superstation carried on most cable systems, and as small as helping to set up a fully-digital community broadcast station in the town where I live. My new studio Macintosh has been handling the workload, including digital video editing, very nicely. It has gone so smoothly that while I once thought that I would keep my readers posted about the troubles of a major studio update, that just hasn't happened. Every software install, like the latest Waves® plug-ins, have been completely uneventful.
Next up, some producing work on two album projects for other artists. Too soon to give the particulars, but watch this space. As some of you know, my volunteer work in historic preservation (something completely outside of my music career) has taken more of my time and attention as I have been appointed to some positions of regional responsibility by different levels of government here in New Jersey. That, and my work with technology for the hearing disabled, has conspired to push my own Synergy composing projects lower on my priority list. But, I'm hopeful that some of those other projects will wrap up later this fall and there will be enough time to get back to the Synergy projects. |
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June 2008: NEARfest X (2008) The show has happened. We recorded video of the show in hi def. If it looks worthwhile, a DVD will eventually be issued. On June 30, 2008 I repeated the performance at the XM Satellite Radio studios in Washington DC. Watch the XM broadcast schedule for the times when it will air, possibly on XM Live Channel 120. May 2008: All the rest of the Synergy albums are now available on iTunes. We have to get a listing glitch straightened out, but for now search for "Synergy" to find all of the albums and titles with the exception 'Reconstructed Artifacts' which for some reason is found under "Larry Fast". We are aware of the other "synergys" that are listed. Some are beyond our reach outside of the US trademark jurisdiction, and some are not. March 2008: Interview on Gearwire. There's a nice audio interview that I did with Gearwire's Bill Holland. It's called "From Memorymoog to MOTU: The Electronic Journey of Larry Fast." Click the link to listen. NEARfest X (2008) I'll be opening the tenth NEARfest with a solo performance of Synergy music on Friday night June 20, 2008. Just me, the Macintosh and a couple of synthesizers and modules. It will be a set of classic Synergy pieces, some dating back to the mid-1970s. I'm in the process of making sure that the equipment, music, MIDI files and other devices will be ready for the show. Keep checking the NEARfest site and we'll have more here as it develops. February 2008: Mike Smith from the Dave Clark Five died this month. What's the connection? Even though I was a big (huge) fan of the guitars and drum Beatles back in 1964, Mike played a keyboard, a Vox Continental organ in the DC5. I could do that, I thought. I already played piano. And from that inspiration, seeing electronic keyboards in a rock band, it wasn't that big a leap to Moogs and Mellotrons for me a few years later. I got to meet and work with Mike in the mid 1980s on some American Airlines commercial tracks in New York for Radio Kings Productions. He was gracious even as I peppered him with questions about the Ed Sullivan show and the British Invasion of 1964. We exchanged Christmas cards for years until his accident made it so difficult for him to manage in 2003. He inspired me to do what I do and I'll miss him. (watch YouTube video) January 2008: No particular projects to report on right now (at least that I can say anything about). The latest Synergy Studio news is that the new MacPro computer arrived at the end of December 2007 along with a whole slew of software, both new and updates. There's also a little bit of new I/O hardware from Mark of the Unicorn for higher sample rates and word length than I've had before. Already in are MOTU's latest versions of Digital Performer, MachFive 2 and Unisyn; and Key To Sound's NextSyn. Coming are the latest BIAS Peak and IK Multimedia's SampleMoog. Old friends like the Kurzweils remain in the arsenal. Though I haven't been an Apple Logic user, the new live-performance MainStage module looks very attractive for using virtual synthesis on the road. I'm kicking around the idea of doing a blog about the upgrades and what I'm doing with them. Watch for more . . . There's an interesting piece from Wired online (October 2007) http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2007/10/gabrielstudio Ironic...at the fall 2007 Audio Engineering Society convention in New York, my wife Phyllis and I were waiting to visit with my old collegue Peter Gabriel outside the shed demo. Peter's personal studio concept grew from my experience with one at home in 1975 which itself was somewhat copied from Wendy Carlo's 1966-67 Switched on Bach studio. The reporter saw Phyllis, one of the few women at the AES convention, spoke to her and took our names. I don't think he had any idea about my 30 year connection with Peter. And I didn't know he was from Wired. No Tony Levin Band fall tour in 2007 or Winter 2008. Tony's out promoting his new Stick Man CD and gearing up for a King Crimson reunion, and Jesse's out with Todd Rundgren.
There's a new Nektar website about the legacy of the classic lineup. I hope to contribute some media memorabilia one of these days. www.theNektarProject.com Summer 2007: Peter Gabriel is back on the road this summer. Thank you to those of you who have emailed about the tour. Yes, Peter's new tour set is predominantly the same material we recorded and toured with Peter in the 1970s and 1980s when Tony Levin, Jerry Marotta and I were the core of Peter's band. Peter has chosen to have only Tony rejoin him for this return to his past. I was emailed by the production people at Real World who had a lot of questions about what instruments I had used and how I created the synthesizer patches and parts. Any of you who have seen the Tony Levin Band on the road since 2000 know that I have recreated many of my signature Moog sounds in newer digital instruments The last I heard from Real World they were attempting to sample my parts to use in the show from the Peter Gabriel albums studio tapes done all those years ago. If that's the case, I guess in some remote sense, I will be on the road for this tour. Seems like way too much work, though. Email: And speaking of email, the incoming spam and spam filtering for this Synergy site have become almost unworkable. I manage to rescue some of the email trapped in the filters when I discover them, but sometimes they're auto-purged before I find them. With a dozen or two legit emails overwhelmed by several hundred pieces of spam every day, it's becoming difficult to manage. My apologies for any emails that have become irretrievably lost. Eventually we're going to set up a forms based way of communicating. It's a little more restrictive, but it means that you can send messages to a controlled mailbox that will recognize them as valid, and in a place that the spammers can't find. Thanks for your patience.
Prior to Mexico and one appearance at NAMM, the band had been off the road since our West Coast US tour leg in October, 2006 which followed a busy spring and summer of touring the eastern US, Europe (Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Germany), eastern Canada and one show in Mexico City. All this followed our late 2005 dates in Italy, Switzerland, Hungary and Russia. Click on the "Resonator" CD cover to visit pages on Tony's site about the latest album. I've been swamped with other projects including construction of new studio space at home so I'm leaving it to Tony and the other guys in the band to publish our pictures form the last tour leg online. Click here for a link to Tony's site; and here for Pete Levin's pictures. XM Satellite Radio News: I've received a lot of questions about the proposed XM and Sirius Satellite Radio merger. The short answer is that I don't have any additional information. There are a lot of legal and regulatory hurdles, not to mention the technical ones, in combining two separate satellite services. For the moment, my sound logos (or "sounders") -- the over 100 that I created and recorded at the Synergy Studio, and the many more that famous and talented artists have recorded of my little 7-note theme for XM's on-air use continue to be the sonic identifier of the XM programming channels. Read more in Lee Abram's blog. For those of you who are Sirius subscribers, or those who haven't subscribed to XM yet, here are some mp3 examples for you listen to. click here... Nektar News : the new album "Book of Days" is being recorded during the summer of 2006. I've been invited to contribute to the arrangements (and it's even posted on the Nektar website). As soon as there's more information and I know more about it myself, I'll post my own observations. UPDATE NOVEMBER 2006: It's pretty simple; I don't have any information. To date I have not contributed to the new album. I'm still waiting to hear about that. I was asked to do the tour, but it conflicted with some of my other obligations including the Tony Levin Band dates so I had to decline. Now I understand the tour has been postponed until 2007. The best source of information is the official Nektar website. UPDATE JANUARY 2007: Still no contact from the band or management. I'm starting to think that it's unlikely that I'll be involved after all. The Nektar tour has been rescheduled for February through April 2007, but I have Tony Levin and other commitments so I won't be doing that either. Thanks to all of you who have asked. UPDATE MID-FEBRUARY 2007: The Nektar winter tour is off (again). I'm so far out of the loop that I find out most information from the band website and by reading the fan forums. However, recent emails and phone calls from present and former band members indicate that the Book of Days album recording is moving toward completion and future touring plans are being put in place. Once again, the Nektar website is where official announcements can be found. I have a soft spot for the first major band that I toured with 31 years ago. I want everything to work out for them. UPDATE MID-JUNE 2007: Uh Oh. The official Nektar seems to be gone. Try www.royealbrighton.com. I hear Roye's trying to finish the new album, but I don't have any information about how that's going. Look's like there might be some touring, though. One of the pioneers of our field of electronic music, Dr. Robert Moog, passed away on August 21, 2005. Bob and his family had posted a website to keep interested friends and supporters up to date during his illness. It contains many memorable comments and tributes. Please consider making a donation to CaringBridge which is sponsoring the site. Click here for one of my pictures of Bob from a few years ago. Another significant member of the electronic music community , John Simonton, Jr., founder of PAiA Electronics died on November 25, 2005. John was a good friend and someone who shared my background in the nuts and bolts of hardware and software design from which musical creativity could be coaxed. John's obituary on the PAiA site is here. Marvin Jone's, one of PAiA's lead designers and first editor of Polyphony/Electronic Musician magazine's remembrances are found here. A few of my pictures and comments are on a separate page. The last of the Nektar reissues "Magic Is A Child" is out. I helped in the remastering and mixed a rediscovered Robert Fripp Frippertronics loops part that wasn't used on the original LP in 1977. It's back as one of several bonus tracks on the CD. More info at the official Nektar site. Hear some Synergy electronic production on the tribute album of Pink Floyd's The Wall called Back Against The Wall produced by Billy Sherwood (formerly of Yes). Click here for more information on Billy's site. Work is now proceeding on the followup; tribute versions of the music of Dark Side of the Moon. I'll be contributing a track to the project. There is an informative interview posted at INNERVIEWS (www.innerviews.org/inner/fast.html) with a lot of good background on the SYNERGY CD releases through the years. |
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VOICEPRINT RECORDINGS (UK) Many of these discs have bonus tracks. More information about US and Canadian domestic distribution will be announced soon. more info... |
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NOW AVAILABLE: Online downloads of SYNERGY tracks from iTunes, Buy Music, eMusic.com, MusicMatch, the new Napster, Rhapsody, and many others. Some titles are already up on several sites. We'll have a more formal announcements when everything is in place in the coming weeks and months. |
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The latest SYNERGY CD is "Reconstructed Artifacts". All new recordings, but familiar Synergy material. more info... Reconstructed Artifacts is available now through The Artist Shop and CD Baby in North America and through Voiceprint Recordings (UK) for Europe and Asia. The most recent Voiceprint reissue is Metropolitan Suite. more info... |
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Yes, it's
that SYNERGY.
Electronic Music, Moog Synthesizers, Mellotrons,
Computer Music.
Since 1975, SYNERGY has been my outlet for exploring electronic music, its technology and creative uses. Beyond my SYNERGY projects I have spent a lot of my time recording and touring with other artists. My non-SYNERGY work started with NEKTAR in the mid-1970s, ran about a decade with PETER GABRIEL, and has continued with many other talented performers and groups right up to the present day. Currently, aside from my SYNERGY work, I'm recording and touring with the Grammy-nominated TONY LEVIN BAND and from time to time with the revitalized NEKTAR.
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WHAT'S NEW AT THE SITE . . .SITE ADDITIONS AND UPDATES. FOR RECENT NEWS SEE THE SYNERGY NEWS PAGE
- THE SYNERGY CD CATALOG INCLUDING RECONSTRUCTED ARTIFACTS IS NOW DISTRIBUTED OUTSIDE OF NORTH AMERICA THROUGH VOICEPRINT RECORDINGS
- ADDED ORIGINAL PICTURES AS FEATURED ON THE PETER GABRIEL REMASTERED BACK CATALOG CDs/SACDs ARTWORK.
- CD and DVD OF THE NEKTAR NEARFEST REUNION SHOW AVAILABLE www.classicrockproduction.com
- THERE'S A NEW TONY LEVIN BAND PAGE. NEWS RIGHT FROM THE SOURCE ABOUT SHOWS AND RECORDINGS AND INTERESTING STUFF.
- XM SATELLITE RADIO WITH SYNERGY CREATED AUDIO IS ON THE AIR. SEE THE ENTRY ON THE SYNERGY NEWS PAGE
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- OLDER NEWS HAS BEEN MOVED TO A NEWS ARCHIVE PAGE
- PICTURES OF MY LIVE RIG FROM THE TONY LEVIN TOUR IS ON THE PRODUCTIONS & STUDIO PAGE
a division of SYNERGY® Electronic Music, Inc.
SYNERGY® is a registered U.S. Trademark. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
Though I can't promise to correspond with everyone who emails, you're invited to send your comments or observations to synergy@synergy-emusic.com. The same goes for unsolicited demos; I appreciate being included in your career plans, but due to the extreme demands on my time by projects and tours I cannot promise to respond. (The old email address synergy@eclipse.net is no longer active).
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9/11 The picture is one that I shot from the ferry traveling across the Hudson River on my way to MacWorld NY in 2001 just a few weeks before the attacks on New York and Washington. I probably should take this picture down and move on almost seven years later, but having always lived in the shadow of New York City, I'm not ready to remove this little memorial just yet. I've
been collecting and digitizing shots that I had
taken of the World Trade Center over the years. At
some point we'll probably put up a page just for
those images. |
