I really wasn't planning on it, but I just bought a DD + expander. Funny thing is, I'm not even a Vangelis fan, I'm a Wendy Carlos kinda guy.
This video cost me a lot of bones... Hope it blows me off my feet even more in person!
I think John Carpenter used a CS-80 in the early days...* markd runs off to check on that
....no, it was two Prophets, three Arp synths and a 4-voice (and an EMS VCS 3 for Dark Star). I was sure that Assault on Precinct 13 music was a Yammy but no, it had to be the Oberheim as it was the only one of those listed that was on the market in '76. Then again my info source only cites the gear that Alan Howarth had back then and he wasn't involved with Carpenter until Escape From New York.
*TAKES DEEP BREATH*
THE DAN WYMAN ERA
Assault On Precinct 13.
Moog Modular System 55
Fender Rhodes (for Julie's Theme)
Halloween
Moog Modular System 55
MiniMoog
Piano
The Fog
Piano
Moog Modular System 55
Sequential Circuits Prophet 10 (Single Keyboard)-it was this synth and not the Prophet 5, as programmer Dan Wyman also used it for his personal scores for Hell Night and Without Warning alongside an orchestra.
“Says Dan Wyman: "All of the programming for all of the films was done on a Series III Moog (sometimes called a Moog 55) with 5 boxes. While I had both an Arp string synthesizer and an Oberheim around, I did NOT use them for either Halloween or the Fog. We used an acoustic piano for Halloween as well (John played some, I played some.) The tempco circuit in the Moog 951-952 keyboards had a tendency to wander a bit- something john would not have known. However, I am somewhat cursed with perfiect pitch, and I remember stopping somewhat frequently to retune. John probably remembers that, as those were very low budget films, and he wanted to spend as little as possible. The sessions were "non-union," and we were all paid very little for our work. Mr. Carpenter made millions. That was life in the film industry of
the 1970s. All synthesis for all three of those films was done at Sound Arts. We also did most of the effects for The Fog. "
“The strings are ALL Moog. That patch is: 9 oscillators (with slight frequency differences) mixed, into a filter set- highpass-lowpass, with a very highly attenuated keyboard triggered envelope opening up and down slowly on it, keyboard tracking at 60percent, and the telltale signature of envelope-controlled vibrato that widens slightly as the key is depressed. You will note that the strings are not "buzzy" so no 2-pole Oberheim filters were used, and that the synchronized opening and closing of the VCFs could not be accomplished by placing an ARP through Moog filters. The String Ensemble had no filter of that kind. You are hearing (at one quick listening) three tracks of strings, with the characteristic tape flatness of a 3M 24track, albeit squashed by several layers of Digital World compression algorithm. Oh, and I had a little regeneration up on the high strings to get an edge going. Half of those oscillators were 921s, the others
were 901s.
Music recorded at Sound Arts studios, Los Angeles CA. Synth-programming by Dan Wyman.
(AOP13 was recorded on 8 track, Halloween on 16 track and The Fog on 24 track).”
THE ALAN HOWARTH ERA
After The Fog, Carpenter went on to work with programmer Alan Howarth.
Escape From New York
Prophet-5
ARP Quadra
ARP Avatar (2)
ARP Sequencer
Roland CSQ-600 Sequencer
Sequential Circuits 700 Programmer
Roland SVC-350 Vocoder
Linn LM-1 Drum Computer
Fender Jazz Bass
Fender Stratocaster
Howarth: "Quadra was in several cues. In the opening titles of EFNY as part of the chord pattern and also in the arpeggiated riff after the body of the cue. Quadra is also in the Duke arrives and the president at the train. The
final cue, across the 69th street bridge is also a stack of quadra and avatars and prophet on the main melody."
Halloween ii
Prophet 10
Prophet 5
ARP Avatar (2)
ARP Quadra
ARP Sequencer
Roland CSQ-600/Sequencer
Sequential Circuits 700 Programmer
Linn LM-1 Drum Computer
“The BIG lead line on the Halloween II is a stack of overdubs from the SCI prophet 5 &10. Remember, this was 24 track
analog stuff, so before MIDI and all the computer sequencers, I had to overdub. The other Halloween part, the 1/8 note stuff is from the ARPs. There were 2 ARP Avatars (Really Oddsseys) that were driven by the ARP sequencer. The Quadra was also overdubbed as the BIG line. I used the LM1 as the master clock for everything and it had a FSK tone that I
recorded to track 23 of the 24 track tape. This way I could sync the sequencer to the tape for overdubs."
Halloween iii: Season Of The Witch
Prophet 10
Prophet 5
ARP Avatar (2)
ARP Sequencer
Roland CSQ-600/Sequencer
Sequential Circuits 700 Programmer
Linn LM-1 Drum Computer
The repetitive 16 of 8 note stuff on Halloween III was the ARP sequencer/ARP Avatars. Any larger sequences were with the sequencial circuits sequencer that was attached to the Prophet 5 & 10 systems. The SCI 700 was used on one of the Avatars as a programmer and sub-sequence, and the Linn LM-1 was driven from a tape track and used as a master clock for all sequencing.
Says Howarth: "This worked well, but you had to always go back to the start of the cue to get the proper clock lock. You could not start in mid cue like today with smpte and midi."
Christine
Prophet 10
Prophet 5
Emulator i
ARP Avatar (2)
ARP Sequencer
Roland CSQ-600/Sequencer
Sequential Circuits 700 Programmer
Linn LM-1 Drum Computer
(The Lost Empire also had Fender Stratocaster, Jazz Bass, Flute, and Saxophone)
Big Trouble In Little China (Carpenter and Howarth's first MIDI score and same as Retribution)
Prophet-5 & Prophet-10 w/ Poly sequencers
E-mu Emulator I & II w/CD ROM
ARP Avatar (x2) and Arp Sequencer
Linn LM-1 , LM-2 & E-mu SP-12 (this combination was treated as one gigantic drum machine.
Kurzweil K250 w/user sampling
Prophet 2002
Prophet VS-2400 Vector Synth
Oberheim 4 voice w/Midi (mostly used as a bass unit)
Howarth was able to trade Sequential some of his own
programs for use of a prototype Prophet VS, which he used for a lot of the "Chinese" sounds.
Says Howarth: "I'm not a real DX-7 fan, he explains. I never warmed up to it, and along came the VS. It gave me some pretty neat sounds. The digital waveforms were nice and bright, and they gave me all the Clavinet and Rhodes things, and I could still deal with it in an analog fashion, which is what I'm most familiar with. We've got a lot of great sounds out of it...whenever Chinese black magic was cast against the bad guy, we used the Prophet 2000 choir preset along with a VS sound that was sort of voicy. We recycled that as a sound, rather than a theme, so the audience would hear that and think, "Here come the good guys".
Carpenter & Howarth's first MIDI score
"We had a MOTU Performer running on a MAC Plus. This let us get every sampler and analoge sysnth the stack on every track. That's why this score was a new sound. The VS was a new instrument as well as the K 250. The samples in the
K250 that we liked were the horns and strings and piano. The Emulator 2 was also a key player because I was close to the Emu people and I got a lot of cool samples as well as I programed many of my own stuff for the E2."
Howarth was a bit unfamiliar with the sequencing capabilities of the MOTU performer software so he mostly used the on board 8 Track Sequencer of the Emulator 2 to sequence a lot of the external gear.
Prince Of Darkness
Emulator I & II with CD ROM
Kurzwell 250 with 50K sampling
Sequential VS-2400 Vector Synthesis
Sequential Prophet 10
Sequential Prophet 2002
Oberheim SEM 4 Voice
ARP Avatar
They Live
Synclavier Digital Audio System
Emulator II with OMI CD-ROM
Yamaha DX7
SCI Prophet 10, 2002 and VS
Ensoniq EPS and SQ-80
Oberheim SEM-4 Voice
Howarth: "simultaneously to getting started on THEY LIVE I also acquired a new musical instrument called a Synclavier, and the sonic capabilities of that instrument are just to the Nth degree, it sounds as good as it's going to sound. Playing back sampled sounds from the Synclavier gave us ultra-realism; slide guitars, saxophones, acoustic basses, and nice well-recorded instrumental sounds were all available to us in such a way that we could multi-track until we just worked it out. The thing with John, because he's so visual, if he can watch the movie and listen to the score, he knows everything he needs to know.
There was a certain sort of sonic challenge in THEY LIVE. For the whole alien element, we developed some sounds, signature music that you always heard whenever they were around. There were some other sort of TWILIGHT ZONE/sci-fi sound effects that we also included directly in with the music as we went, and we hadn't done that before. In fact a couple of them made it to the soundtrack album, it was very interesting. At the same time, this is the first time we went through and actually scored all the source cues. All the little TV snippets that are happening innocuously in the background. For one reason or another, we actually wrote special pieces for all those little things. Usually some editor would just go to a source music library and look for music from records, or from wherever, that music's going to be put in there, because its not important things,. But that's some of John's sense of humor to, going ahead and making up car commercials and beer commercials that's running along with what's going on."
THE JIM LANG ERA
Then Carpenter went on to work with Jim Lang for....
In The Mouth Of Madness and Body Bags
Digital Performer software running on a Macintosh Iicx computer.
Emulator IIIxp (EIVxp on MOM)
Forat F16.
Hammond B3,
Wurlitzer electric piano,
MicroMoog,
Roland MKS80, D550,
Prophet VS,
Yamaha DX and TX series,
EMU Proteus 1 and 2,
Korg M1r and M1rex,
AKAI 612
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