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On re-performing Atlantys and Vision de la cité interdite by Tristan Murail - Part I
Atlantys and Vision de la cité interdite by Tristan Murail are two pieces for two Yamaha DX7 synthesizers. They are originally part of the longer Random Access Memory cycle for two electric guitars, two electric drums and two synthesizers that have been re-written by Tristan Murail so they can be performed as synthesizer duos. Yamaha DX7 synthesizers are still around and so are quite a few emulations that can read the original patch files.1 The scores are available at Editions Henry Lemoine, the piece has been played a few times already, I have a few instruments to play around with, so everything seems to be a doodle. So much so that I programmed Vision de la cité interdite for a 5-hour concert at Ghent's De Bijloke in February 2015 with Frederik Croene as my duo partner. (The other partners in crime for that concert were Elisa Medinilla (piano) and Maarten Quanten (De Bijloke)). I didn't have a DX7 and although it's not really difficult to find a cheap one on the second hand market they are heavy, old (aka "might die in concert") and don't really have a stellar audio output (quite a lot of noise and only 12 bit resolution, which in this case was not really what I wanted). All in all, I didn't want to buy two old synthesizers but port everything on a newer instrument. I had quite a few options: - Dexed, a free VST3 by Pascal Gauthier - I also knew of Hexter, which was used by the Integra project at Birmingham Conservatoire to make a new version of Madonna of Winter and Spring by Jonathan Harvey, but I hadn't checked that out yet.
Everything looked fine and dandy and this was my ToDo-List in October 2014: 1) get patch files from somebody 2) make a few tests on which instrument the patches sound best 3) Have fun!
The first thing was asking around if somebody had the original SysEx-Files for the piece. Since the pieces are being played sometimes I thought somebody must have the patches in digital format. I posted my question on Facebook and got tons of advice, albeit not what I wanted. For some reason, nobody who did the work before kept the files for other people. Did I mention that the publisher didn't even bother to even answer my mail? No? Well, I guess you figured. It did, however, bring me in contact with the wonderful Jean-Luc Plouvier who offered his help, but more on this later. And although I didn't get the original SysEx, I did get the patches for Atlantys from Sascha Lino Lemke,2 albeit not as SysEx but for a program called DX7 Librarian. So, opening Sascha's patches in DX7 Librarian looked like this:
Yikes. I had never worked with FM synthesis and had never owned a DX7, so this didn't say me anything. I quickly went to my own turf and opened up the Nord G2 editor to see if I could make sense of it's FM modules. This is what a Nord G2's DX7 modules look like:
I also opened up Dexed, which looks like this:
Finally I also read the original DX7 manual and after constantly getting confused I realized: despite the clear similarities, quite a few things were different, too. Or who thought that "Modulation Sensitivity Amplitude", "A Mod Sens", "SM" and "AM" are all one and the same thing? In order to not get confused all the time I had to do a comparison chart using the original DX7 manual. Here we go:
"Oh, wow," I thought, "am I really working on a spread sheet right now? This was supposed to be a doodle!" But here I was, making a spread sheet. I checked out the synths more and more and actually the deal breaker with all of the above were the missing portamento settings, something Tristan made use of. The DX7 has four different settings, two for mono and two for poly mode. I do understand the settings for mono by reading the manual, but the poly modes are called "Sus Key P Retain" and "Sus Key P Follow" and it's lovely names, isn't it? I tried to understand what it says about them in the manual but I failed. Actually, the manual makes a distinction between portamento and glissando, I actually fail at knowing the difference between the two and will have to listen to the machine to find out all about it. However, since neither the Nord G2 nor Dexed had any settings for this I knew by now I'm stuck with Native Instrument's FM8. Or the Yamaha TG77. And probably Hexter. But for now I went for the FM8. However, I only found out after doing all of the above and spent quite some time reading manuals (DX7) and discussion groups (Dexed) and help files (Nord Modular G2) because I heard that Dexed and the Nord G2 are such fantastic emulations and how bad NI's FM8 was. And I would have loved it if it was true, because I didn't want to work myself into FM8, which is quite a beast. And lots and lots of kudos to anybody who spends their time working on free software. I try to give back by reporting what's missing (e.g. here and here). I would have wished to know earlier though that none of these are really an option. Now that it was clear I would go for the Native Instrument's FM8 I found myself still without patches. Or rather: with the patches for the wrong piece, because I wanted to play Vision de la cité interdite but I only had the patches for Atlantys. Bummer. I realized that although my ToDo-list had changed nothing had really moved forward: this was then my ToDo-list for November 2014 1) Make patches with DX7 Librarian and create SysEx files (I chose to d them in DX7 Librarian because it seemed easier to do than in FM8) 2) Load them into FM8 3) possibly try them out on the TG77 (how?) and Hexter (how?) 4) Have fun! Surely, this would work like a breeze, wouldn't it?
1) in those times stored as so-called SysEx files which are transmitted via the MIDI protocol. MIDI-OX for Windows and SysEx Librarian for Mac are two current programs that can transfer SysEx files from a computer to a hardware synthesizer and vice versa 2) actually I changed the time line of this whole story to make it all a better read. In fact it was Sascha who made me aware of the existence of Atlantys and later it was Jean-Luc Plouvier who told me about Vision de la cité interdite. 3) A VST (Virtual Studio Technology) is a virtual instrument or effect, or in other words: a piece of software that makes or changes sound. It often mimicks old hardware. In this case, the software emulates the hardware Yamaha DX7 synthesizer in software. There are literally thousands of VSTs in the world, because they are so darn handy: they weigh nothing and just live on your computer. No clunky hardware needed anymore. There is an ongoing discussion though if emulations can ever truly sound like the original, which is indeed a difficult task to achieve. However, they don't necessarily have to mimick old devices but can be used to create completely new ones.
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