VSE Switched-on comp 2014 - VOTING THREAD

[adamstan]

We have four tracks submitted for this competition. Pick the one you like the most

Bela Bartok - "Schnell-Tanz"


Leon Boellmann - "Introduction et choral" from "Suite Gothique":


Terry Riley - "In C":


Jules Massenet - "Meditation":


The poll will run for one week.

[tomorrowstops]

Man this is a tough one....

[mpa1104]

Dayum, talk about rubbing salt in the wound.
Not only did I not get to finish the piece I was working on, these four submissions I've actually performed (or performed in)!
The Massenet ... well, what organist has not played that one for a wedding at some time or another?
The Boellmann Suite was inflicted upon me by one of my teachers, I ended up hating the damn thing.
The Riley and Bartok I've played a few times over the years (the former on vibes or xylophone).

These all sound great, but my two faves were the Bartok and the Massenet. The Massenet had a Vangelis/John Kerr vibe to it, very nice.

[dustinh]

Great contest and a great concept! I'm so glad to see that these are still going on. Even with only 4 submissions, this is one of my favorites so far.

[vicd]

Bela Bartok - "Schnell-Tanz"

Well well well... looks like we have someone from Panta Rhei here?

Jules Massenet - "Meditation":

This one reminded me of the renditions of classics on EMS SYNTHI-100 (the whole LP deserves a listening, but especially the Debussy ones):

[_dan]

Bela Bartok - "Schnell-Tanz"

Well well well... looks like we have someone from Panta Rhei here?

Not quite, I was but a gleam in me fathers eye in the early 80's, but thanks for pointing them out, I would have never thought of dressing Bartok in prague

[GuyaGuy]

Great contest and a great concept! I'm so glad to see that these are still going on. Even with only 4 submissions, this is one of my favorites so far.

Judging by the number of votes, not everyone agrees...

[adamstan]

Ouch! Yeah, 13 votes isn't exactly impressive Nevertheless, the winner of this competition is AlanC3, who recorded "Meditation", so he becomes host of next comp, which, hopefully will attract more participants and listeners

[AlanC3]

I don't know what to say... I wasn't expecting that.

Thanks!

So, the noob gets to choose the subject for the next competition? Oh, I have ideas, all right.

Just to check: I set up an appropriate soundcloud account and give the ID and password to anyone who PM's me when they've got an entry. The competition runs for a month (or longer if we're not getting too many entries) and then I set up the voting thread. Anything else?

[ninja6485]

It's a shame there was such poor voter turnout! The entries were awesome. I had to go with the Bartok piece. I the twxtures worked really well! It was a tough decision though. They were all well done!

[Swayze]

I feel like a real j**k for not listening to these yet, but I just moved outta state and it's taken a couple weeks to get settled. Looking forward to putting on some headphones and rocking out to these jamz tonight.

[Swayze]

Job well done guys! I really need to listen to more music like this.

[tomorrowstops]

Swayze - if you want to start with the avant-garde side of things....check out the 'Electronic Music of the 50's+60's thread happening in this forum!

I'm falling deep into the youtube/discogs rabbit hole as a result! And its not all serialism....there's tonal bliss to be discovered as well!

[tomorrowstops]

This one reminded me of the renditions of classics on EMS SYNTHI-100 (the whole LP deserves a listening, but especially the Debussy ones):

More info on this LP please!

[vicd]

More info on this LP please!

Well, if nobody minds the offtopic - here's a short dive into the late-USSR electro scene. I admit I may be wrong in remembering minor details though.

"Take a regular switched-on xxxx record like Wendy Carlos' Switched-on Bach, play it on an EMS Synthi 100, and you'll get this lost diamond of Russian electronic music, and possibly one of the rarest "switched on" records ever made.

This one is a rather non-typical record of Eduard Artemiev (Tarkovsky's Solaris OST, 1972 - remember?)- made after he and his colleagues successfully lobbied the then-soviet Ministry of Culture to purchase an EMS Synthi 100 for the Moscow Experimental Studio of Electronic Music.

► Show Spoiler

The studio was set up in 1958 by the father of ANS synthesizer Evgeny Murzin, and is mostly known to us mere humans from records containing earlier musique concrète and electroacoustic oeuvres by Alfred Schnitke, Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidullina, Stanislav Kreichi- and by Eduard Artemiev himself. There were under a dozen of ANS LPs' pressed by the soviet Melodia; some of these records are still listed available as CDs under the Electroshock Records label now held by Artemiev and his son.

The LP was recorded by Artemiev accompanied by his colleagues Vladymir Martynov & Yuriy Bogdanov in 19821980.
Producing an LP with well-known classics (ok, less-well-known classics) was probably a part of the deal with the ministry to popularize electronic music - hence the selection of classic pieces, and also a nice short introductory article on the history and the prospects (as-seen-of-then) of electronic music and synthesizers on the back of the sleeve, written by Martynov. I seriously doubt that Artemiev would really desire doing a "switched-on" kind of record - he always was (and still is) a very self-focused composer.

Their work also reminds me of the Jarre - Geiss - Rimbert amalgamation: Artemiev was acting more on the composer/arranger side while the two other guys were more of "Synthi 100 test drivers" and engineers. Yet, apart from the plain "switched-on" parts, the LP also contains a couple of compositions by Martynov, and the titanic "Motion" soundscape concluding the album is co-authored by Artemiev and Bogdanov.

I still have it (terribly scratched during the eighties) in my LP collection.
Too much entries at discogs for the LP; this one looks the most readable.