Keith Richie : History of Musical Influences

History of Musical Influences by that SharePoint Guy - Part 3 - 1980-1981

krichie — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 06:07:00 GMT

History of Musical Influences by that SharePoint Guy - Part 3 - 1980-1981

Before I start with 1980, let me note that I'm afraid the same thing that happened after I made my previous post in this series of becoming inspired to create a piece of work based on the artists in that time frame is going to happen again :).

Shortly after posting part 2 of this series, I got inspired and wound up composing The Maestoso Interstellar Suite. (See the blog posting on this) I finished that CD, and it should be live on CDBaby any day now, then shortly thereafter, distributed to the digital download services.

Now that I'm working on Part 3, it's already happening again :).

1980

During this year, I discovered Kraftwerk. Interestingly enough, as I was listening to my limited Kraftwerk collection, a member of my team must have noticed my link to their official site on my blog Music category. (Btw, if you have not visited Kraftwerk's official site, it's actually pretty darn cool). This team mate made the statement something to the effect of "You're about the only other person I've seen since High school that lives in America that actually has heard of Kraftwerk as well"

Jean Michelle Jarre came to my attention by hearing Oxygene and Equinoxe. (I really don't follow Jean, but he was still an important part of the story at this time).

There was also work by Brian Eno brought to my attention as well as Gary Numan . You've got to thank Gary for his song Cars, now considered a classic rock staple.

The early 80's introduced me to so many different inspirational artists, it would be impossible to list them all. And I can't end 1980 without mentioning The Cars, themselves. Every single one of their albums up to 1980 were in my regular play list all the time and into 1981. I know I wore out at least 10 different cassette copies of Panorama, along with constantly swiping my brothers vinyl copy :) I even own a copy of Greg Hawkes solo release, Niagara Falls.

1981

The only thing I can say about 1981, is simply, Vangelis and Chariots of Fire. This entire release is a fantastic work of art IMO.

During these years, I heard a lot of music utilizing a Vocoder. With my latest round of listening to my Kraftwerk collection, I've been playing around with a virtual synth version of a Vocoder, and thinking about doing yet another CD on the Kraftwerk like style. It's undecided, but inspiration is happening yet again :).

Next up, 1982-1983

- Keith

Previous Posts in this series:

Additional references and links:

History of Musical Influences by that SharePoint Guy - Part 2 - 1978-1979

krichie — Wed, 24 May 2006 03:45:00 GMT

History of Musical Influences by that SharePoint Guy - Part 2 - 1978-1979

1978

During this year, I discovered ELO, The Bee Gees (No, it wasn't the Disco releases like Stayin' Alive, etc that really caught my attention with them, but more on their mellower releases, like Spirits Having Flown :)), and stuff like Dream Weaver by Gary Wright.

Probably the second most influential band I discovered this year was Rush. And boy was it a rush for me :). Sequential Circuits released the Prophet 5 which was used by just about every favorite artist of mine, and Superman The Motion Picture was released. Yet again here we go with John Williams creating yet more inspiring music for me.

John Williams is great, but there was another artist named John that really got me hooked, and it was probably this year that I decided and said to my self

"When I grow up, I wanna be just like John Carpenter!"

Yep, the quintessential horror movie King John Carpenter.

This was the year that Halloween was released. (Yes, I saw it when I was 8 years old :)), and the pulsing sequence in the main title was all I needed to hear. I thought this was the coolest thing...dark, eerie, electronic. I was hooked :), over the years, this began a buying spree of everything he produced as well. It was this thing alone that made me want to do soundtrack work. Later, as I discovered that he also wrote; directed; and scored more movies....I knew for sure that eventually some day, I would do something similar to what John did.

(I know I'm jumping ahead in years here, but My personal favorite John Carpenter tunes are Chariot of Pumpkins from Halloween III, the Theme song from The Fog, and from the Big Trouble in Little China Soundtrack Lo Pan's Domain and Into the Spirit Path are both great tracks.)

He's the primary reason I wanted to get into doing short films, and is the inspiration behind my Original "N"otion Picture soundtrack Réalité De Destination.

There were tons more artists this year, but these were the primary ones who influenced me during that classic year of 1978.

1979

I honestly can't remember anything specific from 1979 :) Except of listening to more music from the other artists in this post and the previous :) Oh well, if I remember...I'll update it later :).

In closing...I'm not Jack Burton, but I figured this was a nice way to end this post :). Or not.

Next up, 1980

- Keith

Previous Posts in this series:

History of Musical Influences by that SharePoint Guy - Part 1 - 1976-1977

Additional references and links:

The Tangerine Dream Collection Project - Part 2 - The cost estimate and the wifes' reaction!

krichie — Wed, 24 May 2006 00:37:00 GMT

The Tangerine Dream Collection Project - Part 2 - The cost estimate and the wifes' reaction!

The Wifes' Reaction

So I told my wife about my little project, and to my complete utter amazement, she stated "Ok"

After I got back up off the floor from falling out of my chair (I don't think she realizes just how much this is going to cost yet :)), I started thinking of how I wanted to attack backfilling my collection.

Should I start with replacing the destroyed media first?
Or should I just start chronologically from the beginning?

I think I'll go with the chronological pattern first (as much as possible :). What stinks about this, is that I'll be replacing all the earlier releases which I either had at one time, and were damaged, etc. So it will be tough until I start getting to a lot of the newer releases I haven't even heard yet.

The Cost Estimate

Based on my current Items to Acquire list, which is currently sitting at 136 items, with an average of $10 per CD...simple math tells us that this will run me $1,360 at a minimum.

Obviously I want to order as many as possible if I order them online, to save costs with shipping and handling.

Some of you may be asking

"Why don't you just purchase as many as you can from the Digital Distributors like MSN Music, iTunes, etc?"

Well, I could do that...but I want the to be able to rip using the highest quality for my media server.

"Why don't you use someone like MusicGiants who provides Hi-Fi music downloads using Windows Media Audio Lossless encoding?"

Well, for me...Each CD is like a fine painting :). Some people collect paintings...I collect CDs of my favorite artists:)

Truthfully, there are only a few artists in which I would just insist on having hard copies of CDs. TD is one of them. I want to ensure I have the hard copies as backups in case I have to re-rip again. That's just that :) Until we're able to download (legally that is) uncompressed 24bit audio :) I'll stick with the CDs, as a lot of new music (Especially from TD) is coming out in 24bit formats.

The plan

I think the best way to tackle this, would be for me to order at least 5 CD's per month on each months self allowance for this project.

That would allow me to complete this task in just over 2 years (around 27 moinths :))

But, if I find good copies of CDs in used shops, etc...Obviously I'm going to go that route, for cost savings and time savings.

I'll probably use Amazon as much as possible as they have the widest stock of TD material at this time. Once I get into the "Current years" releases, I can go to the official TD site and order from there if necessary, for specialty items.

Also, after each purchase is established, I'll update my Items currently in my collection list and the others with the source location so in the end, we'll have a complete list to refer back to just in case.

With that in mind, here are the first 5 CDs that I'll be purchasing.

Stay tuned for Part 3 "The first order"

- Keith

Previous Posts in this series:

The Tangerine Dream Collection Project - Part 1

Additional references and links:

History of Musical Influences by that SharePoint Guy - Part 1 - 1976-1977

krichie — Mon, 22 May 2006 15:34:00 GMT

History of Musical Influences by that SharePoint Guy - Part 1 - 1976-1977

I don't necessarily plan on detailing in chronological order the events that marked the musical influences on me, but I'll use it as the basic outline. Just note we may take a segue here and there as the synapses in my brain fuse back together and old buried memories are reborn :)

The purpose is not to just note the electronic Musical Influences, but all musical influences. I think you'll see that at the end, you'll see why it's my passion to do music for film..

1976

Logan's Run. I won't go into a plethora of detail on Logan's Run itself, except that I am patiently waiting on the remake of this and this is the earliest form of electronic music I can remember at this time, that evoked a bit of emotional "Oooooo....What's that!" from me :)" Jerry Goldsmith did the orchestral music, but I'm not sure who actually did the electronic pieces.

1977

Star Wars. Other than a simple masterpiece of science fiction and cinema, this was probably one of the first albums I ever listened to and owned. It, of course, was my introduction to John Williams. My parents constantly nagged me to please stop playing that same album on the family turntable day in, and day out. Uh, well...It was the only album I owned :), I found myself mesmerized by the music, and then I heard "the five tones".

It was probably a month or so of hearing "the five tones" all over TV, Radio etc before I actually saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but when I realized it was also John Williams, it had to be immediately added to my collection :) I remember that when my parents would ask me what I wanted for Christmas at this time, I would tell them anything that John Williams has done. I'm not sure they even knew who he was, and I didn't even own a turntable at the time.

It was also about this time I started hearing music from Kraftwerk, although I didn't realize it was them at that time. As well, I kept hearing things "Moving in Stereo", and was immediately hooked. It was a couple of years later, but my brother and I became serious fans of The Cars. For my brother, it was the everything about The Cars. For me, it was learning who Greg Hawkes was. I still have his Niagara Falls LP :).

I'll end with a little Popcorn by Gershon Kingsley.

Next up, 1978-1979

- Keith

The Tangerine Dream Collection Project - Part 1

krichie — Sun, 21 May 2006 21:16:00 GMT

As I was preparing for my first post of "The History of Musical Influences by that SharePoint Guy", I did something that caused a stirring in me that's been going awhile, and thus it turned into a tornadic experience :) and I've started up a new project called "The Tangerine Dream Collection Project"

I spent the better part of the morning of Saturday May 20th 2006, re-ripping and cataloging everything I had TD related. To my surprise...I no longer had as many items as I once had. I've either lost them, loaned them to someone and forgot, and a lot of my material was destroyed in moves, etc.

It's been a few years since I stopped buying everything TD related due to necessary budget constraints. But now, I'm ready to dig back and complete this lifelong goal :), thus a new personal project to acquire missing CD's, replace destroyed ones, and purchase all outstanding TD related works that are yet in my collection.

So I went to http://www.tangerinedream.org/ and got the official Discography list and compared my collection to that list. Even the official list at http://www.tangerinedream.org/ isn't 100% concise due to a lot of imports, etc, but it's what I'm going off of right now.

Obviously, I'll be using SharePoint lists to keep track of everything :).

I've set up a site simply called "The Tangerine Dream Collection Project" here:

http://wss.indieopolis.net/artists/keithrichie/tdproject

There you'll find the following lists:

I thought it would be an interesting project to blog about.

Stay tuned for Part 2 "The cost estimate and the wife's' reaction!" :)

- Keith