When Wendy Carlos released Switched-On Bach in 1968, her “greatest hits” compilation of the Baroque composer’s music, played entirely on the Moog analog synthesizer, the album became an immediate hit with both classical and pop audiences. Not only was it “acclaimed as real music by musicians and the listening public alike,” as Bob Moog himself has written, but “as a result, the Moog Synthesizer was suddenly accepted with open arms by the music business community.” There’s some exaggeration here. Stars like the Doors, the Monkees, and the Byrds had already recorded with Moogs the year before. And some classical purists (and classical Luddites) did not, in fact, hail Switched-On Bach as “real music.”

But on the whole, Carlos’s innovative demonstration of the electronic instrument’s capabilities (and her own) marks a milestone in music history as the first classical album to go Platinum, and as the first introduction of both Baroque music and the Moog synthesizer to millions of people unfamiliar with either.

Were it not for Carlos’s “use of the Moog’s oscillations, squeaks, drones, chirps, and other sounds,” as Bruce Eder writes at Allmusic, it’s unlikely we would have the video clip above, of Leonard Bernstein giving his own demonstration of the Moog (dig his hip “HAL” reference from the prior year’s 2001: A Space Odyssey), during one of his popular televised “Young People’s Concerts.”

Having just begun moving out of the studio, the Moog was still a collection of modular boxes and patch cables—an engineer’s instrument—and it takes four men to wheel it out on stage. (The easily portable, self-contained Minimoog wouldn’t appear until 1970.) Most people had no idea what a Moog actually looked like. But, its forbidding appearance aside, the sounds of the Moog were everywhere.

Bernstein mentions Carlos, and those stuffy purists, and makes a few more sci-fi jokes, then, instead of sitting at the keyboard, hits play on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. This pre-recorded version of Bach’s “Little Fugue in G” was actually arranged by Walter Sear (sample Carlos’s version here), and the recording lacks some of the panache of Carlos’s playing while the tinny playback system makes it sound like 8-bit video game music. But for this audience, the musical wizardly was still decidedly fresh.

The choice of Bach as Moog material was not just a matter of taste—his music was uniquely suited for Moog adaptation. As Carlos explains, “it was contrapuntal (not chords but musical lines, like the Moog produced), it used clean, Baroque lines, not demanding great ‘expressivo’ (a weakness in the Moog at the time), and it was neutral as to orchestration.” The Moog could also, it seems, make Bach’s fugues fly at almost superhuman speeds. Hear the “Little Fugue” played at a much more stately tempo, on a traditional pipe organ, further up, and hear it break into a run in the majestic performance just above.

Organs and harpsichords, strings and horns, these are still of course the instruments we think of when we think of Bach. Despite Carlos’s inventive foray—and its follow-up, The Well-Tempered Synthesizer—the synthesizer did not radicalize the classical music world, though its avant-garde offspring made much use of it. But it sure changed the sound of pop music, and wowed the kids who saw Bernstein’s program, some of whom may have gone on to popularize both electronic instruments and classical themes in prog-rock, disco, and yes, even video game music. See the Moog segment in the context of the full, one-hour “Young People’s Concert” here.

via Synthtopia

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

When punk rock began to wend its way out of the three-chord guitar attack and into a new generation of mannerisms, it tended to be bass players who led the way. Joy Division’s Peter Hook, Public Image Ltd’s Jah Wobble, The Cure’s Simon Gallup, Bauhaus’s David J. With their moody takes on dub reggae, chord-driven melodicism, and lead lines on the upper frets, these were innovative players, but they still embraced the relative simplicity of punk at their core. Across the pond, then across the continent, however, in Southern California, punk bass took a much more animated, virtuosic character, thanks to jazz and funk-inspired legends like Minutemen’s Mike Watt and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, who has become, since his early 80s beginnings one of the most famous rock musicians in the world for his speed and unparalleled technique.

The shirtless wonder, who comes across both onstage and off as incredibly gregarious, yet humble, was once voted by Rolling Stone readers as the second best bassist of all time, and it’s not hard to see why, for example, in the mind-blowing video just above. But it is hard to see how. How does he do it? And what exactly is “it,” that incomparable Flea style? Where did it come from?

The Polyphonic video at the top breaks it down for us, the combination of funk slapping and popping and punk speed and aggression, combined with a melodicism Flea developed as a counterpoint to John Frusciante’s rhythmic guitar lines. Flea’s incredibly detailed attacks stand out for their novelty and precision, but it’s his ear for melody that makes his playing so distinctively musical, even when pared down and slowed down in RHCP’s ballads.

Some bassists weave lines around guitars and vocals, some mostly synchronize with the drummer’s kicks and hits—Flea does both, shifting from style to style within songs, and sometimes sounding like he’s playing two basses at once. His syncopated slap bass hits, courtesy of Sly Stone’s Larry Graham, create a secondary backbeat slightly ahead or behind Chad Smith’s drumming; his use of strummed chords, wild leaps around the neck, and beautifully melodic voicing make his bass playing an essential element of every song, rather than a just a low-end harmonic underpinning for more noticeable instrumentation. Funk music has always been bass-driven, and the Chili Peppers’ funkiest tracks, and most excellent covers, follow the tradition. But in rock the bass can feel “like an afterthought.”

In Flea’s more than capable hands, a simple rock bass riff, as in “Snow,” just above, can suddenly become a thing of wonder (check it out at 1:51), even on its own and unaccompanied. Perhaps no bassist since Paul McCartney or John Paul Jones has done as much to turn rock bass into a lead instrument or has written as many memorable bass lines, only Flea can play them ten times faster while leaping several feet in the air. His “astounding instrumentalism” has always been amazing to behold, and not easy to imitate, to say the least. But why try? Bass players can learn a lot from watching Flea and incorporating his expressive techniques into their repertoire. But even Flea himself, perhaps the most recognizable bass player in rock, understands the instrument first and foremost as a supporting player. His best advice? Play in the “spirit of givingness,” as he says in his video lesson below, and listen to the subtleties of the other musicians’ playing. “You want to make everyone else sound good.” Hey, if it’s good enough for Flea….

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness