Another composition of mine is called "Sawatdee", which is the
Thai greeting. It also means "fortune" or "prosperity" and
although the tune itself has little to do with Thailand, this seemed a good
enough title. On the picture below you see the registration room of studio
8 and Ferry Sluyter who plays a great flute- and
tenorsaxsolo on "Sawatdee", which you will hear if you click the
photo.
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Also our drummer and colleague Hugo Vogel composed a tune and arranged
it too. I added a counter-melody I am playing on synthesizer. It is a
beautiful tune, so although it is not mine, I wanted it on these pages
as well. There are compositions of other bandmembers too on this site,
with their permission. By
clicking the photo you can hear this tune. Hugo named it
"Whisper" , refering to Benny Golson's "Whisper
Not", although musically these tunes have no relationship
whatsoever (in case
you are trying to discover it). |
Hugo Vogel didn't stop there. He can also find his way on a piano and
started to take up music seriously and is a composer now. He
has his own site with music examples.
My brother Gerard lives in Amstelveen, where Hugo was born in 1947. Coincidently
Hugo's brother played a few times with my brother in a jazz-combo - now, how big is the
chance of that happening!? But it did. Hugo's father is the wellknown
choirconductor and composer Willem Vogel whom I also have met in my work as a
sound engineer.
Here is one more recording of the PT-band.
More about this recording is on the chapter about what I recorded at
home during that period.
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More pictures of the PT-band can be
admired on the photopages via the link below.
I was also the technician on a program called "Walhalla
Symfonie" (Walhalla Symphony), specials where I could use my skills on music-montages, but
this time with the help of synthesizers (ARP 2500 en 2600) and other special
equipment (like the Publison Pitchshifter and Synton Vocoder). It was an idea of KRO producer
Theo Stokkink and it was broadcast on "Hilversum 3" (like
BBC-Radio 1). It was a 2-hour program, the first hour was just called
"Walhalla" and the second hour was "Walhalla
Symfonie".
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It started 4-okt-1981 and 34 symphonies were made, most of them by me. Not all of them, because
in 1982 the SVEM started and I did radio plays too, so I was very busy and two colleagues of mine
did some symphonies too. That first symphony took a long time to make.
The idea was 6 hours montage for it, but we actually worked from 9 in the
morning till 2 o'clock the next morning (with two breaks). After that we had
two days for one hour symphony.
I also produced one Symphony myself. It was
all about love - the central theme for most songs. Every symphony opened with an original composition by a Dutch synthesizer
artist always using the Walhalla theme. I composed my own and used three sequences. The first two sequences I
made at home on my Wersi organ (!) and later added some elements on the ARP 2600.
For a third sequence I used the rhythm track of my arrangement of the opening
theme of a German SF TV-series called: "Alpha Alpha" (which is on the
next page). I made a new tune with this 5/4. I also used my own Korg MS-20 in
this piece.
Here is the opening, with Theo Stokkink reading a fragment from a book by Midas Dekkers.
The main tune of the program Walhalla had to be used as well, but I have no
idea which music that is.
In 1983 there were 4 more
symphonies after a break of 14 months. Among them one of the best episodes I
made. It was a journey from Europe to Japan in music, called "Japan Express(ion)".
I think it was Wybo Goslinga (from the Dutch magazine on electronic music:
Sonic Report) who used his own record collection (I am sure it was him,
because I recently found his site!). It was my task to make it
into one "symphony". But we also used a part of my
"muzikollage".
We rented an EMU Emulator 1 and
used it for a few effects, but else only tape-editing was used and some
reverb-echo machines. Computers for audio-editing weren't there yet. We worked
a few days on this program. I am sorry I can not put this entire program online because of
rights, but a few clips can't hurt.
"Walhalla Symfonie" and radio documentaries were not enough to be
promoted from program engineer A to "head" program engineer (senior or chief engineer).
For that I should become a music engineer. As a test I had to make a
mix from a very bad recorded 16-track tape. I didn't do very well, because I
was listening to the music and didn't care very much how it sounded - if I
were a producer I would start with a good recording and not fix a bad
recording afterwards, but for radio you have to make something good, even in
terrible circumstances - I didn't like that at all.
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But later I was promoted anyway, because I started doing radio plays. This
was very nice, because I could be inventive and come up with all kinds of
solutions for really very strange requests from directors. Also for the
radioplays I used synthesizers and other specialized soundeffects equipment.
The radio plays were sometimes very 'avant garde'.
The photograph on the left is me setting up the microphones for actor
René Lobo. (in the early 90's)
At the same time I started doing something else. With Theo Rijsdijk and
Fred de Beer, two colleagues who were older than I and more experienced, I
formed a workgroup to start the S.V.E.M., an electronic studio for
musicproduction and radioplays. This studio was opened in 1982. More about
this studio and the music I made there in the next chapter.
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TROS and KRO had programs for amateur musicians and in 1982 they broadcast
a special of 10 episodes only with music made by program engineers. They
called this program "Tussen de Schuiven" (between the sliders) -
it's a word joke. With the expression "between the sliding-doors"
is meant people who perform at home for their own family, so sliding doors are
used as stagecurtains and between the sliding doors is the stage itself. We were all soundengineers, who use
channelfaders of mixingconsoles,
also known as ... sliders, hence: "between the sliders"
The PT-band was in one of the programs, my dear colleague Beer Gertenbach
was in another episode and I made a few arrangements for him. Actually Beer
is the only one of us who already had professional experience. As Beer Bossu he
sang in musicals and is heard on several records. He became a program
engineer and did radio plays too. But he also had his own radioshow which he
presented and produced. He is a fan of Doris Day and calls her every year
on her birthday.
I never knew there was a picture of the recording session, but when Beer saw
this site he sent me the photo you see below. The three recordings we made for the TROS-KRO
program can be heard here.
Beer Gertenbach is on the right of this photo. Next to him Hans Rikkert de Koe,
then me and the guy on the right is Egbert Schoenmaker, at present organist
of the Simon-and-Judas church in Ootmarsum. I worked with the NOB just for
a short time.
I did the arrangements of the songs above. In fact there is a demoversion of
"By the light of the silvery moon" in the chapter called At
home earlier.
The first two songs on this page are with the PT-band and the singing group.
On the third song, "Mist in Amsterdam" I play grand piano (dubbed twice) and accordion. I am not a pianist
(or a singer!) but I bluff my way
through it ;-)
In
another episode of the TROS-KRO program Hugo Vogel, Paul Schoenmakers and I played with guitarist John
Evers. I don't have a photo of John Evers, who is a very good guitarist
and still plays a lot. With the John Evers Band we recorded three
songs. Rob Gerritsen, another colleague is singing in "Follow
you" and wrote the lyrics for that song. John Evers composed it.
Our bassplayer Paul Schoenmakers wrote "Rockels" - quite a
different composition than the one I made, which is called "Lepus".
The songs were not mixed to our satisfaction. It was done by a technician who was
in a learning stage. Unfortunately when we wanted Hugo Vogel to remix these
songs, the
tape was erased. I did some equalizing techniques to lift the singing above
the rest of the instruments, but even that was hard to do, but it helped a
little anyway.
The song Lepus I first recorded on the Wersi Orion organ. This recording is
in the At home earlier section.
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