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Tangerine Dream


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I am sure that it is common knowledge in these circles, but Electronic/New Age pioneers "Tangerine Dream" recorded 2 albums/cd's exclusively on Atari ST computers, sporting the Atari logo and thanking Jack Trammel in the liner notes.

 

Check out "Optical Race" and "Lily On the Beach"

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In Europe where the ST had a much higher profile, you'd be hard pushed to find an album or musician NOT recorded using an ST and one of the many sequencers available at the time. There were also all the hardware add ons for SMPTE, extra MIDI ports, rack mount cases etc. Every studio had one or more STs. While some did use them live such as Jarre, Sparks etc, a lot just wrote backing tracks to DAT but the source was still an ST.

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During this time period, Tangerine Dream composed a number of albums using Atari computers and Cubase. These were for the purpose of recording keyboard performances via MIDI which could be multi-tracked and arranged before recording to tape or digital audio in the studio. They also used the computers on tour to provide backing tracks, sequencing, or other automation. If you have a look at the cover of the Livemiles live album cover, I think you can see an Atari monitor on stage above an ST keyboard and track balls. Another photo of the band with stage equipment shows five or so Mega STs. I saw them during the 1988 Optical Race tour, co-sponsored by Atari, complete with Atari banners adjacent to the stage. The tour shirts included the Atari logo with the subtitle "Building Computers for Talented People". I used to have the white shirt, stolen by a woman, but still have the black one.

 

I would think that at least the Livemiles, Optical race, Lily on the Beach, Melrose, Miracle Mile, Destination Berlin albums were composed with Atari computers, if not a few more. Eventually I think they switched to Apple computers with Cubase, after Atari stopped making computers, but who knows whether they were still in the studio.

 

Depeche Mode lists Atari STs among the gear list as of the 1997 Ultra album. It's not like these cease to be useful for MIDI recording, and while I use Emagic Logic on a Mac in the studio for digital audio purposes, I also have a TT, Falcon, Mega ST, and Mega STE for other software such as Notator, Logic 2.5, Sound Diver, and a ton of programs for specific synthesizers. I never was partial to Cubase hence Cubase Audio Falcon, and Logic Audio seemed to have beta stability. In any case I run 48 digital audio tracks from 24 synthesizers, which is unfortunately beyond the capabilities of the Falcon.

 

Cheers

 

 

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In Europe where the ST had a much higher profile, you'd be hard pushed to find an album or musician NOT recorded using an ST and one of the many sequencers available at the time. There were also all the hardware add ons for SMPTE, extra MIDI ports, rack mount cases etc. Every studio had one or more STs. While some did use them live such as Jarre, Sparks etc, a lot just wrote backing tracks to DAT but the source was still an ST.

 

Yeah, I still love me some Atari Teenage Riot - who are still producing music on a 2MB ST :)

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Me and my friend were quite into Tangerine Dream in the 80s as teens, and who wouldn't be with their absolutely stunning soundtrack to all 13 episodes of Street Hawk?

 

But yes we both had STs in the mid 80s and it was fun to read the inlays of each cassette album we got and that they went out of their way to mention they used STs for composing music.

 

ST Midi packages (Cubase/Steinberg Pro etc) are to music what Amiga + well known graphics packages (Dpaint 3 or Digipaint 3 etc) are to pixel art and digital photo-montage. It was a great time for people, truly a bedroom revolution with musicians, pixel artists and programmers all born from tinkering with 'toy computers' at home.

 

I'm not a musician but I'd be interested to know the thoughts of people who used it on STFMs to Falcons and how it compared with Cubase PC and Mac (including issues you may have with crappy Windows or Mac OS at the time compared to efficient and fast GEM on Atari's not just the actual Cubase package, in both eras)

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Near Dark is both an awesome soundtrack and movie. But again if you watch the various 13 episodes of Street Hawk you will hear how awesome Tangerine Dream are. Such a shame the DVDs are in f%#king mono :(

 

I also had Underwater Sunlight which was very nice despite the limitations of compact cassette technology :D

 

To be fair however even today you could use any ST or Amiga midi packages to produce high quality retail level music....the CPU power may have increased this decade but the talent seems to have decreased for music in the retail music environment lol

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An Atari is still considered to be one of the tightest sequencers, probably due to the fact that Cubase and Logic generally don't run in a multitasking environment where other applications may be affecting timing. I'll never get rid of my ST, Notator, and Logic 2.5.

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  • 2 years later...

That's nice, and I like their music. Although, saying "recorded 2 albums/cd's exclusively on Atari ST computers" is overstatement, because Atari ST has no sound recording capabilities, especially not some studio quality one. I would say that they used Atari STs for control over MIDI :)

Yeah but have you ever used rival machines of the era for it? Music X etc was quite late in the Amigas life and by then Cubase and Steinberg were on their much refined sequel releases. Also it means it's the only computer they used for everything, not a PC in sight.

 

If you wanted to build a bedroom studio today I think you could make world class music using just a Mega 4 and said MIDI packages, could you say the same about desktop video and an Amiga 3000? ;)

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Matt Gray was inspired by the music of Tangerine Dream, when creating the music for System 3's Last Ninja 2 on the C64:

 

 

The Office level music comes from: Midnight in Tula

 

The Mansion level music is from: Alchemy Of The Heart.

 

I'm with:oky2000 here, Near Dark and Street Hawk are simply awesome.

Edited by Lost Dragon
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