For Tomita, his main goal was
to move away from orchestration for acoustic instruments, into something new,
which lead him to the synthesizer. He felt that all there could be done with
music had been reached by the time of Wagner. He spoke to Red Bull Music
Academy in a lecture-
“Anyway, stereo broadcast and performance by an
orchestra were what captivated me. Except, the sound components of an
orchestra, such as the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and the trumpet, horn,
trombone, tuba... I have to select a tone quality from these when I do the
orchestration. Consider that as opposed to art, in which there are no longer
such restrictions when painting or sculpting. You could use gold dust in your
painting, or grind up cinder and paint with it, it doesn’t matter what you do.
But with music you can’t do that, even if you were to invent a unique instrument
and get a musician to play it for you. Take the violin for example. Becoming
pro takes years of practice. Who’d be willing to do that? There was no way to
make it possible. But I did want to create music using a different tone
quality, and around the time I began to feel that way, when I’d sort of hit a
wall with orchestral arrangements, I heard about the existence of Moog
synthesizers. That it was something created near Buffalo (New York) in the
middle of a field. And I felt an irresistible urge. I thought I could create my
own sound with it. If I could create my own sound, then that meant I could
create music that broke free from existing ideas. I also had a certain amount
of confidence. It was unfounded, but still. That’s why I acquired the Moog synthesizer.”
(Tomita) [1]
As
already discussed in short, Tomita had a lot of trouble figuring out how to
operate the Moog III, with only a small manual to work from he spent months in
the studio, sleeping in a sleeping bag and just experimenting with the sounds
he was producing. This is a far cry from modern digital synthesizers.
“Anyway, it was hard work. I might as well have
imported scrap iron from the U.S. if I couldn’t master it. I felt pretty uneasy
for a while. But I like doing these things by nature, so as I fiddled around
with it, I’d occasionally see a light, so to speak, shining ahead. So, the way
I learned to use the Moog synthesizer was pure tenacity and persistence on my
part in the end. I guess when you become too engrossed in something, the gods
take pity on you and decide to give you little hints along the way. So, when
one sound came about, another one would show itself in relation to it. The
process was completely self-taught. When I got to the stage where I could
control it to some degree, I decided, “Well then, let’s try and record an album
with this.” (Tomita)[2]
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