In Tomita’s heyday, the Moog
he used to compose his first album with was not polyphonic, meaning only single
notes could be played at any one time. This meant that playing chords would be
a difficult process of multi-tracking each note from say a tonic triad and
using a layering technique which would prove difficult and time consuming.
Quite a feat considering he would need to play in the parts that are emulating
each section of the orchestra individually to produce the large sound he has in
his compositions. The Moog at the time was a far cry from today’s digital
synthesizers. Known as modular and analogue, it took a lot of creativity and
hard work to produce a sound from these instruments.
“If I look back, thinking
about and listening to stuff from the old albums through to the recent ones,
digital synthesizers are quite easy for me to use. People usually have a
tendency to use something much easier instead of doing a more difficult job
from the beginning. But analogue or Moog synthesizers - it's like if you want
to have dinner in a good suit. If it's custom tailored, then that's really
something with which you can express yourself. But if it's ready-made, well of
course you can buy it very easily, but everybody has the same thing.
If I want to express my personality, it's got to be analogue because sometimes even the noise can be included in a recording. Analogue is more human, and therefore more part of my personality. Thinking about analogue synthesizers and the recent high technology digital ones, all synthesizers are like a painter's palette. For example, I myself, or Kitaro, or the old Yellow Magic Orchestra – all these three use the same analogue synthesizers, but the music created by the synthesizer becomes really different for each of the three different characters. But nowadays, if I use a ready-made digital synthesizer, my music becomes quite similar to those who use the same synthesizer. It becomes really boring, and it's also very difficult to express my own strong characteristics. And for that reason, I still like to use analogue synthesizers sometimes. “(Tomita) [1]
If I want to express my personality, it's got to be analogue because sometimes even the noise can be included in a recording. Analogue is more human, and therefore more part of my personality. Thinking about analogue synthesizers and the recent high technology digital ones, all synthesizers are like a painter's palette. For example, I myself, or Kitaro, or the old Yellow Magic Orchestra – all these three use the same analogue synthesizers, but the music created by the synthesizer becomes really different for each of the three different characters. But nowadays, if I use a ready-made digital synthesizer, my music becomes quite similar to those who use the same synthesizer. It becomes really boring, and it's also very difficult to express my own strong characteristics. And for that reason, I still like to use analogue synthesizers sometimes. “(Tomita) [1]
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