The Circuit-bent Speak & Read at the Center of the Earth

Repurposing childhood toys and etudes

Hello casual followers!

Life has been busy these past few months so things are a bit slow-going on the music production front, but I’ve managed to put two more pieces together for Inferno.

Breathing Some Life into an Electronic Instrument

Ever since the MIDI protocol was invented in the mid 1980s, musicians have programmed the notes from beautiful and beloved classic scores into their computers and keyboards…. only to find them played back in the most robotic and soulless performance imaginable. Dismay! It turns out that melody and harmony and rhythm are only PART of what it takes to make most music intellectually and emotionally powerful. The human performance, with it’s constantly fluctuating tempo, micro hesitations, and widely varied tones and articulations play an essential role. Acoustic instruments played with breath or fingers come by all these qualities naturally, (whether you want them or not!), but electronic ones have to be played more deliberately to achieve the same effect.

A screenshot of an Amiga music sequencing app from the late 1980s.

For this piece (Studies in Thievery), I took a classical guitar etude I enjoyed playing in college, from Cuban composer Leo Brouwer’s “20 Simple Studies” collection. I adapted it slightly with a few extra measures and some repeats to extend some portions. I then played it on a keyboard as expressively as I could, with a lot of rubato, and live filter and timbre adjustments to the synth. I used a Yamaha CS-80 lead patch which I think has a really great and dynamic sound. (Vangelis stands out as a musician who was able to get powerful and emotional sounds out of electronic instruments. He favored the CS-80 for much of his film work.)

This is really another cover tune, and a minimalist one at that, but I hope it captures some of what is great about the original etude and places it in a new light.

What’s at the very bottom? It’s complicated.

Skipping ahead to the bottom of Inferno, we have a track titled Behringer. Since the track contains several layers of inside jokes and references, I debated even providing liner notes for this one. A joke typically isn’t funny if you have to explain it, but here it goes.

Near the end of Inferno, Dante and Virgil approach the center of the earth, in the 9th circle of hell, where Satan himself is. Sounds ominous and scary! But what do they find? Satan is pathetic, and stuck in a frozen lake. He can’t even open his mouth to speak to them. After a quick glance, they continue on their way toward the exit.

I started by writing a simple uplifting trance melody in the style of UK DJ Gareth Emery. After the tune is stated several times, our heroes reach the devil, who tempts them by saying “All of this can be yours”, just like he did when speaking to Jesus in Matthew 4:8-9. (You may recognize this same line in U2’s song Vertigo from their masterpiece 1991 rock album Achtung Baby). But what does the devil have to offer? A pathetic restatement of the anthemic melody, played on an extremely cheap toy piano.

The incredibly janky toy piano.

I picked up this toy piano at a local thrift shop a few years ago for $5. It has no model number and I can’t find it anywhere online or on eBay. As far as I can tell, it was made in China in the early 2000s. The prayer group I meet with still use it to plunk out psalm chanting melodies several times a week. It lives in the conference room cupboard with a stack of prayer books and bibles. If you put nearly dead batteries in it, the pitch becomes very unstable and glitchy. A few of the keys also have some terribly cheesy bit-crushed drum samples assigned to them. In 1972, Christian music pioneer Larry Norman asked why should the devil have all the good music? Well in this case, it turns out he doesn’t. He only has trash and cheap imitations.

An OG Speak and Read. Mine isn’t as shiny as this one. The batteries are held in by duct tape.

In an attempt to speak, he briefly possesses an old Texas Instruments Speak and Read. This is actually my own childhood Speak & Read, manufactured in 1980. It still works! Alas, it’s hasn’t really been modified (circuit bent) like some noise musicians have done to their units, but it only has about 150 words in its vocabulary so after punching in each word recording it through the internal speaker, I had to cut some phonics together to get the phrases I wanted. Satan declares “I am the duly elected Lord of the underworld. I am willing to negotiate.” This is a reference to what Saddam Hussein first ridiculously declared to special forces soldiers who found him hiding in a tiny hole in the ground in rural Iraq in December 2003.

Soldiers around the hole where Saddam Hussein was found hiding. He told them he was willing to negotiate, but it was a little too late for that.

Finally, the title of the whole thing is a reference to a spoof of Inferno that appeared on the Synth Memes group, that I first saw referenced on Austrian Florian Pilz YouTube show Bad Gear. (I’ve been proud Patreon supporter or his for years now!) Who is the stand-in for Satan in the synthesizer gear-head world? It’s Uli Berhringer, the unscrupulous engineer that steals everyone else’s best ideas and manufactures clones for a third the price. The fact that the instruments actually work and sound pretty good just makes him all the more infuriating to nerd synth aficionados.

Pixel art representation of Inferno, modified for synth lovers.

That’s a lot of allusions and the average listener probably isn’t going to be familiar with more than half of them. But that’s OK I think. Did you get all the references in the lyrics of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl half time performance? Probably nobody did.

I’ve been reading Nick Cave’s recent memoir Faith, Hope, and Carnage and he has quite a few worthwhile reflections on art and songwriting in particular.

Personally, I want to know I have done something of value within my allotted time, for others, that the songs have been of some utility to people. There is always that. I just don’t believe our artistic gifts are given to us entirely for our own amusement. Songs are too valuable for that…. songs are a force. They can make people better, they help people and with that lies responsibility. (p.172)

This track might not be a great piece of art, but it tries to use a collage of materials to make fun of the devil, a very real enemy. It just might click with someone (besides myself)!

Thanks for listening! (or just skimming). Hang in there and we’ll all make it to the end of dreary February.

-Matt