MATRIXSYNTH: Nobukazu Takemura Interview (from Salon Magazine)


Friday, August 03, 2007

Nobukazu Takemura Interview (from Salon Magazine)


YouTube via likeafatrat. Sent my way via Loscha.
"play at his studio place: kyoto/Japan"
Spot the synths. Be sure to watch the gear pan towards the end.

7 comments:

  1. 3 VCS's!! 2 2600's! serge and doepfer modulars MS-50, clavia..etc etc.

    What astonishes me is that those apartments are small and he has managed to fill his entirely with gear...he was sitting in the kitchen during that interview. Awesome.

    Where are all the mass gear haters?!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Having spent a decent ammount of time in Japan I'd say Takemaura's apartment is pretty big by their standards.

    Was that a Moog Sonic 5 next to the 2600s on the floor?

    I wonder what the gear haters are going to say about Takemaura. He makes great music that I never would have thought to involve anything analog.

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  3. Gear haters? Who are these gear haters and what the hell would they be doing here..?

    Well I had a good chuckle at that.. cant say Ive ever seen gear piled up in the kitchen before.. one second panning across from VCS3s, Memorymoog and various other exceptionally nice gear then suddenly in the midst.. a refrigerator! Awesome. Next time someone tells me I have too much gear I will show them this clip!

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  4. Well, I am not a "gear hater"... but I will explain the thinking:

    Basicly, the "gear haters" hate the guys who post pictures of their $100,000 worth of vintage synths, yet have no music to show for it. They feel that the big time collectors who don't really make music are buying all the vintage synths at insane prices, making it unaffordable to "real" musicians.

    I agree that the collectors buying up vintage gear is making the vintage gear unaffordable to most musicians... And most of the guys posting pictures of their insane studios don't actually seem to make much music (Nobukazi Takemura excepted... of course, he is not posting the pictures himself to brag, it was an interview someone else did).

    Where I deviate from the gear haters is this:

    Hey Gear Haters, go buy a Korg Radias, or a Dave Smith Evolver, or Elektron Machinedrum, or any number of really cool and (relatively) cheap NEW mass-produced gear and make some damn music yourself! Maybe vintage gear was indispensable back in 1997 when all affordable gear sucked total ass, but nowadays there is plenty of really cool gear so that no-one needs to purchase vintage gear to make music.

    Like anything else, the collectors are going to drive up the price so that no-one else can afford it. Same with baseball cards, same with 1960s muscle cars, and now with synths.

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  5. People that have a ton of gear generally bought it over an extended period of time. ex buy a synth, use it for however long, then you want something else to do something different and freshen your perspective on making music, repeat.

    When I first started buying stuff I lusted over things that were way over my price range. Over time I've been able to justify buying things that I never would have considered 5 years ago. One day soon I'll buy an EMS Synthi which has been an object of desire since like 97. In theory as you get older you make more money and buy what you want.

    I've been buying vintage gear for about 8 years and I have to say that vintage synth prices have been pretty slow to rise. Another thing to consider is that vintage synth prices are relativly cheap when you take into consideration that most of them are cheaper now then when they were new.

    If you want to whine about prices... try to buy a vintage Gibson electric guitar. If you can afford one, buy it! Every decent investment advisor will tell you that its one of the best investments you could make. It sucks for real musicians but reality is that you can make music on whatever. Its not the tool its how you use it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Right ;) I know a lot of people with a lot of valuable vintage gear...They are not pro-musicians, nor collectors.

    Rather passionate people.

    You can have tons of gear, but use one or two synths only at a time.

    These guys have pleasure with their equipment, and sometimes record 2 or 3 tracks per year. But it's enough. The musical production is so massive, that we can consider a good thing to record only quality music, not a huge quantity of crap ideas, proportionnal to the quantity of equipment...

    ReplyDelete
  7. i think the notion that these collectors buying up all the gear and driving up prices, leaving no gear for "real" musicians is naive and ridiculous. No offence intended. A lot of the gear that sells for insanely high prices is gear that is not particularly useful for a musician at all, but of high value to a collector. Like that Kraftwerk vocoder prototype that sold for $20k or something not even working. Its true, some of the museum quality and very rare pieces go for very high prices, but there is a seemingly endless supply of gear on the market for musicians to purchase and use. Prices of some things have risen a bit in the last few years, most have stayed the same, some things seem to have even become a little cheaper, but I think thats attributable mainly just to the size of the market as more and more people get into ebay and analog.. but generally speaking I think most things are still very affordable and still represent great value for money.

    ReplyDelete

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