The entire album is a huge synthpop masterpiece. 45 years later it still amazes me on every listen and it still sounds so fresh and ahead of its time. The way they've maximized the basic setup they've used is so impressive, true geniousity!

@CasioChaosTheory

4 ай бұрын

Absolutely agree! Brilliant songwriting along with Martin Rushent's groundbreaking production makes Dare (and Unlimited Orchestra) all time classics. I still listen to them and love them all these years later :-)

I remember Stephan Remmler of Trio playing the Da Da Da melody on the VL-1 on the note keys at early live performances. Later he dicovered the 1-key-play function and he used that to avoid hitting a wrong key 😅

That's the most investigative video on a casio synth that I've ever seen! As a journalist myself I have to protect my earlier colleagues a bit: Any proper journalist would hand a transcript to the interviewee to double check it. So I'd rather blame the producer: Maybe he didn't remember correctly - or maybe he just didn't care enough. In my interpretatiom, Casio synths were already so irrelevant in the 80's that a professional producer wouldn't care about how exactly they were used. Nit that they deserved it

@CasioChaosTheory

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you, it did indeed take quite a bit of investigative work to find all the information and discover that the M10 was the Casio used on Open Your Heart! And yes, it is quite possible that Martin forgot/ mis-remembered the correct details, though I still suspect that the journalist standards used by EMM magazine are no where near as high as yours (and other qualified journalists). EMM has published incorrect information a number of times in other issues as well (as pointed out in the video), and being from a pre-internet/ pre-digital time, I actually doubt that Martin was ever given a transcript of the interview to check as that wasn't the done thing back then. This was also from the same era that many interviews with famous artists/ musicians were so badly transcribed, with quotes and statements taken out of context/ misattributed, that the artists disliked and in many cases subsequently refused to speak or give interviews to the press for this very reason! Also Martin was quite the genius, spending 2 weeks alone programming just the sequence data into the Roland Microcomposer for "Don't You Want Me?", and he pretty much knew the equipment he used and recorded inside out. But of course, I am not Martin and maybe he did mix up the two Casios that he recorded the previous year. My feeling is that the flow of the text between discussing Get Carter and then moving on to Open Your Heart was disjointed, it really seems that a sentence or two had got lost. Who knows whether the interviewer was recording the interview with a cassette dictaphone and the tape got mangled at that point, or if it was written down in short-hand and somehow some of Martin's quotes were missed. Sadly, Martin is no longer with us so we can't ask him for clarity, and if the original journalist could be found and asked, they may no longer remember! Regardless, I do hope that I have at least raised awareness of where the M10 was used in DARE, and finally got it the credit that it rightly deserves :-)

This is so nerdy, I love it!

Loved this vid - great work. Funny in the video he is playing B instead of upper C in Open your heart though, although it is on a totally different keyboard. Can't you play back on the VL using the Auto Play button and how closely could you recreate the Open your heart sound using the VL's ASDR? Just some thoughts, thanks for the vid!

@CasioChaosTheory

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks so much for the compliment, it's very much appreciated! Yes, it's quite amusing watching the main melody being played all wrong in the video - the notes being hit are all over the place! He appears to be "playing" - C C C E C, F F F A# F, G F G E, B B - and if you try that on a real keyboard the melody sounds completely wrong. Though as this was for the promo video, often the visual performance is much more important than musical accuracy. This is also apparent when they were seen "playing" ARP Odysseys for the "Sound of the Crowd" Top of the Pops promo video, when they never even used Odysseys on any track on DARE. To be fair, Top of the Pops was nearly always done to playback, and most bands/ artists used/ mimed with whatever was lying around if they weren't actually able to bring their own equipment. For years everyone was saying that the Human League used ARP Odysseys for DARE simply because of that one video. Regarding the VL-1, it doesn't have an Auto Play button like some later Casios, it only has the One Key Play feature as demonstrated in the video. That's the only way to play back notes in the sequencer memory. Also good call on the possibility of being able to recreate the Open Your Heart sound using the VL-1's ADSR. Yes, it may well be possible to get a similar sound, and even more so as vibrato is an option in its ADSR parameters so it could be disabled, but it still wouldn't be able to play the high C note of the melody though. In the video I was primarily critiquing the interview text that stated that the sound was "the standard Flute preset" and there's no way of turning off the vibrato for any of the preset tones. Hopefully it could be heard in the side by side comparisons that it most certainly wasn't the sound used in Open Your Heart. Once again, thanks for the compliment and I'm glad you enjoyed the video :)

I'm sure the m10 is featured in my upload as a prize on Tiswas interview 1981...

@CasioChaosTheory

2 жыл бұрын

I'd love to see that! Do you have a link to the video?

@krisscanlon4051

5 ай бұрын

Watch out for the flans to the face ! Sally was quite fetching too 😂

Ah ...Martin really did talk rubbish about the making of Dare. Even to claiming that the VL-tone was programmed. This caused problems later on because he didn't credit anyone else for their contributions. You can play the hi c by vari slowing the tape down 2 semitones.

@CasioChaosTheory

2 жыл бұрын

You can program the VL-1 though. Both its ADSR style synth section, and also its 100 note step sequencer. And yes, you could go to the trouble of vari slowing the tape to get the VL-1 to play the high C of the OYH melody, but the tonal characteristics of the VL-1's standard flute preset do not match the sound used on the recording (too much vibrato), whereas the M10's flute preset is a perfect match as well as having the range of keys to play it. I demonstrated the VL-1's sequencer in action in the video, and also covered the tonal difference between the VL-1 and M10 flute presets to reach the conclusion that it was the M10 used in OYH. Plus the whole point of the video was identifying where the M10 was used in Dare! I also concluded that the interview was likely transcribed incorrectly by the journalist who missed out crucial points by Martin that would have clarified the context of what was being spoken about. As for those that that contributed to Dare, all those that were involved are credited on the album inner sleeve liner.

The attack on the M10 is not snappy enough.

Drop down an octave (at least) for Get Carter.

@CasioChaosTheory

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for commenting, though if I did that, it wouldn't match the pitch of the original Get Carter recording! Don't forget that my rendition was recorded completely dry and sounds "thin" compared with the VL-1 played on the Get Carter recording that has reverb applied. And at the 29 second mark it also appears to then be either double tracked or played through a chorus effect, making it sound bigger.

Off the top of your head, which synths do you think were used to record "The Sound Of The Crowd"?

@CasioChaosTheory

Жыл бұрын

Good question, and I wish that I knew for sure! I can tell you that Sound of the Crowd doesn't feature the Linn Drum machine as in an interview it was stated that the song was already written and released (IIRC it was the first track that they ever recorded with producer Martin Rushent). They were working on the next batch of songs that would be included on the Dare album when they got hold of the Linn Drum, and after hearing it they immediate replaced all the drums sounds they'd already recorded! There's actually surprisingly few synths used on the whole album, with the Roland JP4 and System 700 playing the largest roles. The Korg 770 was mentioned in interviews as belonging to Phil, and though it was pretty basic and was falling apart, it still apparently produced good bass sounds that they used in places. The Korg Delta was a combined string machine/ synth, so a lot of the "String" sounds on Dare likely came from that. The Casio VL-1 and M10 were used on Get Carter and Open Your Heart respectively, and that then left the Yamaha CS15, a surprisingly flexible monosynth that was also good for making effects and percussion sounds. For Sound of the Crowd, at a guess, the bass was either the System 700 or Korg 770, but I'm leaning more towards the System 700 seeing as (semi) modular synths are great for bass sounds, and being a Roland it likely integrated and played well with the Roland MC8 Microcomposer that they used for all the sequencing. The brassy melody sound during the verses is either the Yamaha CS-15 or the System 700. The silky synth strings sound during the chorus is either the JP4 or the Delta, but that silkiness makes me suspect the JP4 as Roland Jupiter polysynths were known for their silky sound. And the drums/ percussion, probably the System 700 as as giant modular always excels at "noise" type sounds. But those sounds could also have come from the Yamaha CS15 (check out Alex Ball's KZread review of a CS15 and you can hear what it is capable of doing). The above are guesses, so please don't take my answers as gospel! I really wish a Classic Albums feature had been done on Dare, detailing all that went into the making of the album along with the instruments used. Sadly, Martin Rushent passed away unexpectedly quite a few years ago, so unfortunately he's no longer around to ask. A shame, as it's such an incredibly sounding album, even today, as well as being a game changer for synth pop/ electronic music. Hope this kind of/ sort of answers your question :-)

At 1:45, did you say, "I've listened M-10'tly to this album..."? :D

@CasioChaosTheory

6 ай бұрын

Of course! ;-)

Amigo yo tengo un Casio Ctx 3000 puede salir el sonido de la cancion.

Greetings from Japan, Cool T-Shirts and Great Video! I thought it might be possible that they slowed down the tape speed a bit when recording and played it in a lower key.

@CasioChaosTheory

5 ай бұрын

Thank you! And yes, they could've possibly done that, though it was much easier to just play it with the M10. Plus the VL-1's flute preset has vibrato on it that can't be switched off. Also, if it wasn't the M10 on Open Your Heart, where was M10 used on the album? I've listened intently through every track, and the only track that has a tone that matches the M10 is Open Your Heart! A real shame that Martin Rushent is no longer with us to confirm what instruments were used or could be part of a "Making of Dare" documentary showing all that went on in the studio. It's still an incredible album even all these years later.

@kuri9810

5 ай бұрын

@@CasioChaosTheory Thank you for your reply! Your video was very interesting because there are few people in Japan who talk about Human League musically through their equipment.

And I thought they only made calculators.

@CasioChaosTheory

2 жыл бұрын

And watches! Seemed that almost every kid at school in the 1980s had a Casio watch! As for instruments, Casio have been making musical keyboards and instruments from 1980 right up to the present :-)

The VL1 can record duration as well as pitch. The One Key Play buttons may be used to program timing / duration. Then, pressing "Auto Play" will play back the sequence. The tempo can then be adjusted and played back at different speeds. So the magazine quote may be more accurate.

@CasioChaosTheory

6 ай бұрын

That is most certainly true, though getting the VL-1 to sync with the multi-track tape would have to be done by trial and error as the VL-1 cannot sync with external devices. Plus it's still missing the high "C" needed to play the last note of the melody and has too much vibrato on its flute preset! Interestingly, I've read other interviews where it was revealed that there was actually a fair bit of live playing on some of the tracks, as I demonstrated when comparing the same melodic VL-1 passage at different parts of "Get Carter". I also read in one interview that the choppy percussive filter sweeping/ phasing sound you hear at the beginning of "Love Action" was actually Jo Callis playing his guitar through the System 700's filter via the synth's external audio input! A real shame that Martin Rushent is no longer with us to clarify in further detail how that incredible album was put together.

Sorry, this is not the genuine logo on your T-Shirt ;-)

@CasioChaosTheory

Жыл бұрын

It's the genuine 2014 Human League "A.U." UK tour tee-shirt! I bought it at from their own merchandise stall in the venue when I saw them perform at Wolverhampton Civic Hall as part of this tour!