[HN Gopher] Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" synth sounds ___________________________________________________________________ Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" synth sounds Author : daverol Score : 194 points Date : 2022-07-09 18:43 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (reverbmachine.com) (TXT) w3m dump (reverbmachine.com) | taylorius wrote: | I'm surely in a minority, but I couldn't stand that song when it | came out, and I haven't changed my opinion. That said, I love | most of Kate Bush's work. | ROTMetro wrote: | Everyone already probably knows this, but if you search <Song | Name> acapella or <song name> isolated vocals on youtube you can | get the vocals to songs you want to cover. Sometimes its the | original isolated, but sometimes its just someone singing it. | I've been having a lot of fun with Reverbmachine's Legends bank | and vocals from youtube. Eurythmics Sweet Dreams for example. | | On a tangent, when I was in prison my mom died, and Kate Bush was | her favorite music. Also in prison as a coping mechanism I | created my own superstition that music on the radio was a message | for me (I know it isn't but I needed a way to just get a little | space to breath). Like Tom Petty meant the the day was going to | turn out ok. So I programmed myself to be super receptive to Kate | Bush being popular again and it's been amazing for my mood and | productivity. Programming little positive things into my makeup | has been really important in getting through stuff, be it | addiction or just day to day difficulties. | sthatipamala wrote: | I have nothing to add on the synth/music aspect, but thank you | for sharing your personal story. The idea of programming your | mind to get through tough times really resonated with me. | ROTMetro wrote: | It's actually been a super great tool because it randomly | breaks me out of the moment/pattern I'm in. If a song comes | on it snaps me out of any bad loop and I have space to | remember it's just a bad day not a bad life. | tomduncalf wrote: | You might be interested in Meta's Demucs, which can split a | song into drums, bass, vocals and other stems. It's really very | impressive, I can't quite believe such results are possible! | | https://github.com/facebookresearch/demucs | | You can try it out at | https://huggingface.co/spaces/akhaliq/demucs if you don't want | to install it. If you google "source separation" there are a | bunch of hosted services which mostly use either Demucs or | Spleeter (which was an earlier, good but not as good, system | from Deezer) | themitigating wrote: | Songs are also composed of each instrument on a single audio | track and they are sometimes distributed | tomduncalf wrote: | Oh yeah of course, but in my experience it's quite rare for | these multi-tracks to end up online. Demucs can in many | cases extract an acappella which would be good enough to | make a remix with (of course using ML trickery, so it's not | going to be the actual real acappella and might have some | leakage from other sounds in the track etc.) | ROTMetro wrote: | These tools are awesome, I have iZotope RX which also does a | version of this, but when I'm in the music flow grabbing | something off of youtube vs firing up another piece of | software can be more conducive creatively for me. | tomduncalf wrote: | Yeah makes sense! I'm sure we will start to see this | integrated into the next generations of a lot of music | making software with it being open source. FWIW Demucs | sounds a lot better than the RX separation (which I think | uses Spleeter, could be wrong) to my ears - it doesn't have | any of that mushy "low bitrate" kind of sound, it's much | crisper | ROTMetro wrote: | I wonder how hard it would be to write a Max4Live device | that wraps this? That would be awesome, have the original | track in my project for reference, and have a Max4Live | device generate isolated stems of the different parts. | tomduncalf wrote: | I thought about the exact same thing when I first saw | Spleeter and it turned out someone had already done it: | https://github.com/diracdeltas/spleeter4max | | Looks like the meat of this is using a JS script to | invoke Spleeter using execSync so it might be quite | simple to adapt to Demucs, maybe I'll give it a go! | kreeben wrote: | Me and my siblings were raised by a single mother. She's still | alive but I have a memory from when I was six or seven of her | sitting for hours on end with headphones on, smoking | cigarettes, sipping wine and listening to Supertramp. Three | years later I discovered music (The Beatles White Album). Mom | told me it's my dad's favorite record. | | To this day they're two of my favorite bands. | | Music has this weird property of connecting you to different | people and different times. It's some kind of magic. | | Sorry to hear you've had it so rough. Hope you're ok. | ROTMetro wrote: | I'm all good. I'm glad you have that music connection. It's | so powerful. | classichasclass wrote: | I know all the 'tramp fans say Crime of the Century is their | best, and it's definitely classic prog rock, but I still love | Breakfast in America despite its commercial pretenses. My | best friend in high school and I first heard it on 8-track | (!) and we enjoyed every song. | [deleted] | emmelaich wrote: | Not mentioned is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Jeczalik who | helped her on "Dreaming" and was also a CMI pioneer. | | Jeczalik also worked on Godley and Creme's "Cry" (1985) - another | synth heavy reverbish song. | DennisP wrote: | > she used the Yamaha CS-80 as her main composition instrument. | She seemed to favour it particularly for its touch-sensitivity, | and it was one of the few synths that offered the feature at the | time. | | This undersells the CS-80. It had polyphonic aftertouch, which | most synths don't have today. | | Most have velocity sensitivity, meaning each note transmits how | much initial force you applied. And most have aftertouch, meaning | they transmit how much force you continue to apply after hitting | bottom. But for most it's just channel aftertouch, meaning it | transmits the aftertouch of the key you're pressing the hardest. | | The CS-80 transmitted aftertouch of each individual key, and had | nice controls to to adjust how it used that information. A lot of | synths can use polyphonic aftertouch but only a few new ones | actually have poly-AT keyboards. The ones I know of are the | Hydrasynth (out for a couple years now), the Behringer UB-Xa, and | the Iridium keyboard (both introduced this year). | | Vangelis was also a huge CS-80 fan and used it on the Blade | Runner soundtrack. Incidentally, a boutique synth that replicates | the CS-80 pretty well (without keyboard) is the Deckard's Dream. | It's $4000 but that's way less than a vintage CS-80. | rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: | As someone with a passing interest in music production, this is | such a cool comment. I love this place. | dtagames wrote: | Arturia has a fab CS-80 recreation as part of their | V-Collection. It has poly aftertouch. My physical Roland | V-Synth to play it with via MIDI only has a single aftertouch | channel -- but the CS-80 is still my favorite of the | collection. The default preset alone is amazing and playable | for hours. | SeanLuke wrote: | > This undersells the CS-80. It had polyphonic aftertouch, | which most synths don't have today. | | Vangelis using poly aftertouch: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoEkyBX7qsg | | The CS-80 also famously had a touch strip, which Vangelis used | to great effect in Blade Runner. | | The strip in action: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV3qDUTVsNo&t=1487s | | A famous example where it's used: | https://youtu.be/smpTDkLCYb0?t=125 | | > A lot of synths can use polyphonic aftertouch but only a few | new ones actually have poly-AT keyboards. The ones I know of | are the Hydrasynth (out for a couple years now), | | Interestingly the Hydrasynth is also one of the only modern | synths with a touch strip. I think it's clear what the | Hydrasynth was going for. | teilo wrote: | Indeed, and I use my Hydrasynth Deluxe to drive Arturia CS-80 | V4. It is the first reasonably authentic recreation, and it | is a testament to the brilliant design of the CS-80 that it | took this long for virtual analog recreations to reproduce | it. | | Previous attempts were pretty miserable, such as versions 1-3 | from Arturia, and Memory Moon. At best they could be | described as CS-80ish. | | Poly aftertouch on the Hydrasynth is a revelation. I didn't | think I would use it nearly as much as I do, and now I can't | imagine being without it. I even play my Novation Summit from | the HS. | cmroanirgo wrote: | Thanks for this and parent too! I didn't realise that this is | precisely what I've been missing in my compositions: I never | quite understood that poly aftertouch is actually rare! | | Anyone know of weighted keys that implement this? | not_a_sw_dork wrote: | Wait until a SV guy discovers the state of life... | | Yes, not many synthesizers had polyphonic AT, compared to | channel pressure / AT, implemented. AFAIK the Hydrasynth was | one of the latest ones. And using a ROLI is like molesting a | dead seal. Is this news? Is this discussion-worthy on HN? You | guys are so outside of every common domain besides apps its | cringe-worthy... all this was discussed years and years in | knowledgeable circles, just point to it then. | trasz wrote: | >And using a ROLI is like molesting a dead seal. | | That's sadly true. Someone(tm) should make a polyphonic AT | keyboard, but with proper, rigid keys, perhaps also with a | vertical touch sensor on each of them as another | controller. | anigbrowl wrote: | Poly-AT was locked up by patents for years, much like FM. | nkozyra wrote: | Everyone worked around FM patents by creating "new" | synthesis processes that were in effect FM. | cronix wrote: | It's also very easy to overload the midi bandwidth with | polyphonic aftertouch data, which is likely why it wasn't used | in more early synths. The CS80 used it internally since it | didn't have midi and could only be routed internally. | | > Keyboards capable of generating polyphonic aftertouch are | relatively rare, since it requires a more expensive mechanism | than what is needed for channel aftertouch. Polyphonic | aftertouch is also known as a generator of large amounts of | MIDI data, which in older equipment was capable of exceeding | the maximum bandwidth of a standard MIDI cable (the so-called | MIDI choke), | | https://electronicmusic.fandom.com/wiki/Polyphonic_aftertouc... | IAmGraydon wrote: | You can buy a MIDI keyboard with poly aftertouch and just use | that to control the synth. I use a Novation Launchpad Pro for | this, which is a bit unconventional but I much prefer it to | playing on actual keys. There's also the Roli Seaboard, among | others. Pair that with Arturia's CS80 emulation and you would | hardly know the difference if you closed your eyes. | KerrickStaley wrote: | This was discussed on a recent episode of the (excellent and | highly recommended) Switched on Pop podcast: | https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/kate-bush-running-up-that... | itcrowd wrote: | Awesome writeup and very topical with Running up that Hill being | popularized again by season 4 of Stranger Things (on Netflix, I | would also recommend the series, by the way) | xxs wrote: | I'd say Placebo already did that. | 1986 wrote: | But the Chromatics version is even better. | ROTMetro wrote: | I never thought my favorite 80s music would come out 20 | plus years later. But it just true, Italians do it better. | tomduncalf wrote: | Their version is great, I've not heard it for years! Thanks | for the reminder. | pier25 wrote: | I have nothing to add other than I'm happy to see so many synth | geeks on HN :) | emmelaich wrote: | Discussion of the Fairlight here on HN - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18225377 | | Trivia - one of the Fairlight engineers wrote the open source | 'libsndfile', used everywhere. | | http://www.mega-nerd.com/ | kaasmonster wrote: | Related to this and worthwhile watching is the following video by | Vox on the CMI Fairlight: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8A1Aj1_EF9Y | tomduncalf wrote: | What a fantastic video, thanks for sharing! I'd never thought | about just how omnipresent this sound was. | apachedomains wrote: | anewpersonality wrote: | Bored on vacation, what's the best way to learn synths in 2022? | pier25 wrote: | Syntorial if you want some structure. | | If not, just get Vital and start messing around. There are tons | of Youtube tutorials. | ROTMetro wrote: | Post a way to get you info and I have an Ableton Live Lite | license if you want. | tomduncalf wrote: | Ableton have a really cool web based intro to synthesis | https://learningsynths.ableton.com/ (and also one for learning | music: https://learningmusic.ableton.com/) | | Syntorial (on desktop or iPad) is an app which teaches you | synthesis by doing - it's a full synth which you can use in its | own right, and it introduces you to each part and gives you | challenges to recreate a certain sound using that part. I can't | say I've done the full thing but it's a cool concept. | | You can also just download some free/cheap synths (or get a | free trial of Ableton or some other music making software which | comes with its own included synths) and start messing around of | course haha, there are a tonne of good ones around, including | on iOS if you use an iPad (the advantage being the touch screen | makes it maybe more fun than using a mouse). GarageBand on Mac | is maybe a fun place to start experimenting too. | | Happy to advise more if you have specific things you're | interested in! | bbgm wrote: | I have a 9 year old who's learning all about synths via a | combination of the synths in garage band and my OP1. Great | combo IMO | ROTMetro wrote: | The only bummer about synths now is that at 9 I learned a | lot of networking concepts from having to adjust the MIDI | setup of my keyboards/drum machines/sequencer (and then be | able to get them back how my dad wanted them without him | knowing I changed everything). Other than that I can't | imagine if I would have had these capabilities at an early | age. I mean, oh, you want a free symphony to play your | music? OK. https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/bbc- | symphony-orchestr... https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-so- | discover/application/ | ROTMetro wrote: | Vital is an amazing free virtual synth. It rivals the pay | ones at this point and makes it on most of my tracks (though | Arturia Pigments is my favorite VST). | brunorsini wrote: | I second the Syntorial recommendation -- | https://www.syntorial.com. By far the best method I've seen, | largely because you learn in practice. | tptacek wrote: | This is so good it almost makes me not want to throw up in my | mouth when I hear that Kate Bush song for the 90th time in a day | because of Stranger Things. | | I remember seeing a breakdown of The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch | Up" that made me lose absolutely any respect I might have had for | the composition of that song. This writeup kind of had the | opposite effect; I get what went into the song and how much the | tools they were using defined it, but it's somewhat more | interesting as a result. | teilo wrote: | I highly recommend watching Rick Beato's "What makes this song | great" breakdowns. | 0x0 wrote: | Was this the breakdown you saw? | | "Making of "The Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim | Pavloff" | | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eU5Dn-WaElI | bitwize wrote: | It's really, really hard for me to disrespect Kate Bush or her | music. She is a profound genius who strives to say something | very specific with each song of hers, almost as if she's | engaging her audience in a conversation, so I guess I tire less | easily listening to her music than to most artists because of | that. | | I'm a big fan of Imogen Heap who is very similar to Kate Bush | in that she brings together technical sophistication in | composition, a love of technology in the service of art, and | something deep and meaningful to say in each song. It's hard to | conceptualize that much awesome incarnate in a single person. | aviditas wrote: | If you like both of those artists, I'd suggest checking out | Kimbra. She has heavy jazz influences and incorporates so | much meaning into her music and videos. She does similar | vocal layering to Imogen Heap and her live mixing of her own | vocals is simply amazing. | no_butterscotch wrote: | > This is so good it almost makes me not want to throw up in my | mouth when I hear that Kate Bush song for the 90th time in a | day because of Stranger Things. | | I love this song, but I wonder if I'm the only one who thought | it was really out of place in that scene, even kind of forced | in. | | It too me _out_ of the scene rather than keeping me in. | jnovek wrote: | I understand your perspective and think it's a totally valid | response. I actually found the out-of-placeness sort of | charming -- it reminded me of being an adolescent and having | opinions and feelings about music for the first time... while | completely misunderstanding what the song was saying. | tptacek wrote: | This is an interesting pair of takes because my problem | with it was that it was just about the most on-the-nose, | boring, predictable song they could have put there. I was | just joking that they should have put Cloudbusting there | instead, but it was pointed out that there's an early 90s | version of that song that is clearly going into Season 8 of | the show. Just pick any other song from the Chocolate War | soundtrack instead. "I Have The Touch" would have worked | even better. | peterstjohn wrote: | UTAH SAINTS! UTAH SAINTS! | | ;P | | (It would have been more fun if we'd spent the past month | with clickbait like "What is Orgone Energy, Anyway?" | tptacek wrote: | Right? It would be as good as anything else the show has | induced in the culture. Maybe it explains the Upside Down | or whatever. :) | bobthepanda wrote: | You're probably being facetious, but season 5 was | confirmed to be the last season when season 4 was | announced. | ceejayoz wrote: | Which scene? They used it in two key scenes. | tomduncalf wrote: | I know what you mean about The Prodigy video (and even more so | the Daft Punk sample source ones), it's a bit disappointing to | learn a track is almost entirely samples, but I think there is | also a real art to picking those samples. If you've not been on | it before check out whosampled.com and prepare to lose some | time, lol. | | I have to say I'm more impressed by artists who's music is | largely sample based but they twist them into entirely new | forms (eg DJ Shadow and Future Sound of London) than just | lifting a few loops wholesale though! | tptacek wrote: | I've been in a 90s hip hop rut for the past couple years and | I'm pulling myself out of it by making playlists of the | original songs getting sampled (one great thing about good | hip hop is that any given song or pair of songs tends to | produce a pretty excellent playlist), and one thing I've | discovered is that RJD2, a musician I was into in the mid- | aughts during an instrumental hip hop phase, puts essentially | zero effort into things; the best example I can think of | there is "Bless The Telephone", which he "covered" from Labi | Siffre in the funniest possible way. | | Finding stuff like that will definitely give you a new | appreciation for DJ Shadow (both, for what it's worth, were | excellent live). | | Also Labi Siffre: very good stuff. | specialist wrote: | Fun. | | In case you didn't know: KEXP occasionally does breakdowns. | Here they played every song sampled on Beastie Boys' Paul's | Boutique. https://www.kexp.org/breakdown/paulsboutique/ | tptacek wrote: | Not my favorite band (they're fine), but I'll say that | from Paul's Boutique through Hello Nasty, they're by far | the best to generate playlists from. | comprev wrote: | DJ Shadow's Entroducing [0] is an amazing body of work if you | think about the effort required to crate dig for all the | samples. Truly mind boggling! | | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endtroducing..... | Rodeoclash wrote: | I'm a huge FSOL fan and I think what they did with sampling | to produce albums like ISDN was ground breaking stuff. | | Daft Punk not so much. Rather than composing the samples | together they use the entire sample as the hook. Maaaybe they | might speed it up a bit but that's usually it. | post_break wrote: | If you haven't heard it yet, Placebo's version I think is almost | as good as Kate's. I know that's a strong opinion but it reminds | me of Hurt from NIN vs Johnny Cash. Both very good takes of the | same song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5GuBa4Bbnw | teilo wrote: | Check out Meg Meyers: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7iVWK2W48o | andreyk wrote: | Not sure if it has been recommended yet, but this is a great | video about the writing and composition of this song "Running up | that hill: how Kate bush became queen of alt-pop" | | https://youtu.be/Pum6v55X1t8 | jdkee wrote: | Here is a fantastic vid of the sounds recreated on vintage | machines. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAuvZr5j9as | __s wrote: | When you said vintage I expected something more like _Orkestra | Obsolete play Blue Monday using 1930s instruments_ : | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHLbaOLWjpc | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | OK, who do I give everything I own to for naming a Valhalla verb | preset "Homestar Blade Runner" ? | folli wrote: | Apparently I'm living under a rock, but why does this song seem | to be so popular all of a sudden? | zomglings wrote: | I believe because the Stranger Things soundtrack/playlist was | recently promoted heavily on Spotify. | ceejayoz wrote: | It's a key plot point in the latest Stranger Things season. | ryandrake wrote: | Wow, thank you! I was walking by my daughter's room and this | song was playing and I was mystified. I told her "That song | is almost older than me! How did you find it??" Total WTF | moment for me. | tootie wrote: | Yeah, not only is it featured in a few scenes, it's | mentioned by name. One of the key characters needs to | listen to it on her Walkman in an endless loop to protect | herself from a psychic monster. The finale prominently | featured Master of Puppets by Metallica which is apparently | starting to climb the charts now as well. | MarcoZavala wrote: | [deleted] | lbotos wrote: | My favorite running up that hill moment is from a few years ago. | Big Boi from Outkast waxing poetic about how running up that hill | is his favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSdHgq3oBD8 | tptacek wrote: | This is fantastic. Now somebody needs to sample Big Boi | beatboxing the CELLO2 sample Kate Bush used, and cover "Running | Up That Hill" with it. | jacquesm wrote: | That whole album is something special. Especially 'Under Ice', | the tension in that piece is something else. | mkesper wrote: | What makes this song special (by Rick Beato): | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwZysZPIrYI | newaccount2021 wrote: ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-09 23:00 UTC)