Klaus Schulze: Digital To Analogue Conversion

The Godfather of German electronic music, Klaus Schulze favoured an all‑digital approach to recording during the '80s. The last few years, however, have seen a radical revision of his former philosophy. Paul Tingen meets the musician for whom old working habits die hard...

At first glance, it looks a fairly typical modern recording studio. But for the rural location, it might be the sort of upmarket London facility popular with the larger record companies, with its light, airy ambience and mood of chic professionalism. And yet it's more than usually homely, a large and comfortable sofa, coffee table and guitar rack inviting the visitor to wind down, read a book, listen to some music or simply bask in the climate of creativity.

Only the abundance of vintage gear, and the somewhat unorthodox studio layout, point to the identity of the owner. Standing on an island in the centre of the control room are two mixing desks, a Soundcraft 6000 (92‑channel, custom made), a Mackie (32‑channel), two pairs of monitors (KS and Tannoy), two keyboards (PPG Wave 2.2 and Memorymoog), a couple of TV monitors and a mass of outboard gear. All elements of the island are set up in such a way that a user faces its middle. And in the right‑hand corners of the room, on either side of the sofa, stand two tiny isolation rooms. The impression is that this is a musician's studio, strongly personalised to the exact requirements of the musician who works in it.On closer examination, many of the museum pieces which litter the parquet floor represent not just old, but rare and esoteric technology. The gigantic, modular Moog 3C that dominates the left wall is the clearest evidence of this, with its eye‑catching patch wires. Two Minimoogs, a Quasimidi Raven and Cyber 6 are placed underneath the large Moog, so as to be accessible to someone working behind the Soundcraft desk. At the back of the studio there is a rack with nine Hohner HS1/HS2 Casio‑clones, and next to it are such keyboards as the Korg T3, Akai S1000, Prophet 2000 and EMS A2X. Another rack contains an ancient‑looking Akai S612 sampler with two accompanying disk drives, while on the gear island, next to the PPG Wave 2.2, are racks with a Moog Vocoder, ARSonic Refresher, Roland Super Jupiter/MKS80, old, analogue Eventide H494 and 910 Harmonizers, and a Korg Vocoder DVP. Finally, there's a bizarre‑looking, stand‑alone, radiator‑shaped EMT 251 digital reverb, and an equally strange‑looking EMS Synthi A.

The reason for the sheer variety of sound sources and processing gear becomes clear only when you discover that this is the playground of one of the world's electronic synthesis pioneers. Perhaps best known for his his work with the bands Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel in the early '70s, Klaus Schulze has since recorded more than 50 solo albums. Since his debut album Irrlicht in 1972, he has influenced virtually everybody who has ever worked with synthesizers. To name but a few: '80s keyboard luminaries Vangelis, Kitaro or Jean‑Michael Jarre, '90s acts such as The Orb or The Grid, and the current new age and ambient house movements.

The back wall of Klaus Schulze's studio is dominated by his Moog Modular.

Moldau Musician

Schulze's studio and home are located deep in a forest, close to the mid‑Northern German town of Hannover. He explains that his studio is named Moldau Musik Studios, a pun on the name of his village, and the Czech river Vltava (Moldau in German), honoured by the Czech composer Smetana in one of his most famous compositions. The studio has been in existence since 1977, when Schulze moved from his native West Berlin. The Berlin music scene had lost much of its appeal and inspiration for him, and anyway he, "preferred the countryside." Until his move, Berlin had played a pivotal part in Schulze's musical development. After having learnt classical guitar as a kid, he moved to drums when he wanted to enter the world of rock music. He played drums in a band called Psy Free, before being asked in 1969 by Edgar Froese to be the drummer in a new group called Tangerine Dream.

The latter band was, together with Kraftwerk and Can, part of the most internationally influential wave of German groups, and Schulze was involved in the making of Tangerine Dream's seminal debut album, Electronic Meditation (1970). He left the band even before the album was released and, after founding groups like Ash Ra Tempel and The Cosmic Jokers, shifted his attention to the synthesizer, because "I wanted to make new music with an instrument that I had never played before." The result was the first of his many solo albums, Irrlicht (1972), soon to be followed by Cyborg and Picture Music (both 1973). All were highly influential albums, that showed influences from the minimalist and classical composers of the day — LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Stockhausen — as well as early synth pioneers like Wendy Carlos. This defined the parameters of Schulze's famous signature style, which he has perfected over more than 50 solo CDs. Highlights include albums like Timewind (1974), Moondawn (1976), Mirage (1977), X (1978) and En=Trance (1988).

Atmospheric, symphonic choir‑like sounds, classical influences, fast‑moving, sequenced arpeggios, sudden modulations, endless layers of effects and sounds, weird, experimental, abstract sounds — these are Schulze's leitmotifs. Much of his music consists of slow‑moving, dream‑like soundscapes that are full of depth. The fact that they are often rich on atmosphere but short on melody, and can go on for a long, long time, (half‑hour compositions are not unusual) is probably what most strongly divides the fans from the critics. "My style of music is always the same," comments Schulze, "but the expression is different with each piece. It's like Fellini once said: 'I made so many films, but in the end I did only one film.'"

Music is an emotional thing, and when you use the parameter access system, you get out of that emotional state, and go into an intellectual state

Unlike many other electronic musicians, Schulze has long been a champion of live performance, and he tends to play only new material with every tour that he does. He sequences background parts in the Atari, plays the rest by hand, and "the fans just close their eyes and listen..." Lately, Schulze has returned to his classical roots, with In Blue (two CDs, 1995), the fascinating opera Totentag (two CDs, 1994) and Klaus Schulze Goes Classic (1994). The latter contains Schulze's synth and sample reworkings of compositions by Beethoven, Grieg, Smetana, Schubert and others, and came into being as a kind of occupational therapy.

Explains Schulze, almost apologetically: "My manager told me to relax a bit, because there had been so many releases, and people don't have so much money. But I can't just sit around and do nothing. I was bored, so I took some classical stuff and arranged it. I stayed very close to the original compositions, because I didn't want to do what many people do today: just lift the most popular hook line, put a rhythm underneath it and sell it. It's a bit like the things Tomito and Carlos did, though they only used analogue synths, whereas I used many very fine samples from libraries."

Over a quarter of a century as a recording musician, and the 150‑odd albums that he has been involved with (whether as artist, producer or collaborator), the German musician has witnessed many innovations in music technology: innovations he's always been among the first to exploit. Irrlicht (1972) was prehistoric in synthesis terms, and yet Schulze was already wringing revolutionary sounds from a Teisco organ, Solina string keyboard, tapes, tape echo, a 4‑track Telefunken home recorder, a cheap 3‑channel Telefunken Echo Mixer, guitars and a Revox 2‑track. For most of the '70s Schulze expanded on his collection of analogue artefacts, with instruments like the Farfisa Duo organ, the EMS A synth, EMS VCS3, ARP Odyssey, ARP 2600, Farfisa Syntorchestra, Minimoog, Crumar Brass synth, the Mellotron, Polymoog, Moog 3C and Yamaha CS80.

Schulze graduated to 8‑track in 1975 and to 16‑track in 1979. It was also in 1979 that the digital age was dawning. Schulze discovered computers, sampling and digital synthesizers, and during the early '80s acquired instruments like the Crumar GDS, the Fairlight Series 1 and 2, Emu Emulator 1, and PPG Wave 2.2. The 1980 album Dig It was recorded entirely with digital equipment, as was most of his output of the '80s.

Frigid Digits

Towards the end of the decade, however, Schulze started having mixed feelings about digital instruments. He recalls: "In the beginning, I was really surprised at the clean digital sounds, and really happy with the fact that these instruments didn't go out of tune. I said: 'forget analogue, digital is the future,' gave away many of my analogue synths, and stored the rest. But after a few years, I became completely bored. When you edit digital instruments, you're hampered by the pages system, which doesn't allow you to be very intuitive. The only things that you can do easily are add some reverb, or chorus, or flanging, and change some of the waveforms. But really, a D50 still sounded like a D50, whatever I did to it."

Schulze: "I like the DA88, because I compose long pieces, and I have 115 minutes per track on the DA88."By the late '80s, Schulze had dusted off the analogue synths that he still had, begged his friends for the ones he gave away ("many of them didn't want to give them back, of course"), and set about creating the hybrid analogue/digital studio that he favours today. Having gone 24‑track analogue in 1986, Schulze introduced the Atari 1040ST into Moldau Musik in 1989, and has gradually switched his recording process more and more to the MIDI medium. Today, he owns five Atari Mega ST4 computers, three of which he uses in his studio, with two ST4s working as slaves to the main computer. Two extra Atari Synthax monitors on either side of the PPG Wave give visual information for the musician who finds himself on that side of the island. Using Notator SL as software, the system gives Schulze 290 MIDI channels. He explains that he now records all his music directly into the computer, using a Tascam DA88 for any added real‑life parts. Schulze: "I like the DA88, because I compose long pieces, and I have 115 minutes per track on the DA88. Until recently, I used the Akai DR1200 ADAM extended 24‑track, with 23 minutes per track."

Schulze is not a fan of many recent synthesizers, and lays the blame for the similarity of much recent music at technology's door: "I loved the Roland JD800 because it operated very much like an analogue synth. It is sad that Roland discontinued it because people complained about the number of knobs on it. On the other hand, I hate the DX7 — it sounds like American bar room music, and is very difficult to program. I think this difficulty with programming much modern equipment is the reason that a lot of records sound the same. People become too lazy to edit, and simply use presets. And they all use the same sugary‑sounding effects, and the same sugary‑sounding mixing desks: so all they are left with to distinguish themselves are the seven notes of the scale. And when they only use three notes, their music becomes truly boring. I don't know what to listen to any more these days."

Surrounded by a forest of synths and sound modules, Schulze's rant against modern equipment might seem a little ironic. Moldau Musik Studios, together with what Schulze calls his "museum," in a neighbouring village, boast an amazing 85 sound sources — 44 keyboards, 35 rackmounted units and seven drum machines (including a Roland TR505, Linn 9000, Moog Drums and an Akai MPC3000). Add to that his 36 effects boxes, a total of 124 channels on his two mixing desks, and 290 MIDI channels on his three Atari Mega ST4 machines (increasing to 500 once the Apple goes into action), and this surely sounds like equipment overkill in anyone's book. One wonders how Schulze can still see the wood for the trees.

However, when you look more deeply into Schulze's working methods, it soon emerges that he has good musical reasons for his enormous collection. Two themes come up time and again, and they reflect the experience he has gained during his 25 years of working with music technology. The first is his preference for direct, intuitive access to all the parameters that he's working with in his studio. The second is that he's always looking for three things in his sounds and arrangements: movement, depth and randomness. He decries the clinical, static precision that digital equipment and quantisation offer, and tries instead to infuse his music with analogue warmth, fullness and imperfection. Turning his back on analogue gear in the early '80s was clearly a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water, if there ever was one.

This shot of Klaus Schulze’s studio illustrates both his affection for old Moog analogue synths (his four-module Moog C3 modular rig and two Minimoog keyboards) and his willingness to embrace new digital gear such as the Quasimidi Raven (blue keyboard) and Cyber 6 (red keyboard).

'Brain Versus Gut'

When Schulze goes on to express his reservations about the new Mac‑based sequencing software (see the 'Atari vs Mac' box), and his wariness about working with assignable softkeys on the new Yamaha and Euphonix mixing desks, I begin to wonder whether this inveterate technophile isn't becoming some sort of new age Luddite. For Schulze though, it's simply a question of ergonomics, and that all‑important accessability to the parameters that define his music.

My style of music is always the same, but the expression is different with each piece. It's like Fellini once said: 'I made so many films, but in the end I did only one film.'

"I like to see what I'm doing all the time, and all at the same time. I use the Mackie mixer as a slave to the Soundcraft, with many of my sound sources coming in on the Mackie and going out in stereo to the Soundcraft, and I can always see what's going on. I don't have to go first to this or that page to check the EQ setting on a certain instrument. To me, this is stupid. Music is an emotional thing, and when you use the parameter access system, whether on desks, computers or keyboards, you get out of that emotional state, which I call gut feeling, and go into an intellectual state. It's like a guitarist, who suddenly has to think: 'oh, what frequency am I at now?', and forgets about playing."

To solve the problem of 'gut' versus 'brain' in a studio that is full of gear that you have to edit using parameter access — the Akais and Emu are his favourite samplers, for example — Schulze has established a rhythm of alternating "emotional days," and "book‑keeping days". During the former he just plays, while during the latter he analyses what he's done, track by track, cleans up mistakes, edits out redundant bits and so on. To make sure 'brain' doesn't get in the way of 'gut' too much, he also tries to keep all his parameters as easily and directly accessible as possible:

"That's the reason why I have so many channels. I also want to buy two more Mackies, so that I'll have 200 channels, be able to see what I'm doing all the time, have all my instruments plugged in all the time, and not have to waste time plugging or unplugging gear."

Depth & Movement

With so many mixing desks, channels, sound sources and options at his fingertips, and with his dislike for patching things in and out, it clearly makes sense for Schulze to have an abundance of effects boxes, and to have more than one of several of the models that he likes. The keyboardist asserts, however, that other reasons were equally important for the doubling up of, for example, his Rebis compressor/ gate (he has eight!), Alesis 3630 compressor/gate, Eventide Harmonizer, SPL Optimizers, Roland SRV 2000 reverb and ARSonic Sigma 1.2.

Four Oberheim DPX1 players take pride of place at the top of this rack, along with various Korg M1R, Emu modules and Klaus's much-loved AKG ADR 68K reverb (bottom)."I like to have spares, because I'm in the country, and if I have a breakdown, it can easily take two weeks to get something repaired. Also, I use my effects boxes to treat my sounds very radically. They became an integral part of the sound, and I sometimes use several effects on one sound. For example, I may use the AKG ADR reverb, which has a very warm and full sound, plus the Dynacord, which has a little more mid, and the SRV2000 for the crispy high‑end. I'll give them slightly different delay times, and pan them differently."

Schulze's extensive use of effects boxes lends his music a kind of pulsating, random phase interference, adding to the depth and movement of the sound. This ties in with the second central theme of Schulze's working method, his search for movement, depth and fullness of sound. It's the reason that Schulze works with such an enormous amount of sound sources, and owns more than one of many of his favourite models. For him, sound sources sound thinner when used in multitimbral mode, whatever the manufacturers might say: "It's not so obvious, but if you listen carefully, you will hear a loss of sound quality."

It's for this reason that he uses his sources in single voice mode. Moreover, he sometimes likes to use two identical sound sources with the same sound, pan them, for example, at 11 and 1 o'clock, or at 3 and 9 o'clock. The slight discrepancies between the sounds of the different machines will create a rippling, phasing effect, which Schulze describes as, "a transparency, where things suddenly move; a stereo effect, where the middle is not empty."

The same principle of movement applies in Schulze's trademark fast arpeggio sequences, which he likes to put through a fading delay that is timed at double the speed of the sequence. So if the sequenced notes are 8th notes, the first delay will come at the 16th note immediately after; the third, less loud delay, will come on the second note; and the third, almost inaudible delay, a 16th note after that.

"So you suddenly get a polyphonic sound from a monophonic part. I often do this using the Moog synths, and use the filter modulations to get contrasts in the sounds. For example, if I have an 8‑note sequence, I might program the Moog so that the first note is bright, the second less bright, the third even less bright, and the fourth note maybe brighter again — so you get a kind of sine wave move. Now in the opposite channel I might do the same sequence, but program the filtering differently. Add the delays, and you have a repeating cycle that never repeats exactly in the same way. I sometimes mix the same piece several times, purely to capture the mix with the best random effects."

We say digital is cold, but that's rubbish. It's simply more linear and reliable, and whether you like that or not is a question of taste.

Schulze laments the fact that the powerful, 24dB/octave filtering capacity of the Moog is not available on modern digital synths.

"You can do it a bit, on the Quasar, the Raven and the Nord lead, but they only have 12dB/octave filters," he says, adding that what he is doing with many of his studio tricks is to emulate the imperfections of many old analogue synths with a mixture of digital and analogue gear. "Analogue machines are not so linear. For example, I have an American rackmounted Minimoog remake, made by Studio Electronics — who also MIDIfied my other Moogs. It's quite OK, but it sounds thinner than a real Minimoog. The secret of the Minimoog is that it has three oscillators that always go a little bit out of tune, and this creates a fat sound. The oscillators of the remake are 100% perfect, so they sound like just one oscillator. So analogue creates something that we call warmth, but in fact it's simply imperfection. We say digital is cold, but that's rubbish. It's simply more linear and reliable, and whether you like that or not is a question of taste."

Fuzzy Logic

After wrestling with digital boredom in the '80s, Schulze clearly prefers the imperfections of older equipment — something that emerges during his tour of his studio, when he sings the praises of the old, analogue Eventide 10 and 49 Harmonizers, "because they have this kind of internal modulation. When they heat up, the sound becomes more fuzzy. By contrast, digital harmonisers are sterile." The Roland SRV2000, on the other hand, "works like the tape echoes in the old days, where the processed sound deteriorates. If delays and reverbs are perfect, you get sterile results. But with imperfect delays, you can distinguish the original sound from the delayed sound."

Klaus is a devotee of SPL's Vitalizer processors.

In his efforts to imbue warmth and movement to his works, Schulze also puts all his music through an effects signal path that has been in place since 1990: "Everything I do goes first through the cheap Alesis 3630 compressor/gate, which I use only as a gate — some of the analogue stuff can be rather noisy. Then it runs through the SPL Vitalizer MkII, which creates a wider stereo picture. It makes the final mix sound as you have just taken a towel from the front of the speaker. Suddenly, things sound very crisp and have incredible balls. From the Vitalizer, the signal goes through the SPL Optimizer, which works like a Neve filter with Q factor. It's like a kind of frequency‑specific gate, so I can take out specific things that jar. Finally, things go through an ARSonic Sigma 1.2, which is a noise reducer and gain controller."

When asked about his plans for the future, Schulze insists he has no plans to buy any new equipment, other than (at some stage) a hard disk recorder: "I'm in no hurry. I have virtually everything here that I need. Virtual Acoustics? That's simply manufacturers trying to get analogue qualities out of digital gear. All this physical modelling really doesn't result in truly new sounds. In the end, it still sounds like the manufacturer who makes it."

Maybe Klaus is suffering from technology overkill after all. And yet his quarrel is not so much with the technology itself, as its implementation. He's also been in this business long enough to recognise when those snappy manufacturer's patents really do make life easier or represent genuine innovation. In a forest habitat like his, you pretty soon learn the difference between the wood and the trees.