Richard Lainhart: Cheats on his Moog

In three videos, Lainhart explains what the Buchla 200e needs all these blue, red and yellow cords for (so it can remember the knob positions, which define a particular sound), what the colours of the cords mean (red is for voices, orange are returns from filters, etc) and how to play on the “Continuum”, a keyboard which allows for a highly expressive style by awarding different manipulation techniques to the direction of the fingers. After this theoretic introduction, there is a firwork of improvisation, as Richard Lainhart dives headlong into a 20-minute long exploratory jam and finishes with a short, meditative piece called “Chorale”, which shows how the Buchla 200e enables one to craft highly “musical” soundscapes. Lainhart has promised to add more clips and audio excerpts as he gathers experience and takes the Buchla 200e on tour with him.

So has Richard Lainhart lost his love for the Moog synthesizer? Not at all. In fact, while his DVD project with Jordan Rudess, “A fistful of Patchcords” documented a small-scale live performance, the duo recently found themselves guests at the Moogfest 2007, a yearly concert extravaganza held to honour one of the fathers of electronic music on September 22nd. Guests this year included Thomas Dolby and Eric Norlander (whose Moog system is said to be among the biggest in the business, for what it’s worth). After some research, we managed to gather some (inofficial) information that there will likely be some video coverage of the event on emusician.com soon. Which would be a sight to behold, from our point of view – after all, Richard was so bold as to take his Buchla with him to the “land of the Moog”.

Homepage: Richard Lainhart