Vanghelis' keyboard

[Sergiu Muresan]

You see Vanghelis here playing that custom instrument of his (saw it also on the Mythodeea DVD). It seems made of lots of identical modules, in my opinion each controlling one part of a virtual orchestra. What do you think it is?

 

[Waveterm]

I have no clue.....

 

Never seen one before ( except in this clip 6 months ago ).

 

Looks fascinating !

 

WT

[k77_99]

Hi -

 

It's called his 'Direct' system. It's custom built. He initiated development of the system in the late 80's using a Midi Performance System called the ZYKLUS (invented by british invetor Bill Marshall), which was a hardware device that acted as 12 polyphonic sequencers whose sequences could be played in realtime from a keyboard (think Ableton but with MIDI segments). The ZYKLUS also possessed exquisite capabilities of transmitting a multitude of program change and controller MIDI information to a MIDI synth array, and of savaing such configurations to its memory - this was before the advent of DAWs as we know them today of course.

 

Since Vangelis cherishes realtime performance at the centre of his composing process, it seems that the ZYKLUS MIDI configurability gave him the idea to develop an elaborate and overarching control system of boxes and pedals capable of MIDI configuring his extensive synthesizer setup in sophisticated ways and in realtime. Hence the 'Direct' system.

 

Although I have no first hand experience with this system, it seems to be that each box provides a 'MIDI' configuration front end to synths/modules that reside elsewhere.

 

Regards,

Kevin.

[Yoozer]

What probably gets really close to Zyklus these days is the Karma system as found in the M3 and OASYS.