Tuesday, December 28, 2021

"The Coming of Kohoutek"

About a month ago, I got a Moog synthesizer (the Subsequent 37).  I still have a lot to learn, but the first thing I did was try to replicate a little tune that Mike Vickers played on the BBC in 1969.  (I don't think he ever gets enough credit for this, so I'll mention it:  Vickers set up the Moog synthesizers for the Beatles' Abbey Road and for Emerson, Lake, & Palmer.  In December 1968, he did some orchestral overdubs for Zombies songs, as heard on Into the Afterlife and the second disc of Zombie Heaven.)

This was my second objective:  the first bit of "The Coming of Kohoutek."


I'd noticed before that the Moog and the Mellotron violins play the same thing (a loose quotation of "Dies Irae"), but I don't think I'd noticed the lower Moog part (panned right) until I started examining the song more closely.  My audio example is just those three parts plus some guitar arpeggios.  I played to a click track, not to the original Argent recording, so the tempo might not be very accurate.