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29-463: The Monologue was designed by Korg's then Chief Engineer of Analog Synthesizers, Tatsuya Takahashi , his last design before switching to another position within the company. It is a trimmed-down, single-voice version of the Korg Minilogue with various characteristics of its own, such as the addition of microtuning, a more aggressive sound due to an added drive knob, fuller low-end frequencies due to

58-471: A multi-storey car park at 131 South Olive Street, Los Angeles, opposite the Walt Disney Concert Hall . The 100 cars used for the performance were lined up in rows on top of the car park. The performance began at dusk at 6:17   pm in front of an audience of around 1000 people. At the start of the performance, the drivers started their engines and created a grumbling sound by revving them:

87-529: A "common denominator" between the project and the city. They decided to use synthesisers to create the sounds emitted by the cars. The synthesisers used for the performance at the festival were designed by Tatsuya Takahashi , the synthesiser designer who formerly worked as chief engineer at the Japanese music technology company Korg . The project was the first Takahashi had worked on since leaving Korg. Takahashi partnered with Masimillian Rest of E-RM Erfindungsbüro,

116-429: A Berlin-based musical instrument maker, to create the synthesisers over a period of around three months. Ikeda viewed the composition as a collaboration between himself and the car drivers. When asked by LA Weekly , he was reluctant to take credit for the piece, saying: I wouldn't say this is my piece. It's everybody's piece. I just designed a frame and then it really depends on the participants. The drivers are

145-471: A Korg35 MS-20 style filter chip, and an E-E keyboard to make transposition easier for guitarists and bassists. The Korg Monologue was the last Korg synthesizer that Tatsuya Takahashi worked on directly. He later went on to be an advisor for Korg and currently holds a full-time position at Yadastar GmbH . According to Richard D. James ( Aphex Twin ), the Korg Monologue is as of 2017 the only synthesizer on

174-433: A Los Angeles car club; Guadalupe Rosales , a visual artist interested in the city's car culture; Rod Emory, a creator of "Outlaw Porsches " at Emory Motorsports; and Dorian Valenzuela, a former Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer who refurbishes Alfa Romeos . The film documented the influence of music in the city's car culture; each interviewee was asked what type of music they listen to while driving. A [For 100 Cars]

203-536: A bit like what you might expect to hear when UFOs land, but more peaceful". In the Los Angeles Times , Randall Roberts commented on the community aspect of the performance and how it "felt like a feat not only of bringing imagination to life". Jon Caramanica wrote in The New York Times that A [For 100 Cars] "turned negative space in the centre of downtown Los Angeles into a sublime womb [and] felt like

232-488: A master's degree in electrical and information sciences from the University of Cambridge . To obtain the degree, Takahashi completed a four-year-long course that culminated in a project on "the distortion behaviour of transistor differential pairs". A year after leaving university, Takahashi contacted Korg for a job and was granted an interview. He brought one of his inventions—a synthesiser inspired by Christian Marclay —to

261-491: A sound some likened to an orchestra tuning. The performers were from Los Angeles and were chosen by Ikeda for their car's modified stereos . Some performers were members of Los Angeles-based car clubs, but no performer was a professional musician. The car's designs were varied and included sedans , SUVs and Los Angeles' signature lowriders . During the performance, some cars used their horns and headlights or had open doors. The performers included some notable residents of

290-664: The International Organization for Standardization in 1975. Since starting the project in 2000, Ikeda has exhibited several versions of A at various venues, including the Hayward Gallery ( A , 2000), Minnesota Street Project ( A [4ch version] , 2018) and Centre Pompidou ( A [continuum], 2018). Ikeda composed a new version of the project, A [For 100 Cars] , as part of the first Red Bull Music Academy (RBMA) festival to be held in Los Angeles. The use of cars in

319-686: The Minilogue and Monotron , as well as the Volca series. After leaving Korg, Takahashi worked with Red Bull Music Academy on several projects before returning to lead Korg's German R&D branch, Korg Berlin. Takahashi was born in Japan, near Tokyo, and grew up in London. He began soldering at the age of 11, and his first synthesiser project was a square wave oscillator . During his time in secondary school, Takahashi taught himself electrical engineering. He holds

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348-447: The area including Estevan Oriol, who was driving his blue Chevrolet Impala SS . On the whole, A [For 100 Cars] was well-received by reporters and audiences. It was widely seen as unusual: Selim Bulut of Dazed commented that the sound produced was an "unusual but calming ambient tone". Writing in Vice , Emily Manning suggested an extraterrestrial sound, saying that "the A notes sounded

377-422: The company, but move from Tokyo to Cologne. Takahashi collaborated with Ryoji Ikeda in 2017 for his project, A [For 100 Cars] . For this project, Takahashi created 100 synthesisers designed to output sine waves at different frequencies associated with the musical note A . In 2018, Takahashi worked with Red Bull Music Academy to create a video game based around synthesisers, named Tats . The game gives

406-566: The composition was conceptualised six months prior to its performance during a drinking conversation between Ikeda and the co-founder of the RBMA, Torsten Schmidt. While talking about cars, they considered making an "automobile orchestra" as the next step of Ikeda's A project. Schmidt and Ikeda proposed A [For 100 Cars] after plans were made to take the RMBA festival to Los Angeles in October 2017, citing cars as

435-506: The event connected to its sound system, which constantly output a drone at a frequency that has been associated with concert pitch A at some point in history. These frequencies ranged from 376.3 to 506.9 Hz, covering a timespan from 1361 to 1936. The sine waves were generated using the "Magic Circle" algorithm, a digital sinusoid generator which is often used in computer graphics to draw ellipses. The sine waves interfered with each other, creating beat patterns that changed depending on

464-420: The influence of music on the car culture of Los Angeles. Ryoji Ikeda is a Japanese audiovisual artist and composer. His earliest solo installation is A , which he created out of his curiosity regarding the various frequencies associated with the musical note A . A has been used as tuning standard throughout history but was associated with many different frequencies before being standardised to 440 Hz by

493-496: The instrument's presets, sounds and scales. This article relating to electronic musical instruments is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Tatsuya Takahashi (engineer) Tatsuya Takahashi (born 1983 or 1984) is a Japanese engineer and synthesiser designer. Born in Japan, he studied at the University of Cambridge before joining the Japanese music technology company, Korg . Takahashi has produced several synthesisers with Korg, including

522-633: The interview and was offered a position at the company. Takahashi worked at Korg from 2006 to 2014 and eventually became the company's chief engineer. As Korg's chief engineer, Takahashi was responsible for the creation of the Minilogue , Monologue , Monotribe and Volca synthesisers, as well the reissue of the ARP Odyssey and the MS-20 Mini. On 16 February 2017, Takahashi announced that he would be leaving his job as Korg's chief engineer. Using Facebook, he stated that he would remain in an advisory role to

551-588: The list compared Takahashi to the likes of Robert Moog and Don Buchla , who were early pioneers of the synthesiser. Takahashi is a proponent of what he calls the "democratisation of synthesis". He believes that analogue synthesisers should be available to the general public, not just musicians or engineers. This is reflected in the affordable price and mass-production of the analogue synthesisers he produced at Korg. This philosophy has been replicated by other synthesiser manufacturers, such as Roland and Yamaha . A (For 100 Cars) A [For 100 Cars]

580-458: The listener's positioning relative to each sound system. To coordinate the piece, each synthesiser was synchronised together. The synthesisers featured displays for the frequency being output and timing in the performance, as well as knobs for volume and octave. Their design was created from a piece of aluminium, inspired by the Monoliths of Arthur C. Clark 's Space Odyssey series and likened to

609-400: The market to have full microtuning editing. In his interview of Tatsuya Takahashi for Warp Records, Takahashi commented: "It was completely because of you that we included microtuning. If you hadn't insisted on it, I definitely wouldn't have discovered how powerful it was." Takahashi originally felt that microtuning was a "really niche thing" that would not be needed in a mass market synth, but

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638-424: The performance, which lasted around 27–28 minutes. Journalists had a largely positive reception to A [For 100 Cars] , and commented on the unusual nature of the work and the creativity behind it. Mixmag included the piece's performance on their list of the best performances of the festival. As part of the project, local film makers Van Alpert and Estevan Oriol created a short film named LA: Cars + Music to show

667-513: The performers. Of course they are not trained as musicians, but I want to engage with the local people to make it happen. As part of the project's creation, a short film titled LA: Cars + Music was made by Van Alpert and Estevan Oriol , a Los Angeles-based photographer, in collaboration with the Red Bull Music Academy. The film includes interviews with important groups and figures in Los Angeles' car culture, including Oriol; Bella Doña,

696-494: The player a minute to replicate a sound played using an online synthesiser. Takahashi returned to work for Korg in 2019, when he joined the company's newly formed German branch. He serves as the CEO of Korg Berlin, which is focused on research and development . In 2016, Reverb.com put Takahashi on a list of three people they believed are "modern gear visionaries". Alongside Gerhard Behles of Ableton and Cliff Chase of Fractal Audio,

725-539: The work of Dieter Rams . As the composition was loud (reaching almost 160 dB ), a safety test (using Max , a visual programming language , to create the sine waves) was completed in Cologne before the performance in Los Angeles. To make sure that it was a safe experience for the driver, Ikeda personally took part in the test. In the final performance, all drivers were given a large pair of headphones. The performance of A [For 100 Cars] took place on 15 October 2017 at

754-444: Was a site-specific project created by Ryoji Ikeda . It took the form of a piece of minimalist music, composed in 2017 as part of a Red Bull Music Academy festival held in Los Angeles. The piece is part of Ikeda's series of installations exploring the musical note A and was written for an "orchestra" of 100 cars, which produce sound using sine wave synthesisers created by Tatsuya Takahashi and Masimillian Rest. Each synthesiser

783-416: Was performed by a group of 100 cars. This arrangement was called "the world's largest synth orchestra" by Mixmag and Vice . The full performance of the piece lasted for around 27–28 minutes. Each performer was given a coloured score to read which dictated when to play the synthesiser, as well as the volume and octave (from A 1 to A 8 ). Each car had a sine wave synthesiser created for

812-521: Was soon convinced. "If you try shifting the tuning while running a sequence (in a monophonic synthesizer), you can hear that it gives it another dimension even if it's subtle. To me, it feels like casting light on a rough surface and seeing different patterns as you move the light." To make Monologue more accessible, the keyboard was built to cover the E–E range of notes, like a guitar or bass. Korg worked with Richard D. James as an artist advisor to collaborate on

841-433: Was tuned to a different pitch that has been associated with A throughout history, creating beating patterns as the sine waves interacted. During the course of the composition, performers modulated the octave and volume of the sine wave tones according to a score. A [For 100 Cars] was performed on 15 October 2017 on top of a multi-storey car park opposite the Walt Disney Concert Hall . Approximately 1,000 people attended

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