Pianet M

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Electric Light Orchestra's Clavinet

A number of years ago, I found this picture dated August 1978 that shows Richard Tandy and his keyboard rig in Electric Light Orchestra, including a Clavinet D6 at the bottom:

As the watermark indicates, I got this from Getty Images, although when I went to look for it again in order to link to it, I found that it had disappeared from the website.

I'm pretty sure the other keyboards here are a Yamaha C7 grand piano (specifically listed in the liner notes for A New World Record), a Yamaha CS-80, and a Mellotron M-400.  An-other picture from a different angle (also gone from the Getty Images website) shows a Wurlitzer EP200 and a Moog Polymoog, the edge of whose keys can be seen under the Clavinet here.

Twice recently, I listened to a box set titled The Classic Albums Collection, which contains the original eleven ELO albums plus some bonus tracks, to find what songs feature Clavinet.  I'm assuming that every instance is the D6 model.

There's Clavinet in:

• "Showdown"
• "Laredo Tornado"
• "Waterfall"
• "Evil Woman"
• "Mission (A World Record)"
• "So Fine"
• "Last Train to London"

It may also be in "On the Run" and "Sorrow about to Fall" (although I suspect that "Sorrow about to Fall" features an-other keyboard trying to sound like the Clavinet).

I also re-watched the concert DVD Out of the Blue - Live at Wembley, a performance from 1978.  The keyboard set up is much the same as that in the picture above, but Tandy plays Clavinet only in "Do Ya."

I notated the Clavinet part in the choruses of "Evil Woman" (although there's the standard disclaimer that I may have something wrong):

For years, I was under the mistaken impression that this part was played on guitar, although I also thought that the tone didn't quite sound like a guitar.  I have to credit this Instagram post for setting me straight.

[For what it's worth:  I also run a blog focused solely on Electric Light Orchestra.]

"God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen"

 

Months ago, I was playing what little I know of the Hohner Pianet solo at the end of the Zombies' "Indication," vaguely remembered some connection between it and "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen,"* and came up with a Zombie-influenced arrangement of the latter.  The Pianet with tremolo effect and Vox Continental accompaniment are directly from "Indication," but I also included an A minor to F major modulation, like in "I Love You," and some of the other chord changes are a bit like those in "Nothing's Changed."

While thinking about the lyrics, I realized that, to some degree, the lines "For Jesus Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day / To save us all from Satan's pow'r while we were gone astray" echo part of Romans 5:8:  "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

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*In Claes Johansen's Hung up on a Dream (page 149), Rod Argent explains that the Zombies used to do a version of Jimmy Reed's "Baby What You Want Me To Do," ending with an improvisation based on "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" to which he sang along and that "Indication" was an attempt at doing this same sort of thing.  In the version of "Indication" on Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London (from many years later), Argent quotes "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" in his solo.

Schumann: Ein Choral (From Album für die Jugend, Op. 68)

 

I've been recording a series of chorales by Carl Nielsen by multi-tracking my Moog, and initially, I thought of doing the same with the chorale from Schumann's Album für die Jugend, but I ended up learning it on my keyboard without having to use multi-tracking.  (It's probably better this way, anyway.)  There's an-other piece from the Album für die Jugend (Kleine Studie, No. 14) on the Hohner Pianet demonstration record, so I felt I had to do this one.  I also used a tremolo effect, which was available on some of the Pianet models (notably the N, which is the basis for Nord's Pianet sample).

I don't know if this is anything more than coincidence, but the intervals of the melody (not so much the rhythm) are very similar to the hymn tune "Freu dich sehr," probably best known as the tune to which "Comfort, Comfort Ye My People" is sung.

Notation from IMSLP

Haydn: O Let Me in This Ae Night, Hob. XXXIa:61

 

This is a Scottish folk song that Haydn wrote an arrangement for.  I used the Pianet N sound for the keyboard part and the brighter of Nord's two Hohner String Melody II samples for the violin part.

Notation from IMSLP

Haydn: Divertimento in C major, Hob. XIV:3: II. Menuetto and Trio

 

This is written for clavier, two violins, and cello.  I played the clavier part with the Hohner Pianet N sound and all of the string parts with the mellower of Nord's two Hohner String Melody II samples.  I changed the dynamics in the Pianet part just by how hard I hit the keys (although the instrument doesn't have a large dynamic range), but for the strings, I used a volume pedal.

I shot video of the Pianet part but not the string parts.  They would have made editing the video more difficult, and I thought they wouldn't be very interesting to watch anyway.

Notation from IMSLP

Telemann: 168 Keyboard Pieces, TWV 36:64: Menuet: Die Blumen deiner schönen Wangen

 

Earlier this month, I was reviewing what pieces I'd done from Telemann's 168 Keyboard Pieces, TWV 36, and I discovered that I'd misunderstood something in the notation of No. 64, which resulted in my unknowingly playing a wrong note.  I'd thought that one note was a D flat because it looks like a D flat, but I know now from having gone through a number of movements from Telemann's ouvertures that he uses a flat sign to cancel out a sharp, so - if my understanding is correct - the flat sign in front of this particular D indicates that it should be played not as a D sharp, like the note in the previous measure, but as a D natural instead.  Since accidentals are reset in every measure in modern notation, it's really a superfluous marking.

Anyway, I felt I had to re-do the piece and play the correct note.

Here's my revised, modernized notation:

Chicago Live at Tanglewood (Lenox, MA), 21 July 1970

A number of years ago, I watched this concert by Chicago and noticed that Robert Lamm plays a Pianet N.  Earlier this week, it was the fifty-fourth anniversary of the concert, and I watched it again so I could post it here.

Below is the set list from the video description (although it fails to identify the first song).  Lamm plays Pianet in every song but "I'm a Man," which is the encore.

• [unidentified song]
• "In the Country"
• "Free Form Piano"
• "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?"
• "25 or 6 to 4"
• "Poem for the People"
• "I Don't Want Your Money"
• "Mother"
• "It Better End Soon"
• "Beginnings"
• "Make Me Smile" / "So Much To Say, So Much To Give"
• "Colour My World" / "Make Me Smile"
• "I'm a Man"

Fleetwood Mac's "Station Man"

Recently, the Reelin' in the Years Archive uploaded a video of Fleetwood Mac performing "Station Man" in 1975 to its YouTube channel:

I hadn't heard any version of this song before, but I noticed that in this live performance at least, Christine McVie plays Hohner Pianet throughout.  I'm pretty sure it's a model N.

Bass 3

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Pianet N

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Electra-Piano

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