Even if we don’t know its name, we’ve all heard Johann Pachel­bel’s Canon in D, bet­ter known sim­ply as Pachel­bel’s Canon — and prob­a­bly more than once at a wed­ding. But though Pachel­bel com­posed the piece in the late 17th or ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry, it has­n’t enjoyed a con­sis­tent pres­ence in the world of music: the ear­li­est man­u­scripts we know date from the 19th cen­tu­ry, and its lat­est peri­od of pop­u­lar­i­ty began just over fifty years ago, with an arrange­ment and record­ing by the Jean-François Pail­lard cham­ber orches­tra.

And so, no mat­ter how many times we’ve heard Pachel­bel’s Canon, and no mat­ter how many ver­sions we’ve heard, we might well ask our­selves: have we real­ly heard Pachel­bel’s Canon? In the video above, San Fran­cis­co ear­ly-music ensem­ble Voic­es of Music — here Kather­ine Kyme, Car­la Moore, and Cyn­thia Freivo­gel on vio­lin, Tanya Tomkins on cel­lo, Han­neke van Proos­dij on baroque organ, and David Tayler on the the­o­r­bo — per­form what many enthu­si­asts would con­sid­er a defin­i­tive Pachel­bel’s Canon. Not only do they play that ear­li­est of its known man­u­scripts, they play it using instru­ments from the time of Pachel­bel, and with the kind of play­ing tech­niques pop­u­lar back then.

“The string instru­ments are not only baroque, but they are in baroque set­up,” notes the video’s descrip­tion. “This means that the strings, fin­ger­board, bridge and oth­er parts of the vio­lin appear just as they did in Pachel­bel’s time.” The video shows that “no met­al hard­ware such as chin­rests, clamps or fine tuners are used on the vio­lins, allow­ing the vio­lins to vibrate freely.” As for the organ, it’s “made entire­ly of wood, based on Ger­man baroque instru­ments, and the pipes are voiced to pro­vide a smooth accom­pa­ni­ment to the strings, instead of a more solois­tic sound.”

Just as van Proos­di­j’s tech­nique might look slight­ly unfa­mil­iar to a mod­ern organ­ist, so might Kyme, Moore and Freivo­gel’s to a mod­ern vio­lin­ist: “All three are play­ing baroque vio­lins with baroque bows, yet each per­son has her own dis­tinct sound and bow­ing style — each bow has a dif­fer­ent shape and bal­ance.” Their play­ing dif­fers in the way, the notes add, that musi­cians’ play­ing appears to dif­fer in paint­ings from the 17th cen­tu­ry, a time when “indi­vid­u­al­i­ty of sound and tech­nique was high­ly val­ued,” and none of it was over­seen by that most 19th-cen­tu­ry of musi­cal fig­ures, the con­duc­tor. How many his­tor­i­cal­ly-aware brides and grooms — with the means, of course, to hire not­ed ear­ly-music ensem­bles — will it take to bring those val­ues back into the main­stream?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Sounds of the Actu­al Instru­ments for Which Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Han­del Orig­i­nal­ly Com­posed Their Music

See Mozart Played on Mozart’s Own Fortepi­ano, the Instru­ment That Most Authen­ti­cal­ly Cap­tures the Sound of His Music

How the Clavi­chord & Harp­si­chord Became the Mod­ern Piano: The Evo­lu­tion of Key­board Instru­ments, Explained

Mashup Weaves Togeth­er 57 Famous Clas­si­cal Pieces by 33 Com­posers: From Bach to Wag­n­er

Pachelbel’s Music Box Canon

Pachelbel’s Chick­en: Your Favorite Clas­si­cal Pieces Played Mas­ter­ful­ly on a Rub­ber Chick­en

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

There is a lot of cre­ative­ly revised his­to­ry in the Net­flix hit show Stranger Things, and I’m not just talk­ing about extra-dimen­sion­al mon­sters and Sovi­et sci­en­tists under shop­ping malls. There’s also the puls­ing synth score by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein. Deserv­ing of all its praise, the music nonethe­less gives the impres­sion that the sound of the 1980s was made by instru­ments of the 60s and 70s—analog syn­the­siz­ers like the Min­i­Moog Mod­el D and effects like the Roland Space Echo.

Such clas­sic instru­men­ta­tion does cre­ate the per­fect weird, fuzzy, wob­bly, lush accom­pa­ni­ment to the show’s com­pelling mix of sci-fi body hor­ror and cud­dly nos­tal­gia. But the 80s was the gold­en age of new sound tech­nol­o­gy, dig­i­tal, and the dawn of syn­the­siz­ers like the Yama­ha DX7, released in 1983, the year the saga of the Upside-Down begins. Along­side mas­sive­ly-pop­u­lar dig­i­tal synths like the Roland Juno-60, the DX7 defined the 80s like few oth­er elec­tron­ic instru­ments, quick­ly ris­ing “to take over the air­waves,” as the Poly­phon­ic video above explains.

Bri­an Eno, Ken­ny Log­gins, Whit­ney Hous­ton, Her­bie Han­cock, Depeche Mode, Hall & Oates, Van­ge­lis, Steve Win­wood, Phil Collins, The Cure… one could go on and on, nam­ing a major­i­ty of the artists on the charts through­out the decade. Why was the DX7 more appeal­ing than the ana­logue sounds we now asso­ciate with the height of synth qual­i­ty? Poly­phon­ic explains how the DX7 used an algo­rithm called FM (fre­quent­ly mod­u­lat­ed) syn­the­sis, which allowed for more refined con­trol and mod­u­la­tion than the sub­trac­tive syn­the­sis of ana­log synths built by Moog, ARP, Buch­la, and oth­er spe­cial­ized mak­ers in the 70s.

That meant dig­i­tal key­boards had a wider range of tim­bres and could con­vinc­ing­ly sim­u­late real instru­ments, like the marim­bas in Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F.” Dig­i­tal synths were pre­dictable, and could be pro­grammed and cus­tomized, or used for their many already excel­lent pre­sets. And just as Fal­ter­mey­er’s Bev­er­ly Hills Cop theme was inescapable in the mid-80s, so too was the sound of the DX7. It was “damned near ubiq­ui­tous,” writes Music Radar. “After years of exclu­sive­ly ana­logue synths, musi­cians embraced the DX7’s smooth, crys­talline tones and for a while the air­waves were rife with FM bells, dig­i­tal Rhodes emu­la­tions and edgy bass­es.”

Though it’s hard­ly as well known, the DX7 may be as influ­en­tial in 80s music as the Roland TR-808 drum machine. Yama­ha’s dig­i­tal synth was so pop­u­lar that it “almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly spawned the third-par­ty sound design indus­try, and forced oth­er syn­the­siz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers to take a hard look at how they were build­ing their own instru­ments.” Learn about the his­to­ry, ver­sa­til­i­ty, and cus­tomiza­tion of the DX7 from Poly­phon­ic in the video above. And stream a playlist of songs fea­tur­ing the DX7 below. While our 80s nos­tal­gia moment favors the rich­ly har­mon­ic tones of ana­log synths from ear­li­er decades, you’ll learn why the real 1980s belonged to the dig­i­tal DX7 and its many com­peti­tors and suc­ces­sors.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

The Roland TR-808, the Drum Machine That Changed Music For­ev­er, Is Back! And It’s Now Afford­able & Com­pact

Admit it, your list of favorite Bowie songs is full of the big hits. Hell, maybe it’s all hits; there’s no shame in that. Dig­ging deep into the crates will yield many an over­looked sur­prise, many a sub­tle sleep­er, cut-up clas­sic, and elec­tron­ic exper­i­ment. But if all you’ve got is Changes­bowie—the 1990 com­pi­la­tion that became, for some gen­er­a­tions, a defin­i­tive state­ment of his career—you’ve still got a col­lec­tion of songs the likes of which have nev­er been heard before or since in mod­ern pop.

Com­pletists may grouch, but even res­i­dent Bowie scholars/local record store clerks have an “Ash­es to Ash­es,” “’Heroes’,” “Changes,” or “Mod­ern Love” in their top ten. Whether ardent or casu­al fans, we con­nect with Bowie’s music through mile­stones, both in his career and in our own lives. This truth has been exploit­ed. In 2008, Mike Schiller at Pop­mat­ters bemoaned the fact that almost 20 Bowie com­pi­la­tion albums had been released, a few of which “don’t real­ly seem to court any greater pur­pose what­so­ev­er.”

Giv­en this sur­feit of Bowie com­pi­la­tions on the mar­ket, Schiller’s ini­tial groan­ing reac­tion to news of yet anoth­er (“Oh, good Lord. Anoth­er David Bowie col­lec­tion?”) seems appo­site. Except this col­lec­tion, iSE­LECT: BOWIE, released in 2008 to read­ers of the U.K.’s Mail on Sun­day, then lat­er in an offi­cial CD and dig­i­tal edi­tion, “is actu­al­ly some­thing spe­cial.” Bowie “picked the track­list him­self. Even more than that, the track­list actu­al­ly looks like some­thing he’d have picked him­self, rather than hav­ing a man­ag­er or pub­li­cist pick it for him.”

iSE­LECT: BOWIE
1. “Life On Mars?” (from the album Hunky Dory)
2. “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing” (from the album Dia­mond Dogs)
3. “The Bewlay Broth­ers” (from the album Hunky Dory)
4. “Lady Grin­ning Soul” (from the album Aladdin Sane)
5. “Win” (from the album Young Amer­i­cans)
6. “Some Are” (cur­rent­ly exclu­sive to this com­pi­la­tion)
7. “Teenage Wildlife” (from the album Scary Mon­sters)
8. “Rep­e­ti­tion” (from the album Lodger)
9. “Fan­tas­tic Voy­age” (from the album Lodger)
10. “Lov­ing The Alien” (from the album Tonight)
11. “Time Will Crawl (MM Remix)” (new remix by David Bowie)
12. “Hang On To Your­self [live]” (from the album Live San­ta Mon­i­ca ’72)

See the full track­list above and hear a playlist of his picks at the top. If we put all our lists of favorites togeth­er, we might see a very high per­cent­age of “Life on Mars?” picks. We’re in excel­lent com­pa­ny; it’s Bowie’s num­ber one favorite song of his. But how many of his oth­er picks might we choose? The eight-and-a-half minute “Sweet Thing”/”Candidate”/”Sweet Thing (Reprise)” from Dia­mond Dogs? “Win” from Young Amer­i­cans or “The Bewlay Broth­ers” from Hunky Dory?

Aside from “Life on Mars?” and the far less­er-col­lect­ed “Lov­ing the Alien” and “Time Will Crawl,” none of his twelve selec­tions were released as sin­gles. There are no songs from two of the most acclaimed Bowie albums, Low and ’Heroes’, unless we count “Some Are” a bonus track includ­ed on the Low 1991 rere­lease. There are two tracks from Lodger, the third and least acces­si­ble of his vaunt­ed Berlin tril­o­gy, and only one selec­tion from Zig­gy Star­dust, and it ain’t “Zig­gy Star­dust.”

If any­one else hand­ed you this list of favorite Bowie tracks, you’d be skep­ti­cal. Who puts “Hang On to Your­self” (Live in San­ta Mon­i­ca ’72) above any of the stu­dio tracks on that clas­sic 1972 break­out album? David Bowie, that’s who. And who knows, if you’d asked him the day before or after, he might have picked twelve dif­fer­ent songs. There’s no telling how seri­ous­ly he took the exer­cise, but in the news­pa­per release, he did “casu­al­ly [pen] his inspi­ra­tions for the songs and the record­ing process­es behind them,” notes Allmusic’s Jason Lyman­grover.

On his choice of “Teenage Wildlife,” for exam­ple, Bowie com­ment­ed: “So it’s late morn­ing and I’m think­ing, ‘New song and a fresh approach. I know. I’m going to do a Ron­nie Spec­tor. Oh yes I am. Ersatz just for one day.’ And I did and here it is. Bless. I’m still very enam­oured of this song and would give you two ‘Mod­ern Love’s for it any­time…” Bowie got to expe­ri­ence his own music in a way no one else could. iSE­LECT: BOWIE gets behind the great­est hits col­lec­tions for a glimpse at the way he heard and remem­bered his cat­a­logue.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Bowie Used William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method to Write His Unfor­get­table Lyrics

The “David Bowie Is” Exhi­bi­tion Is Now Avail­able as an Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty Mobile App That’s Nar­rat­ed by Gary Old­man: For David Bowie’s Birth­day Today

How David Bowie Deliv­ered His Two Most Famous Farewells: As Zig­gy Star­dust in 1973, and at the End of His Life in 2016

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Pink Floyd is one of few bands in rock his­to­ry who could play the ruins of Pom­peii with­out seem­ing to over­reach, but it wasn’t their idea to put on a con­cert for Roman ghosts in 1971, the year before they record­ed their mag­num opus Dark Side of the Moon. Accord­ing to the direc­tor Adri­an Maben, who filmed the per­for­mance in the ancient necrop­o­lis, he decid­ed upon the loca­tion after los­ing his pass­port dur­ing a hol­i­day in Italy in 1971. He wan­dered Pom­peii alone in search of it and had an epiphany.

It was strange. A huge desert­ed amphithe­ater filled with echo­ing insect sounds, fly­ing bats and the dis­ap­pear­ing light which meant that I could hard­ly see the oppo­site side of this huge struc­ture built more than two thou­sand years ago.

I knew by instinct that this was the place for the film. It had to be here.

Mak­ing cre­ative deci­sions from a chance encounter with echoes and shad­ows was, nonethe­less, ful­ly in keep­ing with the band’s process. Despite their deci­sion to write acces­si­ble lyrics fit­ting togeth­er under a loose con­cept for their cur­rent album, serendip­i­ty and chance oper­a­tions had always played crit­i­cal roles in the com­po­si­tion of their post-Syd Bar­rett sound­scapes, and became inte­gral to Dark Side’s cre­ation.

As David Gilmour told Gui­tar World’s Alan Di Per­na, ear­ly exper­i­ments like “Saucer­ful of Secrets” (inspired by “weird shapes” drawn by Roger Waters and Nick Mason) gave rise to “Atom Heart Moth­er” and Med­dle’s “Echoes,” which the band played in two parts at the begin­ning and end of the Pom­peii con­cert film. These songs, Gilmour says, “all lead log­i­cal­ly to Dark Side of the Moon.”

And they led through Pom­peii, where the band was first “unleashed on film,” as one the­atri­cal poster put it, before they were unleashed on thou­sands of new fans after Dark Side’s release in Decem­ber. Where the filmed con­cert high­light­ed the band’s mas­tery of exper­i­men­tal space rock, the album brought this sen­si­bil­i­ty under the dis­ci­pline of Roger Waters’ sharp song­writ­ing and Gilmour’s stun­ning gui­tar play­ing and arrang­ing.

Though he is mod­est about it, Gilmour’s con­tri­bu­tions came increas­ing­ly to define the band’s mas­sive sound in the ear­ly 70s. His role, as he told Di Per­na, was “to help cre­ate a bal­ance between form­less­ness and struc­ture, dishar­mo­ny and har­mo­ny.” He was, writes Rolling Stone, “a fiery, blues-based soloist in a band that hard­ly ever played the blues,” but he was just as “adept at dron­ing avant-garde improv,” “Chic-like flour­ish­es,” and “float­ing, dreamy tex­tures,” all qual­i­ties ensur­ing that Pink Floyd’s music rose to the lev­el of their cre­ative ambi­tions.

So when Gilmour returned to Pom­peii in 2016, with­out his Pink Floyd band mem­bers, to play the first live pub­lic con­cert the city’s amphithe­ater had seen in almost 2000 years—and the only laser light show it had ever seen—the per­for­mance didn’t seem like over­reach at all. Above, see him play “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond” and “Com­fort­ably Numb” with a full back­ing band (includ­ing Chuck Leavell on key­boards, singing Roger Waters’ parts on the lat­ter song). The mas­sive stage show and huge, smart­phone-tot­ing audi­ence makes this footage more are­na rock show than the per­for­mance art of the orig­i­nal con­cert film, but the grandeur of the music, and Gilmour’s soar­ing solos, still jus­ti­fies the grandeur of the set­ting.

You can pur­chase online the Direc­tor’s cut of Pink Floyd — Live at Pom­peii.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with House­hold Objects: Hear Two Sur­viv­ing Tracks Made with Wine Glass­es & Rub­ber Bands

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness