RIP Malcolm. Thank you for helping to create the sonic landscape of my childhood and for managing to not only craft amazing music technology, but for building the relationship with perhaps the greatest creator of music using those tools. Much appreciated.
Airways knew the synths, but never knew the man who put it all together. I'm sorry to learn of him by his "passing". Sympathy to everybody who feels this loss
It would have been amazing to be a fly on the wall when guys like Stevie Wonder and Weather Report were using this to make their albums in the 70's. This is an absolute incredible piece of music history. I'm glad it's been preserved.
So sad to hear that he left us today. BTW, this video is very interesting, but the sound of the synth itself is way too low in the mix. I can hardly hear it!
My parents had an awesome album from the 70s that was called Tonto's Expanding Head Band. My Dad always told me it was the 1st purely synth based record. It had a way trippy sleeve. Was really good. Im pretty sure that this was the gear responsible for creating it.
I’m not sure if he was an “arranger” but the other man/engineer that worked with Malcolm Cecil building T.O.N.T.O. Robert Margouleff. There’s an amazing interview titled; “Producing Stevie Wonder & the Synth that Changed Music Robert Margouleff story” on RU-vid. He talks about building tonto and first meeting Stevie to recording with him and other artists. Absolutely captivating geniuses in there time!!!!
Back in 1977 I was the morning DJ at a tiny AM/FM station in Mendocino, California. Of course "Songs in the Key" of Life was spinning a lot. One morning I commented on the ultra-tight horn section on "I Wish." A woman called and said "those aren't real horns, it's a synth." What??? Next thing I knew she'd arranged for Malcolm Cecil (who I guess was living locally at the time) to come by the studio for an interview. Wow!
The horns on I WIsh are live, and Margouleff and Cecil were not working with Stevie on Songs in the Key of Life. They worked together on the Stevie's Music of My Mind through Fulfillingness First Finale (and some other albums by Syreeta Wright and Minnie Riperton).
It may sound weird, but I have been a huge fan of TONTO, the synth, since I first saw it, in the Phantom of the Paradise movie. Already being a synth freak as a teenager, seeing TONTO in the movie, absolutely blew my mind. Had wet dreams about it for years, after that. Sadly I did not find out about these RU-vid videos about it, until after Malcom's passing.
Wow, I never knew Tonto was the setup used in Phantom of the Paradise but that all makes sense now. I thought the thing in Phantom was just some nonexistent prop but that is SO cool to know it was real. That's crazy -- I just looked and it's on RU-vid ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-O2JARLdVv5A.html I always loved when Paul Williams took the final sheet music from Winslow who's passed out from working all night, and says something like 'brick him in', and they put a wall up to 'try' to kill Winslow, which of course he busts out of, but the whole script is such a hilarious and scathing take on the music industry, and then of course Winslow literally getting disfigured by the hot plastic in the record pressing machine. It's was really quite well done.
@@plane_guy6051 so glad I helped you find this. Already being a synth nut at the time, my eyes almost popped out, when I saw it in the movie theater. Only many years later, with the help of the internet, did I learn about TONTO, and its importance in the music world. So grateful for information age. Thanks for the message and have a great day :-)
Malcolm had several EMS products. This is what he told me in 2007: "I still have a 256 sequencer and a smaller sequencer with a "painted" keyboard and perspex cover as well as a Cricklewood keyboard and a couple of the thin blue AKS sequencers. The 256 hasn't worked in a while - we rehoused it to fit TONTO but it got replaced with a computer based unit back in the early 90's. I also still have an EMS octave filter bank and a pitch to voltage converter - neither of which have been used for ages but were working fine last time they were played with."
He's just going to give zero credit to Robert Margouleff? Robert was his partner on the TONTO albums and the four Stevie albums. Robert is the one who showed him how to use a Moog. The first synth put in TONTO was Robert Margouleff's personal Moog. Most pictures of TONTO show both of them. They both won a grammy together. And Stevie listed both of them (and listed Robert first) in the producer credits on all four albums. But I'm sure Malcolm did most of the wiring for TONTO, since he was the engineer who built electronics. Malcolm is the mad scientist. Pete Townsend also said that Malcolm loved to show off, and he saw Malcolm destroy a bass and that's what gave Pete the idea to start destroying guitars on stage. Robert was the chill stoner.
THIS tendency towards favoring a system that is as completely flexible as is possible, within the realm of the time when it was used. It’s a contagious endeavor. We’ve all been to the club or seen films with the DJ, holding up his headphones to hear the queued up channel that isn’t playing through the PA, so he can hear the channel that he’s going to bring in without disappointing the audience by forcing them the agony of listening to the parts they don’t want to hear. This system takes that to a whole other level. Super easy to isolate channels, and to let the performers hear the stuff that they don’t want the audience to hear. Pretty neat to think of that wire coming from the Apollo missions and NASA. That should be some extra robust wire. I wish I could get my hands on some of that wire. THANKS FOR SHARING THIS! This is a great glimpse of the reasons behind the madness!!
This is an amazing setup, and so many great electronic instruments in one arena. I've heard Tonto's Expanding Headband on a late night radio show titled Hearts Of Space.
"From the front, it's got to be playable and from the back it's got to be _serviceable._ H"ow true. I gave up trying to create an amalgam of Arp 2600, Roland System 100, a row of PAIA modules and "keyboard." when it started to look like an Escher print... Great job, sir. , Respect, Rest In Passion, you'd be bored with 'peace'...
I won a tonto, we converted our basement home gym to a Tonto room, i go down there for hours and realize how lucky I am and you are not. Thank you to nobody but myself.
