BT Plans Electronic Opus – Orchestral Electronica Concerts & Album

Electronica artist, film composer and technologist BT has announced plans for Electronic Opus – an immersive ‘electronic symphonic’ album project.

Electronic Opus will draw on BT’s classical background, featuring hybrid symphonic + electronic arrangements of his compositions. It will be produced by BT and Video Games Live creator Tommy Tallarico. 

“This collaboration is an acoustical merging of tradition and technology, not simply symphonic versions of popular EDM songs,” says Tallarico. “This ‘electronic symphonic’ collaboration reinvents what a 21st century symphonic experience can be: incredible high-energy, melodic electronic music from one of the top artists in the field, blended with the artistic and cultural merits of a full symphony.”

“Whenever we would bring up this idea with record companies and executives, they would never take us seriously,” explains BT. “We’re looking to prove music lovers of all types will embrace this new form of orchestra experience.”

bt-opus-electronicaSongs planned for the live show and album include:

Flaming June
Dreaming
Never Gonna Come Back Down
Satellite
The Force of Gravity
Somnambulist (Simply Being Loved)
A Million Stars
1.618
Good Morning Kaia
Forget Me
The Emergency
Every Other Way
Skylarking
Lifeline
Suddenly
Love Comes Again
These Silent Hearts
Ferris Wheel (from the Motion Picture Monster)
The Fast and the Furious (Motion Picture montage)

BT is also hoping to do a new release and remix from the movie Blade Runner.

BT is raising funds to produce Electronic Opus as a Kickstarter project. After one day, it is about a quarter of the way to its US $200,000 goal. A breakdown of the project budget is available at the project site, along with rewards for backers.

23 thoughts on “BT Plans Electronic Opus – Orchestral Electronica Concerts & Album

  1. Some of the rewards have me seriously thinking of kicking in at least $100. Digital sheet music, samples, and stems from BT’s tracks? Yes, please!

  2. My favorite Tommy Tallarico story from video games live: In between the famous soundtracks, he would occasionally run, skid onto the stage on his knees playing his own videogame soundtracks on guitar like a sad Van Halen cover band. Nobody in the audience would recognize any of his own music, so he’d then have to play through the remainder of his song to an indifferent audience. He didn’t seem to mind though, because his ego is through the roof. The poor guy.

  3. What, not even a scratch-pad example to consider? Just nattering on how big it all is and how talented some people think BT to be? Eh, I’m skeptical. I need more than a sales pitch to become enthusiastic over the idea. Jarre kept repeating “Oxygene” until “Zoolook” came out and THAT was a very classy left-turn. Show me a bit of something that indicates a similar different angle of approach and we’ll talk.

    1. He’s got three audio examples at the kick starter site.

      They don’t seem as adventurous as I would expect from a guy who’s done some pretty crazy stuff over the years.

  4. If the past is anything to go by then I’m quite sure BT is fully capable of creating another monument of genius – the only problem being that few actually get the point of his creations – or even grasp a fragment of his concepts. Apart from that, he’s THE most sympathetic musical artist in the Western hemisphere. Any negative comments here only reflect this point. Just wait. You’ll hear.

  5. Im excited about this. Some of BT’s songs are beautiful and densely composed. They will likely transfer very well to a full orchestra. If anyone hasnt had a chance to see a orchestra live should go, it is a powerful acoustic experience to hear that many people playing together.

  6. I expect this will be another one of those “big name artist goes symphonic” attempts that results in a train wreck, and reminds us how much specialized effort and skill really go into making anything with traditional instruments sound good.

    1. Except that unlike a lot of these other big name artists, BT is classically trained and has the ability to do this. Sure, he’s best known for his bank music output, but you have to look at the software products he has collaborated on and albums such as This Binary Universe to see that this is not just another naff ‘artist goes classical’ album. I’ve signed up for this and am personally looking forward to all the BT goodies coming my way if it hopefully gets funded.

      1. Let’s be honest here. Anyone who studied music in college, or even took piano lessons is technically “classically trained”. Don’t get hung up on that.

        And since you mentioned This Binary Universe, that was one of the references I had in mind of specifically “not” being something that I would directly qualify the creator to somehow being a master at symphonic writing and arrangement. I like bt just fine, and enjoy a lot of his music quite a bit. But his music always lets me down when it tries to get too heady because I feel he doesn’t back up the intention with anything “musically or technically” interesting enough to get past dance pop and sonic washes. Maybe that was intentional on his part, to not lose the modern listener who’s ear is, let’s face it, rather unsophisticated. If that is the case, then good on him for being commercially successful, and maybe this will be his outlet for something else artistically.

        His song Force of Gravity is a good example I think of a very moving catchy song, which remains a skeleton of what it could be because there just isn’t any interesting instrumentation, or flair, or any of the other kind of flourish and depth I would expect from someone who is “classically trained”. It sounds like a dance pop artist who really reached and made something much better than the norm, but didn’t quite have the chops to deliver more depth. Compare that to many contemporaries from the past… say a Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd… hell, even Duran Duran were better structural songwriters but still added enough musicality to be taken seriously as musicians beyond the obvious pop-aimed songs. But I still wouldn’t expect any of those artists, like them or not, to somehow be able to construct a meaningful symphonic piece. It’s a different beast. We can all load up an East West library and que in a few string swells and horn stabs, but doing something really meaningful is a whole different thing.

        1. “Let’s be honest here. Anyone who studied music in college, or even took piano lessons is technically “classically trained”. Don’t get hung up on that.”

          It seems very intellectually dishonest to compare everyone that took piano lessons to a guy that’s already scored a dozen movies. Chances are, the guy that graduated from music school, studied orchestration and gets hired to score movies can arrange his music. I wouldn’t put my money on the guy that had some piano lessons.

          Arguing about whether a musician’s music is ‘really meaningful’ is ultimately a little pointless, because it’s so subjective. It sounds like you’d agree that the music that many people think is ‘really meaningful’, is often pretty vapid to musicians.

          What is interesting, though, is to discuss what elements in a musician’s music you find interesting

          For example – I don’t especially like Fleetwood Mac, but it’s interesting that you use them as an example of what you do like, when talking about an electronic musician. Maybe you like electronic musicians that explore more traditional song structures over more experimental or dance-oriented artists?

          What I find interesting in BT’s music are his insane mastery of synthesis (his sound design is always interesting)- and his obsession with micro-rhythm.

          In much of his music, he’s using 512th notes and smaller. As you keep subdividing rhythms, the doubling of frequencies eventually transforms rhythms into sounds and then into pitches. That’s a whole world of compositional possibilities that most artists do not explore, because you have to have both the technical knowledge of how to do these things, but also know how to use these techniques musically.

          It looks like BT’s project is going to get funded pretty quickly – which is very cool, because, whether or not you like his music, he’s trying to explore new territory and has figured out how to get people to care!

    2. How quick you are to dismiss someone you clearly know little about, without making any effort to know what you’re dismissing.

      At least you’re decisive!

  7. This looks exciting but I’m not sure why he needs a kickstarter project apart from the benefits to the sponsors.

    BT is a genius and understands music from many angles unlike certain wacko artists

    1. Why does he need a Kickstarter project?

      Maybe he doesn’t have 200 grand sitting around to fund a huge project that no record label would touch?

      This is what Bach, Beethoven and Mozart all did (not saying that BT is in that league). They came up with ambitious projects, and found supporters to back them. None of them had bucks in the bank for their own orchestra – they had to go to the church, to kings or to the rich to fund their big projects.

      It’s cool that these crowd-funding options exist – so musicians can create big projects that FANS want, rather than it being determined by record labels or rich guys!

      1. I’m all for crowd funding, it actually makes people feel part of the process of creation, my point was that he doesn’t actually need to. He is very wealthy and could easily afford to do it without kickstarter.

        But if his intention is to get others involved then I’m all for that. I look forward to the finished project and may well throw some coins his way

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