‘Silent Night’ On 70’s Monster Synth, The ‘Live Electronic Orchestra’

Composer, engineer and former nuclear weapons specialist Don Lewis shared this live performance of Silent Night.

Lewis performs on his Live Electronic Orchestra (LEO), a custom plexiglass monster synth that he created in the 1970’s. It incorporates organ, multiple synthesizers, drum machines, a vocoder and more:

Lewis is the subject of a new indie documentary, The Ballad of Don Lewis, which is available on DVD.

Black & White Photo: Ned Augustenborg

8 thoughts on “‘Silent Night’ On 70’s Monster Synth, The ‘Live Electronic Orchestra’

  1. I recommend his documentary highly. LEO is like a knockout sideways version of the legendary TONTO. Don is great fun in general. Check out his YouTube demos for Roland, like the fine showoff pieces for the VP-550. That’s still a ‘vocoder to beat’ because of the Vocal Designer. Its a sort of SuperNatural section, apart from classic robot voices. Don leaves no doubt about how deep it goes.

    http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/vp550.php

  2. I realize this is just a peculiar pet peeve of mine but, I have to express it anyway; I absolutely, passionately HATE when classic music such as Christmas carols get all ‘jazzed up.’ To my ears, it completely ruins the song. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that I cannot stand jazz in the first place. I know that puts me in a small minority but, it is just how my musical ear reacts on a very deep, gut level. Every time I hear somebody ‘destroying’ a classic tune by not playing the actual notes as originally written or using odd timings with a bunch of extra notes jumping all over the place in out-of-tune scales, I just want to scream and cram ear protection in my ears to make the pain go away.

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