Having lived and worked with electronic instruments over a period of twenty years, my attention was lately drawn to the tendency of retrospect interest in old analog synthesizers. These instruments represent to me not only a different quality of sound, but also a different mode of composing. This in turn deeply affects the musical structures coming out as the final result. Digital systems have a greater flexibility in terms of time and spectral control on a point basis. Analog systems, on the other hand, offer a way to create complex structures with a direct physical control coupled with a unique "raw" quality of sound lacking in digital instruments.
Composing with "old" analog systems is a rare phenomenon in today's world of computers, harddisc recorders and digital synthesizers. With increasingly few exceptions, analog synthesizers are more often missing than present in modern electro-acoustic workspaces. The transition from analog to digital systems as the main composing tool in electroacoustic studios has taken about ten years. The development of medieval instruments to their modern counterparts took several centuries.
"Renaissance" is based on sounds from a Serge modular synthesizer and some additional sounds from renaissance instruments like drums, lute, crumhorns and viola da gamba. My intention has been to create a virtual meeting between the sounds, composing methods and aesthetics of the analog and digital worlds, painted on a remote cavas of medieval timbres and rhythms.

Ake Parmerud (S) has been a full time composer and artist since 1978. He has studied music but is also a trained photographer. His list of works contains instrumental music, electroacoustic music, multimedia and video. For many years he worked at EMS (The Electronic Music Studio of Stockholm) where many of his pieces were realized. He teaches Computer music and composition at the Music Conservatory of Gothenburg since 1987.