The Ring Modulator

For well over a century, music composers have allied themselves with engineers. For an example, consider German engineer Harald Bode, whose groundbreaking work in electronic sound modification was inspired, in whole or part, by the innovations of songwriter and guitarist Les Paul. Bode observed:

Les Paul . . . stimulated many innovators, and due to his success encouraged them to work in the field of new sound effects. His influence in many areas is felt to this day. The author [Bode himself] was so impressed by his work that he later developed a sound modification system consisting of a number of electronic modules, assigned to two separate outputs through a multiple-head tape loop device. These modules also included a ring modulator.

Note that Bode indicates he was interested in the development of sound modification by means of a device with several modules, research which would later influence both Robert Moog and Don Buchla in their development of the modular synthesizer. Bode did not invent the ring modulator, however, which was a device developed for applications in single-sideband (SSB) modulation. (SSB modulation was used early on with long distance telephone lines as part of a technique known as “frequency-division multiplexing” which allowed several voice channels to be sent along a single circuit.) Back then, though, in the early 1930s when long distance telephone service was being developed, it wasn't known as a ring modulator:

The ring modulator was at the time [ca. 1959-60] relatively little known sound modification device, mainly used in single-sideband communication systems. The main reason was that up to the mid- or late 1950s it was known as a switching circuit, which would have sounded too harsh to be usable for sound modification. It was only after ring modulators were built with diodes, which operate in the square law region of their transfer function (as was the case with certain germanium diodes), that they started to perform as four-quadrant multipliers and became musically interesting.

In technical terms, a ring modulator (named as such because the electronic circuit is shaped like a ring) is an analog sound modification system that takes two inputs, one a signal and the other a carrier frequency, and produces a single output. The signal is normally a wave form produced by the output from a microphone (e.g., a voice), while the carrier signal is normally a sine wave. The function of the ring modulator is to produce the sum and difference frequencies of the signal and carrier. In layman's terms, a ring modulator produces a spectrum of noise, or what Karlheinz Stockhausen, here, refers to as “colored noise.”

It was probably electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s use of the ring modulator that inspired an entire generation of rock musicians. Stockhausen’s Mixture (1964), for example, was written for a ring modulated symphony orchestra. In this electronic composition, the orchestra is divided into five groups (wind, brass, two groups of strings, percussion) and individually mic’ed, each group fed to a separate ring modulator. Stockhausen’s next work using the ring modulator was Mikrophonie II (1965; 14:52), composed “for choir, Hammond organ and ring modulators.” In the liner notes to the Columbia Masterworks LP containing Mikrophonie I and Mikrophonie II (MS7355), the composer wrote:

Mikrophonie II offered the possibilities, as does purely electronic music, to compose with a scale of sounds ranging from natural to synthetic, from familiar (nameable) to unfamiliar (unnamable) ones. The ‘what’ (the material) is not separable from the ‘how’ (the forming). I would never have composed as I did, had the ‘what’ of this process not had very specific characteristics which lead to a specific ‘how.’ For example, when one uses ring modulation, one must compose particular kinds of structures - simple superimpositions, many tones of long duration, not-too-rapidly moving layers - since ring modulators create dense symmetrical spectra from simple material, and this can easily lead to an overweight of noise or a stereotyped coloring of the sounds. . . . the transformation of the choral sound in Mikrophonie II has many gradations, that often untransformed layers are found mixed with more or less transformed layer, and that there is a transition from natural to synthetic sound, and vice versa.

Hence, for Stockhausen, live performance was a form of engineering, a process by which sounds were made, not “captured.” Although the ring modulator is often associated with the synthetic voice of the Daleks in the long-running Dr. Who television series (in which the ring modulator, in other words, is used to simulate the synthesized voice of the robot, the simulation of a simulation) there have been some memorable uses of the device by rock musicians following Stockhausen’s rule regarding the inseparability of the what from the how.

Sonic Samples Of The Ring Modulator:

Jeff Beck - With The Jan Hammer Group Live (1977)
Billy Cobham - “Snoopy's Search/Red Baron” Spectrum (1973)
Jerry Garcia (The Grateful Dead) - “That’s It For the Other One” Anthem of the Sun (1968)
Jan Hammer (The Mahavishnu Orchestra) - “Vital Transformation” The Inner Mounting Flame (1971)
Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath) - “Paranoid” Paranoid (1970)
Jon Lord (Deep Purple) - Machine Head (1972)
Gordon Marron (The United States of America) - “The Garden of Earthly Delights” The United States of America (1968)
Bob Mothersbaugh (Devo) - “Too Much Paranoias” Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978)
Bob Mothersbaugh (Devo) - “Mechanical Man (Booji Boy Version)” Mechanical Man EP (1978)
Ozzy Osbourne (Black Sabbath) - “Planet Caravan” Paranoid (1970)

Clues and Contradictions: Where's John Lennon's White Rolls Royce? Part Two

In the second of two parts, guest blogger Eric Roberts continues his summary of the search for the whereabouts of John Lennon's White Rolls Royce (EUC 100C) that has taken much of our time the past few months.



2: NEW LEADS

A few days before Christmas just last month, Stephen Tebo kindly furnished the following information about the Phantom V Rolls Royce in his collection of classic cars:

I purchased the car on January 24, 1999 at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale, Arizona. It was lot #694. Hope this helps.

Seeking confirmation, I found an article published in the New York Times' Automobiles section in mid-February 1999 which shed some light on the matter:

An enormous 1965 Rolls-Royce Phantom V limousine - with a rare left-hand-drive configuration - brought $115,500, more than twice what these behemoths normally fetch. The car's providence [sic] was extraordinary, however, in that it had a double-Beatle history. John Lennon, the original owner, sold it to Richard Starkey - better known as Ringo Starr.

At the bottom of the page was the following correction:

Correction: February 15, 1999,  Monday A picture caption with the Collecting column on the Automobiles page on Jan. 29, about an auction of cars once owned by celebrities, referred incorrectly to one of two Rolls-Royce limousines associated with the Beatles. The car to the left of the caption was indeed once sold to Ringo Starr by John Lennon, and was sold last month for $115,500. But the one shown beneath the caption, with all four Beatles standing in front of it, was a different car. A former manager of the Beatles, Allen Klein, says he bought that car from John Lennon and still owns it.

Find the complete article about the 1999 car auction here. The picture referred to in the news article correction, of the Rolls with all four Beatles standing in front of it, is shown below.

So where does this bombshell leave us? The suggestion is that Stephen Tebo does indeed own John Lennon's (left-hand drive) white 1965 Phantom V. However . . . EUC 100C was right-hand drive, and appears to be the property of the late Alan Klein, or was in the late-1990s. Below are detailed views of Stephen Tebo's '65 Phantom V. Notice that it is left-hand drive. (Click on image to enlarge.)

Detailed views of Stephen Tebo's '65 Phantom V

Another piece of the puzzle came to light when I found a downloadable clip of EUC 100C on ITN's news archive site (Clip 63 of 65 / Ref:  S17051001 2 65013). The short video is accompanied by an explanatory note which reads as follows:

19.12.1985 - UK: A white Phantom Five Rolls Royce which once belonged to the late rock star, John Lennon, is expected to fetch half a million pounds when it goes on sale at Christie's tonight.

Subsequently, I learned that the bidding failed to meet the reserve price and Lennon's white Rolls Royce was withdrawn from auction. This raises the question: if John & Yoko's Phantom V was captured on television in London in December 1985, what are we to make of the reported sighting of EUC 100C in a New York garage in 1977? (See The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After the Break-Up 1970-2001)

One possible scenario is that when John and Yoko moved to New York in the early-70s, rather than ship EUC 100C over from England and have it converted to left-hand drive, they bought an identical 1965 Rolls Royce already modified for American roads. It may have been this second, left-hand drive Phantom V that was sighted in New York in late-1977 and, in January 1999, purchased by Stephen Tebo.

Then, a few days ago, Sam received an unexpected email from someone claiming to know who the current owner is. Tantalizingly, the message assured Sam that John & Yoko's famous Roller is “alive and well” and “still in England." Perhaps, in the next post, we may be able to reveal the true whereabouts of EUC 100C. In the meantime, we eagerly await further communication.

For a list of previous threads on this topic, click here.

PART TWO OF TWO PARTS