Update January 15, 2023: Matt Traum from Patchman Music helped us by typing out the scanned interview Thank you Matt! The full text can be found right below the scanned pages.
In January 89, this interview/article was published in Keyboard (US) Magazine. It covers the release of Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’ created by Wendy Carlos and Weird Al Yankovic. Well…most of the musical credits go to Wendy Carlos, and Yankovic contributes a few Accordion fills.






What’s the Strangest Artistic Collaboration You Can Think Of?
By Wendy Carlos
SURELY YOU’VE HEARD IT ON THE radio these past few weeks: The familiar ambling theme of young Peter, the ominous low fanfare announcing the presence of the Wolf, Peter’s grandfather captured in the grumpy rumble of a bassoon… Bob the janitor wheezing on his accordion. Yes, it’s the gang from Prokofiev’s Peter And The Wolf, back for another round of seasonal airplay, along with a few new characters conjured up by Wendy Carlos and “Weird Al” Yankovic on their rearrangement of the classic holiday tale.
Though Carlos and Yankovic may seem as likely a match as Arthur Rubinstein and Spike Jones, their collaboration [available on CBS, FM 44567— good luck finding it in the Carlos, Yankovic, and/or Prokofiev bins] proves a delectable success. Yankovic’s wacko take-off on the Peter story is at times echoed, at times balanced, by Carlos’ electronic artistry. Her orchestration alternates between faithful adherence to and playful departures from the score; whether duplicating the ensemble strings on Peter’s motif, or adding a kittenish yowl to the clarinet theme for “Louie” the cat, Carlos’ ear is right on the money.
The flip side offers another treat: A new work based on Saint-Saens’ Carnival Of The Animals. Inspired by Yankovic’s paeans to cockroaches, iguanas, vultures, amoebas, and other beasts somehow neglected in the original Ogden Nash text, Carlos concocts appropriate accompaniments, which, like her earlier reworkings of pieces by Bach, Handel, and other strait-laced masters, remind us that a dollop of whimsy does wonders even for the most ambitious works. (Check out the William Tell excerpt in her portrait of the lowly snail.)
Aside from the glimpse they offer into Carlos’ sense of the musical absurd, Peter and Carnival are notable as first forays into MIDI sequencing. Both projects were mixed down via MIDI as well. They also mark her first recorded use of sampling. Though the Kurzweil 150 and Yamaha RX5 sounds used here were not Carlos’ dedicated samples, the artistry at weaving them together is entirely hers.
Yankovic contributes a few accordion fills in Peter, but the musical credit in both works belongs mainly to Carlos. So it was with some surprise that, when we called Wendy to arrange for an exclusive interview, she informed us that one had already been done and it was on its way to us. Here’s what we got.
—BD
It’s with some embarrassment that we print the following interview. It was originally recorded just prior to the release of Wendy’s latest record, a collaboration with Al Yankovic. Thanks to some high-amplitude power surges in New York due to the summer brownouts, the cassette recorder got zapped by stray collapsing magnetic fields. The result was that all out-of-phase information got canceled out, including the voice (and, unfortunately, identity) of the interviewer. Fortunately, we were able to retrieve the audio recorded in front of the stereo mikes, which included Ms. Carlos’ answers. They are presented here, sans the question, which will be simply indicated by a Q: =============? Our apologies to all.
Q: =============?
No, I guess not. But I’m glad you could make it. Like something to drink?
Q: =============?
It’s due out in another three weeks.
Q: =============?
No, actually the head of CBS Masterworks approached both of us at the same time. If either of us had said, “No,” that would have been that. He said that we were really the only two people CBS thought could do it, although the idea for the project was all theirs.
Q: =============?
Well, the first thing I got was a first draft of some ideas from Al for Peter And The Wolf. The second side of the album hadn’t been decided on then.
Q: =============?
No, we met before either of us actually agreed to collaborate. We hit it off right away. He’s a very intelligent, easy-to-take guy.
Q: =============?
[Laughs] That’s a very good question. No, I hadn’t thought about that. I don’t think we should, at least not in a national family magazine.
Q: =============?
Yeah, but I hadn’t even heard the original Prokofiev since I was a kid. How long since you last heard it?
Q: =============?
Funny, that’s what most of our friends said when I told them I was thinking about doing it. I guess a lot of us cherish this as one of the best of our childhood musical memories. I was quite surprised by the enthusiasm.
Q: =============?

That’s just the problem: How could we add something hopefully new and valid, and yet not take away any of the original’s charm and wonder? Also, I kept asking myself how I could still make Prokofiev’s original point—teaching some elementary orchestration awareness for children and non-musician adults alike— when I would be using my LSI Philharmonic, and not a traditional orchestra. I’m not sure that it would have been possible a few years ago, when all we had were filtered sawtooths, ring-modulated pulse waves, and that sort of stuff.
Q: =============?
Most of my sounds are still from the Synergies and MuLogix Slave 32’s, and a lot from the underrated but powerful Kurzweil 150. I feel the 150 is one of the best examples of why pure synthesis will or should prove to be the ultimate way to go. Some of the non-tonal percussion came from a Yamaha RX5. Ironically, I have a full percussion battery in the MuLogix that’s excellent. But with only three Slave 32s, each with four voices maximum, there simply weren’t enough for a full orchestral MIDI project like this.
At the last minute Kurzweil sent us their new 1000 SX and HX boxes. They’re much more versatile than I’d realized, and a bit of outboard EQ to roll off the boosted 3-8kHz region makes them real quiet too. They proved to be very helpful in sweetening the strings and heavy brass I’d already generated— the mix of the two was better than either was alone. A lot of people are doing that more and more.
With “Weird Al” Yankovic (upper L) doing the libretto, and Wendy Carlos brewing up a satirical score, even Prokofiev and Saint-Saens aren’t safe. Joined by Siamese companions Subi and Pica, Carlos takes five in her studio (clockwise from foreground): Kurzweil MIDIboard, effects rack (top to bottom: JL Cooper Mixmate, Yamaha RX5, drawer holding Fairlight Voicetracker, Axxess Mapper, Datamatrix SMPTE generator, JL Cooper 8-channel MIDI-to-CV trigger conversion box), an even taller rack (top to bottom: two MuLogix Slave 32s, Southworth Jambox, JL Cooper MSB Plus, two T.C. Electronic equalizers, Aphex Aural Exciter, Tascam line mixer, JL Cooper Expression Pius, Kurzweil 150), Finale software resting atop two Synergies, Macintosh with Data Desk 101 keyboard.
How about Wendy Carlos and Weird Al Yankovic playing Prokofiev and updating Saint-Saens?
Q: =============?
No, all of it is in the good ol’ UL- and FCC-approved equal-tempered scale. This turned out to be a big learning project for me in a lot of other ways… One thing at a time, puhleeze. Anyway, that’s the way Prokofiev wrote it, and since my parody arrangement, not to mention the wholly original Carnival Of The Animals, Part II, can be played by a standard orchestra, the scale had to be the ET.
Q: =============?
This is the first record I ever made where everything was totally sequenced. It really felt peculiar not to have both the good and bad realities of using a tape recorder, physical tape moving, the habits of a lifetime.
“How could I make Prokofiev’s original point- teaching elementary orchestration awareness- without using a traditional orchestra?”
Q: =============?
No, I played it all out as I always have: note-by-note, part-by-part, but this one went even better. The tempo didn’t have to be only full speed or half, nothing in between. In fact, with [Mark of the Unicorn’s] Performer, it could be anything at all, and I didn’t have to worry about ritards and accelerandos, or even staying in step with Al’s adaptation, which ended up being longer than the original more often than not. Anyhow, all that could be taken care of later, when just like a conductor I could shade and shape the tempi and phrasings to match Al’s recordings. This sort of “have your cake and eat it too” thing couldn’t have been done much before now. So while playing in the instruments, I could usually find the most comfortable speed for each particular part. It was a great feeling. I think that comfort shows up in the performance too. And yes, I stayed away from quantizing. I didn’t like the mechanical or non-human feel it gave. So instinct dictated the placement of the notes. There’s really a lot of slop factor in there, and I love it.
Q: =============?
Al did several rewrites of the script, well before I had the time to start work, and each one got better and better. He’d send them to me, and I’d make little marginal notes— “Howdahek wegonnado that?” and so forth— and return it. Then a few days later a new version would arrive with the problems worked out, quite a few suggestions taken, and a confident plea that the rest would work out given the chance. In the end he was right. We didn’t get together again until the end. The rest was done by mail and phone calls. Not ideal, but we made it work.
“This is the first record I ever made where everything was sequenced, It felt really peculiar.”
Q: =============?
No, the original flip side was to be— hold on to your hat— Tubby The Tuba! But for some reason it fell through— outside of CBS’s control, whatever. And they suggested Saint-Saens’ Carnival as the pairing.
Q: =============?
We talked about doing just that, but the idea was a little too safe for either of our tastes. We were trying to find more of a contrast. I wanted to play off the burlesques of our massive tinkerings with Peter with something more whimsical. So I asked Al if he’d write a few new oddball animal poems, and I’d do some sort of music for them, to add to the original Carnival, perk it up with a few surprises. The next thing I knew, he had sent me three fine Ogden Nashian poems. They were really neat, humorous, witty inspirations for music, and I began to compose some ideas right away, after calling and saying, “Bravo! More, more!”
Q: =============?
That’s right. Gradually his new verses replaced the original, and we ended up deciding to make it a completely original work, a sort of “Part Two” to the venerable original. We named it just that. Al finished what became most of the poems and list of sections, while I began to compose in earnest. He then went into an L.A. recording studio to record the narration— all as he was under great pressure to leave for a long concert tour.
Later I realized a few things were missing to balance the piece, mostly for musical reasons. So I asked him to add a couple of more critters to the work. He responded quickly, read them the next day over the phone, then recorded them, and they got included. I composed my first blues, which worked out very well, and tried a lot of other musical forms I hadn’t touched in a lot of years. It was really fun, and quite liberating in a special way. Al and his manager/film director, Jay Levey, also went about collecting a lot of the sound effects for later, when I could marry them to the narration, and finally the music.
Q: =============?
Well, that’s when all the fun began. I had been doing a lot of “prebuilding” of the processing steps within Performer. As a beta tester for Mark Of The Unicorn, I was lucky to be able to feedback with them and Roy Groth, the programmer, was most helpful. Then we got a Lefco Prodigy [accelerator] board installed into our studio Mac, and was that ever a saga. To make the story short, though, with the help of John Jensen, a computer artist/engineer who helped us beyond belief, we finally got it all going. Even the latest versions of Performer at that time wouldn’t work with the interrupt structure of the fast 68020 chip. Fortunately we could still run the Mac as a 68000 machine.
Q: =============?
This was in early October, through Christmas, mostly 10-14 hours a day, seven days a week. And that way through to the end, with two brief periods off for other reasons. Finally Roy found a way to make Performer compatible. But there was a flurry of phone calls and mail before that happened. Things started to sound pretty weird, and I don’t mean Al.
Q: =============?
No, this wasn’t even close to MIDI “clog.” It happened much sooner. You should’ve heard the way the start of Carnival’s “Finale” sounded. I had to turn off half the orchestra just to work. But Roy and the team at MOTU made Performer at least 60 percent faster, still on the 68000 chip. And once we got a running 68020 version, it really flew. I’ve had no problems since, even during simultaneous SMPTE lock with dense sections. But for the first two months, fear and trembling accompanied each newly added note, waiting for the floor to sag.
Q: =============?
Then you’re like me— I really enjoy beta-testing, and this year have become involved with Coda and its Finale program. Once Finale has a little time to polish itself out, it, and other similar pioneering systems, will have a major impact on the way we do all sorts of music— acoustic, electronic, or anywhere in between. It may take longer than what the “instant gratification set” thinks is a reasonable amount of time, but this is compelling, heady stuff.
Q: =============?
Thanks. That essential detail comes thanks to Jim Cooper. Without him my MIDI music would have sounded very wooden and inexpressive. I’ve always used a lot of expression working to tape. From the modular Moog system to the latest digital devices, they all got filtered through my little submixer’s volume and tone controls. That plus touch sensitivity is how I’ve tried to get my musical lines to breathe, not unlike a string or wind player. To me, both are essential— the missing ingredients Bob Moog had to invent before I would do SOB [Switched-On Bach]. I couldn’t have made this record as expressive as it is without Cooper making me a custom version of his Expression Plus. Just before the final mix, we got a new Mix-Mate, which has, again thanks to a last-minute addition he made, the ability to decode eight simultaneous MIDI voices originally played with the Expression+, and with improved audio quality. It literally arrived here the day before I absolutely needed it. I quickly read the manual. And then, blam! Off we went. It worked like a charm too.
Q: =============?
No, unfortunately my dear old Synergies and MuLogix units all came a bit too early in MIDIdom to have any awareness of MIDI controller 7 [volume]. Ditto the K150. So it has to be done externally. All the newer Yamaha gear, the Kurzweil 1000s and many others, now respond to MIDI volume commands, which is a blessing.
“I stayed away from quantizing, so there’s a lot of slop factor. And I love it”
Q: =============?
Oh, yeah. The duck’s quack and the cat’s meow were just little conceits, bits of business that I couldn’t pass up. They’re done with one of the modular Moog 904As [a lowpass VCF] hooked up to a control output on the Expression+. Jim gave me a way to modify it along with the internal VCAs. The unit went back and forth quite a few times as we tried to find the optimum match between the output data speed and the slew time of the VCAs. So the 904A got controlled by the Mac, and one of the MuLogix units supplied the pitch, which was bent to suggest the funny duck and cat sounds. Something old, something new.
Q: =============?
No, that’s all done inside Performer. While I’m still hoping MOTU and Roy will eventually add an alternative graphic display to make aligning events in time easier, this is still the Cadillac music storage and edit environment. Although I think Bill Southworth’s MidiPaint is wonderful in other ways. They make all the older ways of working seem crude and only approximate by comparison.
Q: =============?
That’s the “bargain with the devil” side of this power. When you find out you can go in there and make sure every note in that glissando, every grace note, every note of every big chord play at exactly the right moment in time and at the perfect volume, you can’t let go until you get it perfect, whatever that means.
Q: =============?
Well is it really so surprising? If all the notes of an ensemble or polyphonic instrument chord start at precisely the same moment, the result is that the ear loses its ability to hear it as a chord played by an ensemble. The illusion of some huge sort of single timbre is heard instead. That’s why the best ensemble ultimately needs those tiny inaccuracies to register optimally on the ear, or everything begins to thicken. You don’t hear it properly.
Q: =============?
In a funny way, the timing on this project could not have been better. At the NYC MacExpo in May I met Paul Rochon and then Bill Southworth, and saw the magic JamBox/4+. We went out and bought one of the first available. If there’s any occasional problem, would you believe, it’s with its power and cleverness. That can make it too touchy to use as the main MIDI interface. I now have a simple no-frills Apple MIDI box for all inputs and the main 16 outputs. The JamBox/4+ is on the auxiliary 16 outs, simultaneously the source of all Mac SMPTE lock-ups, thanks to Performer’s direct sync mode, and tricky stuff, via its desk accessory. Direct lock-up with a JamBox is the way to go, because it’s nearly instantaneous, and everything else seems slow by comparison. A JamBox and a couple of [Axxess] Mappers can do about anything mere musical mortals and MIDI may dream up.
Q: =============?
No, CBS seems very excited by this project. Why?
Q: =============?
This time I think we’ll get that kind of coverage and promotion. They’ve told us that it will probably be their main end-of-the-year Christmas release on Masterworks this year.
Q: =============?
Oh, yes, I couldn’t resist getting in all those parodies of all sorts of things. Serious music can have a funnybone in it too. I think the contra bassoon oomph oomph oomph in the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is a real chuckle. The categories seem to be falling, don’t you think? Recent audiences want the depth that only the big musical forms and forces can provide, and they’re not so inhibited to hide their reactions.
Q: =============?
Despite all the time and horror tales, it really was a divertimento for me, a chance to step back from all that other stuff I seem to be driven to explore, and to learn some important new techniques while at it. And who’s to say what ultimately is most important? Don’t forget, Saint-Saens is best remembered today for the original Carnival, which he kept for friends and children, deliberately hidden from his publisher and audience until he died. I’m rather proud of the way our new one turned out. But in those days people were a bit more intolerant in some ways.
It’s exactly 20 years since Switched-On Bach came out. Given the current enthusiasm at CBS, and given Al’s successes, maybe they’ll give the target audience a chance on this one. But you never know, it’s always a crap shoot. You know, give it your best shot, and with luck, as the poet says, the rest is history.
Ms. Carlos asked us to credit Steve Martin for providing the inspiration for this interview.
For further reading.
Previous interviews with or articles by Wendy Carlos can be found in the Dec. 79, Nov. ’82, June ’85, and June ’87 issues of Keyboard; Carlos was also featured on our Dec. ’84 and Nov. ’86 Soundpages. Yankovic was interviewed in our Dec. ’87 cover story on the accordion.
KEYBOARD/JANUARY 1989