Snowflakes Are Dancing

Overview

The use of the term tone paintings here describes the nature of a large portion of Debussy's work which was concerned with mood and colour, eschewing traditional tonality in favour of constructions such as the full-tonal scale, parallel chords, bitonality, and to a certain extent atonality, in order to achieve a greater degree of musical expression not allowed by strict adherence to a single key. Thus, the term tone painting is quite appropriate, in that Debussy's compositions often experimented with a much broader palette of tones, allowing each to behave similar to a colour within an illustration.

The album is considered an early example of proto-synthesizer-pop. It sparked a "revolution in synthesizer programming" which it was responsible for taking to new heights. The album's contributions to electronic music included an ambience resembling a symphony orchestra, the use of reverberation, the use of phasing and flanging to create a spatial audio effect with stereo speakers, electronic surround sound using four speakers, realistic string simulations, portamento whistles, and abstract bell-like sounds created using ring modulation. A particularly significant achievement was its polyphonic sound, which was created without the use of any polyphonic synthesizers (which were not yet commercially released). Tomita created the album's polyphonic sounds by recording selections one part at a time, taking 14 months to produce the album. The modular human whistle sounds used would also be copied in the presets of later electronic instruments.

The track "Arabesque No. 1" was used from 1976 to 2011 as the theme music for the PBS astronomy-based program Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler (later Jack Horkheimer: Star Gazer); however, its use as the theme was discontinued when the show was revamped as Star Gazers. In Japan during the late 70s, parts of the track "Reverie" were used for the opening and closing of Fuji TV's transmissions.

Side A

1. "Snowflakes Are Dancing" – 2:10
2. "Reverie" – 4:44
3. "Gardens in the Rain" – 3:41
4. "Clair de lune" – 5:48
5. "Arabesque No. 1" – 3:57

Side B

1. "The Engulfed Cathedral" – 6:18
2. "Passepied" – 3:17
3. "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair" – 3:25
4. "Golliwog's Cakewalk" – 2:50
5. "Footprints in the Snow" – 4:30

Bonus track (2000 CD release)

11. "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun" – 10:18 (from the 1975 album Firebird)

The title track appears to be a mistranslation back into English of an other-language (probably Japanese) version of Debussy's original title, The Snow Is Dancing (Debussy used English titles for most of pieces in his Children's Corner suite).

Recording

The album sleeve names the recording hardware used by Tomita to create the work.

Moog synthesizer

One 914 extended range fixed filter bank

Two 904-A voltage-controlled low-pass filters

One 904-B voltage-controlled high-pass filter

One 904-C filter coupler

One 901 Voltage-controlled oscillator

Three 901-A oscillator controllers

Nine 901-B oscillators

Four 911 envelope generators

One 911-A dual-trigger delay

Five 902 voltage-controlled amplifiers

One 912 envelope follower

One 984 four-channel mixer

One 960 sequential controller

Two 961 interfaces

One 962 sequential switch

Two 950 keyboard controllers

One 6401 Bode ring modulator

Tape recorders

One Ampex MM-1100 16-track

One Ampex AG-440 4-track

One Sony TC-9040 4-track

One Teac A-3340S 4-track

One Teac 7030GSL 2-track

Mixers

Two Sony MX-16 8-channel mixers

Two Sony MX-12 6-channel mixers

Accessories

One AKG BX20E Echo unit

One Eventide Clockworks "Instant Phaser"

Two Binson Echorec "2" units

One Fender "Dimension IV"

One Mellotron