Athan Billias

Interview by Brian Cowell

Over the years we see a lot of great products that come from the many music manufacturers. When you think of companies like KORG and YAMAHA, you know you are talking about companies that create many truly innovative products. From the M1 to the MOTIF, to the foundations of the Korg KARMA, there has been one key element in them all: Athan Billias. From his early days as a Product Specialist at KORG, to being currently Director of Marketing for Technology Products at YAMAHA and a board member of the MMA, Athan Billias has had a long and creative history in the music industry.

Sonikmatter had a chance to catch up with Athan (commonly known on the MOTIFATOR website as "Yamaha USA", and got a rundown of what he does on a day to day basis.

SONIK : How did you get involved in the music industry?

ATHAN : I've been playing piano since I was a little kid and been in professional bands since age 13. I was really lucky in that the university I went to (Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.) had an unbelievable world music program. I was able to study African ensemble drumming, Jazz composition, South Indian music theory and Electronic music all in the same place.

After college I was a professional musician for ten years playing different bands all over the US including the Source with Jerry Martini from Sly and the Family Stone. Playing live was great, but the lifestyle can get to you. I had been on the road for about three years straight constantly living in hotels. I woke up in the middle of the night and had no idea what town or state I was in. So I went downstairs to the front desk and said to the night auditor behind the counter: "Sorry, I play in a traveling band and I can't get back to sleep without knowing what state I'm in". Without blinking an eye he said 'Hell son, that's easy… You're in a state of total confusion." So I decided then and there to get off the road.

I went back to my hometown and worked at a retail store (E. U. Wurlitzer's in Boston) for several years as the keyboard department manager and then the sales manager. Then I became a partner in a 24 track-recording studio. This gave me a chance to develop some recording and mixing skills. But we were putting all our money into the studio, working 70 hours a week and barely making any money. So when a job working at Korg as a product specialist came up I jumped at the chance.

Even then I had no idea how much my life would change in the next year. Within six months of joining Korg USA, I went to Korg Inc. in Japan. It was supposed to be a three-month stay to work on the PCM waves for the M1. Going to Japan completely changed my life. I don't know what it was about it, but I felt at home immediately and started studying the language. I stayed another three months working for Korg USA because we were still in the middle of the M1 development. Then at the end of the six months, Korg Inc. offered me the job of product planning/sound design manager for Korg Inc. I believe that I am the only foreigner to ever hold a management level position in product planning in any Japanese music company.

So I moved to Japan and lived there for the next six years. We worked on the T series, 01/W, Wavestation, i3 and X3 during the time I was there (as well as others) and I got to work with and manage some of the best sound designers around (Jack Hotop, John "Skippy" Lehmkuhl, John Bowen, Michele Pacuilli, Steve McNally, Michael Geisel). I was actually the guy who first hired Stephen Kay (Karma developer) at Korg for the 01/w project and when we were working on the i3 sent him a copy of Max that eventually lead him down the road to developing Karma. Lots of great memories of working on those synths.

But after 6 years it was time to head back to the US, so I took a job with Invision Interactive. Steve O'Connell (now president of Bitheadz) and I worked together on the Invision soft synth and on the voicing for the Alesis 6.1 and Q cards.

After a year at Invision (which was already starting to have financial problems and went out of business later) I got a call from Phil Scott at IVL. We had developed the iH harmonizer together when I was at Korg. IVL had just started getting into the Tsushin Karaoke industry. There is a huge industry in Japan based entirely on MIDI. These are the largest most sophisticated ISDN networks in the world that are used for downloading MIDI files to the Karaoke boxes all over Japan. Within a year of joining IVL as the VP of Sales for the multimedia division we had licensed IVL harmony technology to 9 of the 13 companies doing network karaoke, including Sega, JVC, Brother, Ricoh, and Yamaha who does the designs for the largest karaoke maker in Japan- Dai Ichi Kosho. It sounds like a very weird thing, but it was a great job for me as I got to live in Victoria, British Columbia, but go to Japan almost every month. One of the other things that I licensed for IVL was a version of Karma for karaoke.

When Yamaha started looking for a marketing manager here at Buena Park I couldn't resist getting back into my first love synthesizers. So here I am.

SONIK : What do you do at Yamaha on a typical day, and what is your job title Athan?

ATHAN : I currently have three jobs at Yamaha:
- Director of Marketing, Technology Products. This includes Pro Audio, Portable Keyboards, Digital Pianos and Synths for the Pro Audio and Combo division.

- I also took over management of the Digital Content Design Center just before we started development on Motif. DCDC provides the US voicing for synth patches, PCM waves, song demos and styles for all Yamaha Synths, PSR and Clavinova products.

- Last year we started a Digital Products Support group consisting of 6 products specialists and 20 trainer/merchandisers around the US who focus on making sure the Yamaha digital music products like AW digital recorders (as well as the Synths. Pianos and portable keyboards) are well displayed in stores. We also provide training to in-store personnel and do end-user clinics.

So I stay pretty busy. Here is typical day. Get up around 5:30 and log on to www.motifator.com. I am the guy who posts as "Yamaha US" and if I don't get to some posts early in the morning, I will never get to them at all because it gets busy in the office.

Leave for work around 7 am and make a couple of phone calls to the east coast on the way in.

From 8 am-9 am we usually have a business meeting. As the marketing manager, you have responsibility for projecting sales, ordering the product, and making sure that the department makes its monthly sales budget.

9-10 am or later is answering emails, I get about 100-125 emails a day and about half of them require some action on my part. Most of those are Yamaha related, but I'm also on the executive board of the MIDI Manufacturers Association and as the liaison to the AMEI (Ed. Note: link with Japanese characters)-- the Japanese body that controls MIDI in Japan -- I have to stay on top of all the technical discussions as well.

1 am -12 pm, I will have a meeting or two - either with an outside sound designer who is working on a project or someone inside Yamaha who is working on a marketing project. We typically have about 10 different DCDC projects going on simultaneously. Plus marketing managers have to come up with the ad campaigns and marketing programs which takes a good deal of time. At lunchtime, I usually eat at my desk while surfing the net and answering Motifator posts.

From 1-5 is the main part of the day when I need to get as much done as I possibly can. At around 5 pm, I usually will spend an hour communicating with Yamaha Japan. As I speak Japanese, it's a major advantage being able to call on the phone and speak in the native language. In fact from about 4:30 PM on I often answer the phone in Japanese as it is almost always either my wife (who's from Fukuoka) or somebody from Hamamatsu.

I usually get home around 7 pm - eat and relax for a couple of hours, then from about 9 PM to 11 PM either work on new sounds/patterns/songs or post answers to questions on Motifator.

SONIK : Can you tell us about the naming of the MOTIF synthesiser?

ATHAN : The code name for Motif was originally Kangaroo, don't ask me why - I think all the keyboard code names started with K that year. When we started looking for a name, I knew it would probably be up to me. I had thought of the name Motif back when I was working at IVL.

In 1997, when the Korean and Japanese economies took a real downturn, I came up with a plan for an IVL branded line of M1 products. The line was going to be called Motif and the first three products in the plan were Warpfactory (pretty much what it came out as later), Sorcerer (a "Karma" based product that was just a MIDI processor with no tone generator) and one other product. At that time IVL decided they didn't want to do their own product line so I left and went to Yamaha. About a year and half later Electrix hit the market with some of the ideas from my original plan, but a different name. Motif just seemed to really fit the concept of the keyboard we were working on- different musical pieces in the form of MIDI phrases, Arps and audio samples could be easily put together to create works of music. These "Motifs" were the central core of the idea.

SONIK : Do you think that the FS1R would have done better as keyboard model?

ATHAN : No, that was not the problem. The biggest problem is that unfortunately there is only a limited market for truly unique pure synthesis products.

Look at the truly unique products (Wavestation, Oasys card, FS1R, VL70M, etc.) and you will see limited sales. Partly this is because they are unique, they are also a little more difficult for the average user to understand. Yamaha has done more than any other manufacturer to develop and bring to market new synthesis technologies (Formant synthesis, VL, FM and we were also one of the first companies to develop physically-modelled analog synthesis).

Now take a look at all the supposedly cool software synths and what are they? - copies of 20 year-old technology and really nothing new. Sure they look cool and have nice UIs, but they are not that innovative. The ones that are innovative like Absynth and Storm have smaller sales. So the market votes with its pocket book. Next time there is a unique product introduced go out a buy it. Then companies will be more willing to take risks and develop new technologies.

SONIK : How different is the American market to the European one?

ATHAN : The market is different for a number of reasons. In the US we really like 88-note weighted-action keyboards. We are very pianocentric here. Also the impact and effect of the worship market in the US can't possibly be underestimated. The other difference is the use of software synthesizers.

The European market has embraced these to a much greater degree, especially on the non-professional side. But in the end a good sound in New York is a good sound in Hamburg or Paris. The fundamental needs of people all over the world are pretty similar and it is in the content and marketing that products get localized. If you look at popular music around the world and the billboard charts, there is not really that great a difference in the top 10 records worldwide.

SONIK : What forms of synthesis do you think need to be explored more?

ATHAN : I think that physical modeling still has potential and so does Formant Synthesis. There are some interesting things left to do with the synthesis and the human voice. There are a lot interesting programs around that allow you to design your synth. But what is really frustrating is that people complain that there is no progress and everything is just PCM playback. Then when we come out with something like the FS1r, which was totally unique and made totally different sounds, it doesn't sell well and has to be blown out.

Look at the Korg Oasys card. Great innovative product, and it ended up getting blown out. What is successful?

Some of the things people seem to think are innovative are really just imitations of really old synths and instruments. For example, the Nord and Novation lines, Reason (a Roland Tr series imitation essentially), B4 (Hammond imitation), Pro 5 (a Prophet 5 imitation), and lately FM7 (a DX 7 imitation) do not have anything new as far as synthesis is concerned.

Truly new synth technologies have not been commercially successful and that makes it very hard to make the case for truly innovative products. Fortunately Yamaha is a very technology-driven company so we are still doing very core research in a number of synth areas and will continue to try and push the envelope when possible.

SONIK : Is there any funny things that you've seen happen in the music industry?

ATHAN : There was one NAMM show in Chicago in 1984 or 1985. It had all these weird high-end Synths that never came to market like the $80,000 Prism featuring bubble memory. Anyway there was a huge booth to promote the Synthia. This was a prototype of a huge additive synth developed by Dupont. Some engineer at Dupont had convinced the company to invest a huge amount of money in developing the "next big thing". So here was this really geeky engineer guy and two accountants from Dupont with this weird-looking keyboard attached to a PC. I was the buyer for E. U. Wurlitzer's at the time so I politely asked how much it was and what it sounded like. The guy replied that it was $100,000 and it didn't actually have any presets except for one badly programmed accordion. Dupont thought that if they came to the NAMM show there would be lots of musicians who would make nice sounds for them for free. That's when I realized that it is the software content (i.e. sounds) that drives the sales of musical instruments, not the hardware.

Anyway the funny thing is that one of the Ash family was standing behind me and in a really loud voice with a thick New York accent screamed across the NAMM floor "Hey Richie, you gotta see this, Dupont has a $100,000 dollar synth that sounds just like a $99 dollar Casio!" Dupont never showed the prototype again at a show and never entered the synth market.

SONIK : The MIDI protocol hasn't really changed much since the 1980s, and XMIDI never saw the light of day; Where do you see MIDI in the future?

ATHAN : I am on the executive board of the MMA so this is a very important subject to me. First, there have been some pretty significant additions to the protocol since the 1980s. MIDI Machine Control, Standard MIDI Files, the protocols for DLS 1 and 2 Logo, and most recently the two specifications for using MIDI in cell phones. But a lot of these additions allowed MIDI to move into different markets.

Recently we have made it clear that MIDI is not the 5 Pin DIN cable. MIDI is protocol and can run on a number of different physical transport layers including Firewire (mlan), USB, and serial host connectors. Having said that we really need to start working on a MIDI 2.0.

We are starting a project called "20 to 2.0". MIDI will be twenty years old in 2003. We need to work to get funding to develop a protocol that will take us through the next 20 years. I believe that this Musical Instrument Digital Interface needs to take into account both audio and something like current MIDI; it needs to be bi-directional, define a higher level of connectivity and be much easier to use.

Some of the ideas we have talked about are instrument-specific messages. MIDI 1.0 works okay for keyboards, but not as well for describing the attributes of something like a saxophone or guitar. I think you could have a protocol that would have specific messages to virtually describe different real instruments. In any case, until we solve the problem of funding nothing will get done, and as a member of the exec board that's the first challenge. Everyone has used and abused MIDI 1.0 for 20 years without ever paying money and for the most part without companies or end users contributing anything back.

We are thinking of some simple ideas to raise money even if it's just a T-shirt that says, "I'm a Certified MIDIOT" or something. AMEI, the Japanese organization for MIDI has certification tests that they give to end users and charge a fee for certification. I also think that we should open the MMA to educational institutions and get universities involved in the research and development of the next level of specs.

SONIK : What products did you work on at KORG?

ATHAN : I was the head of both product planning and sound design for professional products at Korg from 1988-1992 . Then we split the Sound Design group off into a separate department. So I worked on every product that Korg made during that time. Of course, highlights were the M1, the 01/W and the i3.

We worked on the M1 when I was first in Japan and first working for Korg so it was really exciting. The 01/w was a huge challenge because we knew we had to follow up on the M1. The 01/w was the first Korg project that Stephen Kay worked on. I had arranged to license a library of Fairlight sounds that Stephen had worked on.

Then the i3 was interesting because Stephen, a Japanese engineer named Igoshi -san and myself got to design Korg's auto accompaniment system. It was a pretty interesting project from a technical point of view. I had asked Stephen to work on the project, but at first he said, "No way, I'm not interested in auto accompaniment".

So I sent a copy of Max to Stephen with the world's simplest Max patch in it. Then I didn't hear from him for about two months. He had gotten totally absorbed in Max and duplicated the entire i3 system as a Max patch. It was out of his work on the i3 that he began thinking about the things that would eventually become Karma.

But the i3 also has some sad memories for me. There were 5 people who were really involved with the i3. Stephen, Igoshi-san, Micheal Filigreabe, the head of marketing for Music Meyer in Germany and a young guy in the Korg planning department named Hashida-san. I left Korg in 1994 soon after the release of the i3.

Within a year three of the five people in the i3 team would pass away. Micheal Filigreabe was killed in a car accident; Hashida-san fell down a flight of steps at product release and hit his head and never regained consciousness; Igoshi-san worked on the MOSS board and then discovered he had stomach cancer. He passed away about 6 months later. It was almost spooky that all those people from that project passed away so young (none of them was 40) and so close together (all within 18 months).

But most of my memories are happy and it was great experience working with the MIDI Patch Boys (Michele Pacuilli, Michel Geisle, Steve McNally, Jack Hotop, John Lemhkuhl, Ben Dowling, John Bowen). Plus there were some great people I worked with in Japan. One of the nice things about our industry is that although we are competitive, we can also get together and hang out.

Especially sound designers have tremendous respect for each other's work and will often check out a new piece of gear, recognize a really great sound and seek out the person who created it to compliment them.

Now I get a chance to work with Scott Plunkett, Dave Polich, Arnie Schulze, Manny Fernandez, Ray Legnini, Scott Peer and even sometimes some weird guy from Australia named Brian (Cowell). It's still challenging, creative, a lot of work and a lot of fun.

SONIK : What is your view of the "software vs. hardware" debate?

ATHAN : I don't think there is a "software vs. hardware" issue. Here is why… there is no such thing as a software-only product. Does a VST "Soft" synth PLG run only on software? No, that's impossible. The VST soft synth is a software program that runs on a certain hardware platform. That hardware happens to be a widely adopted platform that is a multi purpose multimedia computer running on an Intel (or better Athlon) processor. It runs on a certain OS (Windows or Mac). And you need to get audio and MIDI control signals in and out of your computer to do anything with this "Software only" solution. So there are lots of hardware issues with software applications.

Look at all the emphasis lately on hardware for software - name some of the cool, new products at the NAMM show and you will come up with the Logic Controller, Oxygen and Pro Tools HE. All hardware for software. Oh yes! and VST system link which is so you can connect more hardware to a system to be able to play more "software only" synths! All software solutions have a large hardware component and all hardware solutions are mostly software (or they will go the way of the Synthia from Dupont!) What has driven the success of every synthesizer keyboard I ever worked on was the software (sounds and user interface) not the color or the type of metal used in the case.

I am reminded of something Chariman Kato from Korg once said in Japanese - "Anybody can build a machine (Kikkai), but we have to build musical instruments (Gakki)."

Software applications are great tools, but I think there are still major advantages to having an integrated keyboard and sounds if you are trying to build a true musical instrument. If you are just doing loops and synths sounds with no velocity it doesn't matter as much, but when you start sound designing for pianos and you have no idea of what keyboard controller will be used to play the sound, it gets very hard to get the level of expressiveness and nuances people have come to expect.

"Mlan" is another good example of how Yamaha is trying to push the integration of hardware and software. Also there will be a major announcement from Yamaha at Messe (March 2002) regarding a new open-industry standard that we will be promoting to further seamless integration between software applications and hardware devices. So it's not us against them, it has to be us and them providing the best and most transparent solutions possible to our customers.

So the issue is not "hardware vs. software", the issue is how to best integrate software and hardware together into a studio that functions smoothly. Motif is a pretty good example. It is software that runs on a very specific hardware platform. It has certain advantages in that the hardware (keyboard, buttons and sounds) are integrated into one package. Yet we understand that people want to use computer tools so it interfaces directly with Cubase, Cakewalk, Logic and Pro Tools to act as remote hardware controllers for these software solutions.

In the long run, I believe that the days of the all-purpose, stand-alone PCs are just as much at risk as the all-purpose stand-alone keyboard workstations. Eventually we will see distributed computing where you will have a digital furnace (a source of raw computing power) somewhere in your home and then application-specific devices (digital musical instruments of various kinds and digital recorders) that take advantage of a number of open standards to utilize the shared CPU power and memory storage that is used for your refrigerator, taxes, and tv/cellphone/internet book thingy. Each digital appliance will have specific functionality for that application.

Currently your home computer is just about as appropriate for making music as your synth workstation is for doing word processing. We need to use specific tools for specific tasks and the best tool for making music is a well-designed musical instrument. The piano interface has stood up pretty well for the last 300 hundred years and probably will for a few hundred more.

SONIK : Who have been your musical influences?

ATHAN : I really like a broad range of music so the influences are really diverse. You never know what you'll find if your riding in my car. It could be Southern all stars (a Japanese Pop band), John Coltrane or Fat Boy Slim. So it really depends on what project I'm working on at the moment. As head of the Digital Content Design Center we work on style data and sounds, so we spend a lot of time listening to references for different musical styles. Currently we are working on some styles where I'm listening to a lot of Snoop Dog and West Coast hip hop, a lot of 70s funk (Parliament, Bootsy Collins) and Los Tigres Del Norte because we are working on Norteño styles. But that changes all the time.

I'm also a sucker for any good pop tune. I mean I really like Lenny Kravitz, Janet Jackson and Ricky Martin records. I think a lot of people in the music instrument business have this elitist attitude that something has to be obscure and esoteric to be good. Not me, I think there is actually a reason why those records get to be number one. They're well recorded and tunes are really well written.

SONIK : What instruments do you have in your own personal studio at home, Athan?

ATHAN : When I had a recording studio I never had a stereo system in my house. After listening to mixes for 10 hours the last thing you want to do is listen to more music. So even though I have worked on a huge number of synths, I don't have a personal studio or collection of synths in my house. I try to leave that stuff at work. I usually have the latest prototype for the new product we are working on. I try to keep it simple at my house, otherwise I'll just work all weekend. Lately I keep a MOTIF at my house so I can answer questions on the weekend on Motifator.com.

SONIK : Which would be the 10 favourite CDs you own?

ATHAN :

• Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (Greatest keyboard lineup of all time.)
• Sly and the Family Stone - Dance to the music (I used to work with Jerry Martini, the sax player in the Family Stone. He played me a tape of the original demo Sly took to the record company. Absolutely unbelievable, very ahead of its time, almost fusion-like. The record company didn't like it so Sly came home right after the meeting, sat down and in about 15 minutes wrote "Sing a Simple Song". Sly was a genius.)
• Steely Dan - A decade of Steely Dan (Great tunes, great production value).
• Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street.
• Prince - Soundtrack to Purple Rain.
• The Jackson Five - ABC (The best pop song ever.)
• Stevie Wonder - At the close of a century (It's got every Stevie tune you could want on it.)
• Aretha Franklin - Lady Soul.
• The Band - Rock of Ages.

SONIK : And in closing, what do you get to in your spare time, Athan?

ATHAN : I jog, play basketball and try to exercise a lot, I read Japanese novels (Murakami is my favorite) and play as much music as I can. I also cook when my wife Keiko gives me the chance. Mostly I try to pace myself, I tend to like working 16 hours a day so I have to really discipline myself to chill out and take the time to relax.

SONIKMATTER : October 2002