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Chris MeyerInterview by Brian Cowell. When you look at the career of Chris Meyer, you can see that he is a man who has forged his way to the top of all the fields he has worked in. From SEQUENTIAL to CYBERMOTION, Chris has carved a unique career in both audio and video (computer titling). Sonikmatter caught up with Chris and got him talking on the industry today and the stuff of yesteryear. Like many of us at Sonikmatter, I have no doubt that you will walk away from this detailed and insightful interview with lots of answers, and probably with a few questions about the current state of the industry. So without further delay, Sonikmatter is pleased to present you Chris Meyer - the father of vector synthesis. SONIK : What has been your employment history? CHRIS : SONIK : What did you do at SEQUENTIAL? CHRIS : My initial job was to fix bugs in older synths, and to specialize in MIDI. I updated the firmware of virtually every instrument Sequential made (I think the Prophet 10 and the rack effects were the only older instruments I didn't update), adding MIDI features as I went. I also eventually became technical chairman of the MIDI Manufacturers Association, a position I held off and on for several years. The majority of the current MIDI spec was added on my watch (including numerous controllers, MIDI Machine Control, SMFs and General MIDI), including a fair bit from my own pen such as MIDI Time Code and the Sample Dump Standard. Eventually, I started working on new instruments at Sequential. I wrote the MIDI section of the TOM drum machine from scratch, adding such then-wild features as the ability to play the drums chromatically, trigger chords of drums, etc. When the lead engineer of the Prophet 2000 effort was let go during rough times, I took over as the product lead. This was my introduction to sampling. Sampling was new to all of us then, and was an entirely new world! Although to many it may seem that sampling is the opposite of synthesis (capturing existing sounds vs. creating new ones), to those of us working on the instruments it was all the same - it was still about exploring sound. And we were interested in the people who were using sampling to create new forms, like Art of Noise, instead of just trying to place a Symphony in a box. (I consider most of the ROM-based products today to be songwriting tools, not "instruments"). I was always studying new ideas in synthesis, including FM, wavetable, Buchla's timbre modulation in his 400, etc. This eventually led to my design of the vector synthesis algorithm. A separate document I've given Sonikmatter goes over the history of the Prophet VS. My last instrument at Sequential was the Studio 440 sampling drum machine, which I designed. Just as Scott Peer described on the Prophet 3000, working at Sequential during their last years required an insane schedule - 90 or more hours a week; the most extreme pressure you can imagine. The company almost went out of business just when the Prophet 2000 shipped, and we were in crisis mode from then until Yamaha turned it into an R&D lab. On the 440, we simply worked as many hours as we could - we worked until we couldn't any more, slept, and as soon as we woke up, went back to work. I was on about a 25 or 26 cycle per day, creeping around the clock. No matter how much anyone plans, there are two things no engineer can ever predict: how long it will take to do something you haven't done before, and how long it will take to fix a bug that you don't know the cause of. During my tenure at Sequential, I also worked on sound libraries for the Prophet 2000 and a drum expansion cart for the TOM, and helped voice the Prophet VS, including developing many of the waveforms that went in it. I damaged my hearing while working on drum sounds for the TOM - I became desensitized to loud sounds, and kept cranking up the monitoring system to insane levels. To this day, prolonged exposure to loud percussive sounds results in my ears "shutting down": transients are heard as a click, followed by brief muting. We have one touch-tone phone that triggers this response in me just by dialing it. Very annoying. I encourage everyone to monitor sanely. SONIK : Can you tell us what it was like to work for SEQUENTIAL? CHRIS : Working at Sequential in the 80s was a very special time. The technology was moving from analog to wavetable to sampling to digital. Virtually the entire engineering staffs of Sequential and nearby Emu Systems consisted of passionate music-lovers who were groping their way through this new territory together. We worked, ate, partied, and hung out with each other. Yeah, there was also competition and tension, but it was great. I miss it. I can't speak for other companies and engineers today, but I get the impression a lot of fun has gone out of the game - things are much more corporate now. You can't just fool around with circuits; you have to commit to very expensive custom chips, and hope you can program them to do what you want later. I think there are still some good environments out there; the folks at Korg US (including fellow interviewees Skippy and John Bowen) struck me as being a good crowd. Lessons I learned from Sequential and other places I worked included not to pit marketing and engineering against each other, and not to place a glass wall or ceiling between the founders and the newer employees. Segregation only causes resentment and wasted effort. SONIK : Can you tell us about the short time you worked for Tom Oberheim at MARION? CHRIS : Tom interviewed me to consult for a few months on the user interface for a new product he was being hired to design. He couldn't tell me what it was, but I looked around his office and noticed: It was pretty obvious what the project was going to be - Roland's first hard disk recorder. I was very proud of the specification I created. This was over a decade ago, and it included features such as being able to create a tempo map from spotting the waveform of created audio, or being able to align audio snippets to a tempo map grid - things that just weren't being done back then. After writing the spec, I started working on algorithms and systems designs for various parts of the proposed recorder, including buffer and time management. Tom eventually promoted me from a consultant to his chief engineer. When Tom and Roland decided to part ways, Roland offered me a job to be employee #2 at a new US R&D facility they were opening. The product I worked on for Tom eventually became the DM-80 hard disk recorder - although that instrument only implemented a portion of what I originally proposed. In their typical, successful fashion, Roland scaled the DM-80 back to a more conservative first effort, and then added features as they evolved the product line - and now they're quite successful. But I'm more of a typical American - I wanted to hit a home run the first time out :-). While I was with Tom, I also worked on a sample library for his Akai S-950 sampler 16-bit hot-rod modification. SONIK : What instruments did you work on at Roland? CHRIS : I continued to consult on the DM-80, which was moved to Japan for development, and helped gather samples for the JD-800. A JD-800 is one of only two modern, polyphonic, MIDI-enabled synths I still own (a Prophet VS is the other), partially because it has samples in it from some of my older analog instruments which I no longer own (like a rev. 2 Prophet 5 and an Oberheim Xpander). We had hoped that we would design or develop a synth at the US R&D office. But for a variety of reasons, it never happened. The Japanese office felt "we already have people who can design synths and create sound libraries; we need you to explore areas we currently don't have covered." So my main job became acting as an antenna and filter for new trends in both the music and video production areas. I even worked for a while on a big, networked, interactive music community/environment that some major US companies were exploring, but which never came to fruition. Although I no longer worked in sound development, I saw the large amount of resources Roland was pouring into it. I eventually posed the question, "If someone stole our samples, do we have any way to protect it legally?" Roland hooked me up with a top-notch entertainment industry and intellectual property lawyer - Larry Iser of Greenberg Glusker in Los Angeles - and we started looking into this largely uncharted area. As it turns out, a chip company indeed decided to appropriate Roland's Sound Canvas samples set for their own sample ROMs, thinking there was nothing illegal about their actions - so suddenly we had to put our theories about protecting samples as Sound Recordings into practice. We went to court, and won every step of the way until they finally decided to settle and legally license the sounds. Although a far cry from instrument design, I remain very proud of that achievement to this day - it creates a legal basis for all other sound developers to protect their legitimate work. SONIK : What was your role when they were creating the initial MIDI specification? CHRIS : Contrary to some rumors, I was not involved in the initial creation of the MIDI specification. The initial spec was pretty much approved and put into use in late 1983. I joined Sequential in July 1984, and essentially took over the MIDI reigns reins from Dave Smith after its initial creation. One of my main jobs was to be Sequential's representative to other manufacturers for MIDI. In this role, I took on the job as Technical Chairman, and wrote on overall numerous additions and clarifications to the initial specification. Frankly, I'm quite surprised at how little the MIDI spec has been extended since I stopped being involved in the mid 90s - I went poking around on the MMA's web site, and only found DLS2 (when I had worked on DLS1), and GM2 (when I worked on GM1) but very little new beyond that. But part of the reason I left the music industry was the lack of interest among other manufacturers in expanding the spec, even in the early 90s. SONIK : Where do you think the MIDI specification should be now? CHRIS : I really wish MIDI had evolved more for the performing and recording musician. When I was still actively involved in the MMA, I was pushing for more commands that would help a musician configure their studio without having to hand-enter the capabilities of each of their instruments, which could help synchronize instruments of the fly should a performer want to start a new drum pattern or arpeggiation after the MIDI clocks had started flowing, etc. I did manage to oversea the addition of a lot of generalized performance controllers such as modifying the attack and decay of a sound without having to dive into its parameter menus, but the adoption rate of these has been really low. In general, I think there has been a lack of interest, will, and resources to evolve the MIDI specification - we seem to have said for several years "okay, that's enough". I use almost no MIDI in my own music today - usually just MIDI clocks, and maybe a program change. MIDI's strength remains in conveying musical gestures. I'm a poor instrumentalist (don't have the motor skills to make good gestures), and am short on conventional music theory to boot; I'm more interested in arranging, sound designing, and guiding an overall system. MIDI doesn't really give me that. I recently had a chance to look at a list of topics that have been pending in front of the MMA over the past few years. A large number of them were "closed for lack of interest" or are being put off until a future MIDI spec is developed - which I can't see happening any time soon. On the other hand, there are a lot of useful performance-oriented sound modification and effects controllers that are already part of the MIDI specification - many of which rode in on the back of the General MIDI extensions - that are seriously underused. But there isn't a mechanism in place for users to become aware of them, which in turn generates the demand needed for manufacturers to implement them or make them easy to get at. Every new feature in MIDI should receive a round of press releases from the MMA, which the magazines should in turn shout from the rooftops, and run articles educating users on how to exploit the new possibilities they present. But there's just a sense of apathy surrounding the MIDI spec... SONIK : Can you tell us what the story was behind XMidi (Extended MIDI)? CHRIS : XMidi was yet another in a line of proposals to extend or replace the MIDI specification - in this case, replacing the binary math with trinary signals. Like so many proposals, the fatal flaw was that it required a license of some sort from the creator; here, for the trinary communication chip. The concept of MIDI simply won't work if any one company holds too much power like that - the manufacturers are competitive enough as it is; there is no way they would stand for any one company being able to dictate prices or standards or availability to the rest of them. I really wonder if we could ever do something like MIDI again. When Sequential made their first proposal for USI (Universal Synthesizer Interface), it collapsed under disagreements from just the number of American manufacturers that were around at the time. MIDI only exists because three longer-sighted Japanese manufacturers - Roland, Yamaha, and Korg - joined with Sequential and made it happen, borrowing liberally from an interface (DCB) Roland had already created. Four companies created MIDI, and then the rest signed on. And just with four companies, everyone was burned out from the effort that was required to reach consensus. My job was created at Sequential because Dave Smith didn't want to deal with it any more after that (and no one inside Sequential stepped forward to fill the position, because they all realized how burned out Dave was!). And one of the top engineers at Roland told me how hard it was for them - they wouldn't want to do that again. Today, there are probably too many interested parties to reach consensus on something that sweeping ever again. I really hope they prove me wrong - after all, I think it is in their best interest to set aside turf wars and evolve the industry for the benefit of all - but part of the reason it was easy for me to walk away was my frustration over the gridlock and apathy that existed in the development of MIDI at the time. SONIK : Do you think its disappointing that there is no audio sample standard for samplers? CHRIS : I think it is very disappointing. MIDI has proven that users are happier and manufacturers sell more instruments when they can all be freely interconnected, regardless of brand. Instead, an unnecessary burden is placed on sound developers either to support multiple formats, or to choose which formats to support and which to exclude. This also makes users wary of buying new instruments - it's hard to switch when you have an investment in a particular format. This doesn't necessarily mean the user stays loyal to one brand; in many cases it means they make do with what they have. It's a destructive form of exclusionary marketing. To some degree, the Akai format has emerged as a common denominator, through convenience. I had really hoped the DLS (Downloadable Sample) format the MMA pushed would have evolved to become a professional standard for sampling instruments, but it still seems to be concentrated in the realm of multimedia sound cards. I was told DLS 2 was not getting any traction as a pro standard because the manufacturers were yet to see a need for it. But they're not the ones who have to divert resources from making new sample libraries to go propagate existing ones across too many specs, or the user having to buy multiples copies of the same library just because they dare consider buying a new instrument from a different manufacturer. A unified sampler format would encourage the creation of more libraries, and users to upgrade their gear more often. It's shortsighted not to support it. Of course, manufacturers will want (and should have!) some way to differentiate their instruments - maybe they've found a new way to do velocity switching, for example, which leads to a more expressive instruments - but these could be additions on to a basic interchange spec. The sample developers talked about starting a Sound Developers Association - I was even in discussions with them about helping put it together - but unfortunately, they went through the same things that hamper the MIDI manufacturers from working together: competition at the expense of expanding the market, and very few are ready to dedicate the extra time or money required to help support such an organization. To me, it's a matter of priorities: You have to accept that by banding together and setting common standards and working practices, you will grow the market. The initial adoption of MIDI is the absolute clearest, irrefutable proof of that. Then go compete over slices of this larger pie. But instead, most are too busy fighting over slices of the current pie to put their knives down long enough to work together. In my own music, I usually fall back to the absolute lowest common denominator: pasting together individual sound files and loops in a linear audio program, rather than using a sampler. This winter I hope to spend some time getting more familiar with an Akai MPC2000 I bought to replace my Studio 440, and perhaps will get a software sample player, but that's not the space I've been in recently - it's mostly been loops. (And I have some things I wish loop-based composing tools made easier...) SONIK : What are your thoughts on the "workstation" concepts of today? CHRIS : First off, keep in mind that I don't keep up with the latest models and trends anymore - I don't currently design instruments, and as a musician I've personally evolved in a loopist and DJ direction, rather than keyboardist. I see the evolution of the modern synthesizer as having gone in two directions: as a songwriting tool, or as a solo instrument. And let's face it: after New Wave, the New Romantics, and all of those other synthesizer-driven musical genres died and were replaced once again with guitar rock, there just wasn't much interest in the mainstream anymore in the synthesizer as a lead musical instrument. A whole succession of really interesting synths have come and died on the vine, because that's not where mainstream pop is these days. Yes, dance music uses a lot of synthesizers as lead instruments, but the palette is often restricted too closely to the TB-303 range - it's hardly as innovative, in a pure sonic sense, as music was in the 70s and 80s. It may sound like I'm completely ignoring important, expressive instruments like the Virus or Nord Modular - I'm not. But after so many years working for manufacturers like Sequential and Roland, I have to put my business hat on and say "yeah - but does it sell?". The popular, successful instruments seem to be the massively multi-voiced, multi-timbral workstations that essentially exist as songwriting pads. I have nothing against these - they are obviously a boon to numerous songwriters and performers! But I wouldn't call them "instruments" in the sense a MiniMoog was. I don't think this is the fault of the manufacturers - they are struggling to differentiate their products from each other. It's just a fact of mainstream use. SONIK : What are your views of the "hardware versus software" debate? CHRIS : I spent most of my career in the MI industry writing software - so I am certainly not an anti-software person! However, my initial training was on analog synthesizers, where there was an unambiguous dedicated knob for every function, you could turn more than one of those knobs at once, get an instant response, and the instrument was fairly forgiving of "illegal" input - either you hit the end stop on a knob, or you overdrove a section a little bit. I'm just not comfortable mousing around, dealing with the response delay, and getting bitten too hard if I accidentally overcrank a parameter and get hit with full digital distortion in return. I like interacting with knobs. I don't own any software synths. I still own several analog synths; most of them are patchable. I'm also admittedly an instant gratification kind of guy - when I'm making music, I want to pull up a complex sound in a hurry; I don't want to have to fight through a system of menus to painstakingly dredge it out of a machine, be it on a computer or through an LCD display on a rack. Even the famed Oberheim Xpander, which I owned for awhile, I found frustrating to program: It had a ton of power and subtlety, but I found it took me about 45 minutes to get a patch I liked from scratch - and I'm normally very fast at voicing a new sound. In the signal processing realm, I like my "Mojo rack" which is essentially a collection of cheap signal processors (either massively preset multieffects with a couple free-agent editing knobs on their front panels, or analog gear like ring modulators and filter banks), cross-wired in a matrix through the good graces of a lots of effects sends and dedicated return channels which can then be sent back down the sends anew. That said, I am very heartened by the approach of rewireable software synths. We're getting back to the age of modular synths, where you can play "what if?" games and try to come up with new sounds. I also have more interest in the pursuit if new modules, new processing chains, and new sounds than reproducing previous instruments or sounds. SONIK : You don't like the synthesizers of today Chris? CHRIS : Isn't it ironic that when most synths had just variations on sawtooth and a square wave, we were so passionate about their difference in sound? And today, when these workstations we discussed above have hundreds or thousands of waveform or samples, more people complain about how similar they all sound? Some point to the JD800 as an example of a revival synth: lots of controls, lots of great samples. I own one. One of the most overlooked milestones of that instrument is that it raised the sample rate from the typical 32k of most digital synths at the time, to 44.1k - through good speakers, it sends tingles down your spine and makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. But for all the sliders it has, the manual fails to provide a list of those wonderful waveforms, making them much harder to access in a quick manner when you're trying to be creative. I'll still take a modular synth, thank you - at least I can see everything it can do, and get at it, all at once. Or a synth I can reconfigure quickly, with visual feedback. Beyond my JD-800 and Prophet VS, my other main instruments are an EML-101, Yamaha CS-30, and Oberheim 2-voice that I've modified to be completely patchable, with a complement of external modules to patch them into. I love the Oberheim and Yamaha because they give me two parallel voice paths, so I can craft two very different sonic components and then mix them together. I love the EML because virtually all of the controls - waveshapes, filter outputs, etc. - are continuously variable, and everything can modulate everything to create these complex, musky sounds. All allow me to mix in a bit of high pass filter along with the low pass, to create that bit of "air" or "breath" on top of a voice, which I personally enjoy. One of the best modifications I ever made was adding a mixer with overdrive to the Oberheim - I can pull out the oscillators and massively overdrive the filters if I want. And they react in a complex way I can't imagine modeling - and I certainly don't get digital clipping, which I can't stand. I know there is a lot of interest these days in configurable virtual synths. I haven't played with them - I can't imagine doing all that mousing around when I have real patchcords in the room :-). It's not like I'm anti-computers - after editing tape with grease pencil and razor tape, and mixing many a band live with a large console, I can tell you there is no way I would go back to these after using digital audio workstations and being able to draw precisely the mix curves I want. But when I craft sounds, I want the clay in my hands. SONIK : What instruments do you have in your studio Chris? CHRIS : My own instrument collection? Relatively sparse. I was a collector for a while, until I realized the chase had became an end unto itself. I've stripped my setup of anything that I feel can be duplicated by something else in the line-up, or which I simply don't use regularly. My only polyphonics are a Prophet VS and Roland JD-800 (which I contributed some samples to). Samplers include a Studio 440, Akai MPC-2000, and a seldom used Prophet 2002. (Okay, in the closet are also a Kawai K1 - which I also did some patches for - and a K5). Analogs include an EML-101, Oberheim Two-Voice (heavily modified to be patchable, and with an overdrive section that makes it less predictable if I want A beheaded Moog Sonic Six given to me by John Bowen is on extended loan to Gene Stopp (noted repairman and historian; he helped restore Emerson's modular Moog). My recording system is a Digi 001. And I have a lot of weird signal processing rack gear (including a custom DACS ColOSCil ring mod and MAM Warp 9 filterbank) and hand percussion toys. I have a minimum of effects plug-ins, and don't use software synths or samplers yet, because I miss the interactivity of knobs and instant response. Again, the DJ/dub influence in my musical pursuits. SONIK : Can you tell us more about your idea of "chaos theory" being applied to synthesizers? CHRIS : About the time I was working for Marion Systems and then Roland, a book that was getting a lot of attention was "Chaos: Making a New Science" by James Gleick. It would be tempting to assume "chaos theory" was all about randomness. In reality, it's about patterns you can't precisely predict, but which fall into on overall range which you can predict. Take a faucet dripping: you know roughly when the next drip is coming, but for some reason there's a variation in time from drip to drip. Why is that? Or take water flowing faster and faster past an obstruction: it goes from smooth flow, to a regular pattern of waves, to churning chaos. What made it break out of its previous pattern at each step of that progression? Ever set a spinning top wobble as it slows down before it falls - what determines the pattern of those wobbles? Chaos theory is about understanding why these things happen, and the systems that surround them. You may not be able to define the exact path something is going to take, but you can predict what range of parameters it might output given certain conditions - for example, that the next drip is probably going to come within this range of times. It struck me that chaos theory might provide the key to "human imperfections" in musical instruments and sound. The current rage was sound modeling: how you could precisely recreate a real instrument. But I wasn't interested in how to recreate one instrument, I wanted to divine basic, underlying truths that could then be applied to any sound. I had several specific ideas I wanted to see implemented in keyboards. For example: a) a "life" or "turbulence" oscillator, applied as LFO or wave scanner. What life or turbulence systems have in common is, as you increase the amount of "drive" into the system, their output follows this progression: a "DC" signal, which then breaks into an oscillation, and then a more complex oscillation, and then into noise. Imagine that under your fingers for aftertouch! The interesting thing about the "life" function is, inside the noise, you will suddenly find small areas that break back into clean oscillation for a given amount of drive. A little more drive or a little less, and it's back to noise. This is an interesting idea for potentially creating overblown harmonics. The following two are not pure chaos, but spun out of these trains of thought: c) Think of the typical mod wheel, aftertouch or foot pedal hooked up again to brightness or filter cutoff. You set it to a certain point or press a certain amount, and there's your cutoff - period. Now think of a guitarist trying to get feedback sustain: If they're too far away from their amp, or hold the guitar at an angle away from the amp, the feedback starts to die away - and continues to die until gone. Get closer, or rotate the guitar towards the amp, and the feedback starts to build - and keeps building until it hits some saturation point. Want a certain amount of feedback? Then the guitarist has to balance on a knife edge, constantly varying distance or angle. For some, this becomes an expressive, interactive game they play with their instrument. SONIK : Do you believe that we will ever see Vector Synthesis again in the future? CHRIS : Considering how we're seeing every prior analog instrument and module - good and bad - resurrected in either modular, rack mount or virtual form in the name of retro, I can't imagine we won't! Remember that Vector Synthesis wasn't based on some holy grail of how to model sounds, as FM or additive synthesis were; it was just an exceedingly efficient way to produce dynamically varying sounds, when most instruments at the time had single wave cycle oscillators or were heinously difficult to program. I don't think we finished exploring everything that could be done with Vector Synthesis. Hats off to Korg for wavesequencing, which is a lot of fun. I was particularly disappointed with the Yamaha implementation with a 50-step envelope - who has time to program or understand such a beast?!? The idea behind the VS was supposed to be instant gratification. Improvements we were thinking of even while we were working on the Prophet VS included:
As fun as Vector Synthesis was, I think one of the strongest - and certainly most under-emulated - sections of the Prophet VS was its envelopes. I think the compromise we struck on of a few looping segments, with a start point on the attack segment which allowed various amounts of "instant on" transients, was a brilliant solution to creating dynamic sounds with a minimum of hair-pulling. (And a tip of the hat to Don Buchla, who had looping envelopes on his model 400 - that's the instrument that introduced me to the concept.) SONIK : What forms of synthesis do you think should be explored more? CHRIS : I think a lot can be done to extend Vector Synthesis. I'm also interested in seeing someone explore some of the Chaos Theory concepts discussed earlier. Granular synthesis can create some great washes of sound - I'm probably more interested in it as a sound design technique than a specific synthesis algorithm. In fact, I used a simple granular synthesis program called Thonk on some of the voices that are woven throughout my recent album, Lucid Dreams. And I think there is a lot of promise in sound and instrument modeling for the performers out there; the performance interfaces may need to evolve further to really exploit the capabilities that could be exposed in this area for performers to get more of themselves into the sound while they're playing. But for my own personal noodling, I wish the modular synthesizer would be evolved further. Synthesis used to be about the pure joy of conjuring up new sounds, and there was no better tool for that than a patchable modular synth. Today, there are probably more modular synth manufacturers than ever before, but unfortunately for my tastes, although there are exceptions, too many of them are focusing on the past. I just can't get excited about a more stable VCO with more precise waveforms, a quieter VCA, an envelope generator with voltage controlled times, or a recreation of a filter out of an old synth that I might not even particularly have liked. I still keep a binder of circuit designs from a great old newsletter called Electronotes. Each issue - and there were well over 100 of them - had circuits and ideas for completely new types of oscillators, filters, waveshapers, modulation generators, and other modules, designed to create sounds we hadn't heard before. I really wish more modular manufacturers would study those, rather than try to recreate yet another Korg filter. Add an oscillator module that allowed me to play back samples and feed it through this signal chain - in addition to normal electronic waveform oscillators - and I'd be personally very happy. If nothing else, just bring all the internal trims out to the front panel! In my first modular (a PAiA), I added pots to the front panel for any waveform symmetry, envelope overshoot, or similar adjustment that I could find. I know there are some virtual synthesis engines which I should check out more closely, which would get me closer to this goal. But I have resisted so far because I just don't like having a virtual interface between me and my sound creation. Real electronics can also be more forgiving when you make a "mistake", such as overloading a module. I can think of some ways my resistance could be overcome - such as higher resolution or floating point internal calculations, followed by a real-time limiter to save your speakers and ears; simple scaling/offset modules that can be patched inline with any virtual patchcord to make interfacing between different expectations of different modules easier; etc. I imagine some instruments already have these - but I just haven't had the time to seek them out and learn them. SONIK : If you developed a synthesizer now - what features would you implement on it? CHRIS : If I were building a synth for my own use, it would be a large modular system, with as many unusual timbre-shaping modules as I could find or have built :-). If I was designing a synth for commercial sale, I really want to explore some of the Chaos Theory concepts I described earlier. I want to build a synthesizer that is much more organic; that really responds to the way you play - not always in 100% predictable fashion, but still very controllable. I know some will say "well, that's a sound modeling synth", but I'm not interested in going down that strict of a religious path - I want to take the good old fashioned subtractive synthesis machine, and then extend it using chaos theory concepts to react and interact more like real instruments do. So it would be a sound composition and performance synth, like the Prophet VS, rather than a workstation. In the land of sampling, I have several ideas as well. One is combining the best aspects of loop-based composition software, and real-time tempo-matched effects and analog-style processing, in a performance instrument. And for a keyboard-oriented instrument, we need a fast, good-sounding, cheap pitch shifting implementation, so we can separate pitch and playback speed once and for all for every note in live performance. It's simply not natural that the attack of an instrument speeds up or slows down by a factor of 2 for every octave; this needs to be an adjustable parameter. Roland is starting to look down these roads with their variphrase sampler. And most important of all, it must be dead-easy to use. I really think the user interface needs to start from the point of view of "what is the most logical thing the user will want to do next? Okay, what would be the most intuitive way for them to do that?". Instead, too many instruments have one person saying "we're going to have this size of LCD, this many buttons, and this many sliders", and another person saying "these are the features and parameters this instrument will have", who are then trying to marry the two together later. It sounds like some kind of silly party trick; not a way to build an easy-to-use tool for creative people. SONIK : What would be the strangest/funniest thing you have seen/heard the music industry? CHRIS : The stories are endless. As Scott Peer mentioned in his interview, Sequential was probably the most fun place to work, despite the immense pressure of working for a company that eventually went out of business. There's the time I played racquetball with Sequential's president, Barb Fairhurst, and drew blood when I hit her with a racket (no, she didn't fire me). Or the April Fool's bulletin I issued of updates to the firmware in our instruments, with features that were almost believable - the European office in particular started telling customers about features that were quite impossible to implement, before they caught on. My personal favorite at Sequential is so tiny, but it was such a jewel of a moment: A vendor sent us a new footswitch, made out of plastic, to consider packaging with our keyboards. It was less expensive, and one product manager in particular was interested. I snatched it from him, said "well, let's test it, then!" put it on the floor and stomped on it as hard as I could with the heel of my boot. It broke into pieces. He started getting quite upset with me, until I said "you don't think a customer is going to do that?!?". Some of the strangest, funniest stories revolve around new products being displayed for the first time. For example, right before the AES show where the DM-80 was going to premiere, the engineers opened up a blueprint of a fader unit they had designed for its built-in mixer - called the FU-80. I tried to explain to them that there's no way that could be the final name (as it was shorthand for "Fuck You"), but low and behold - they had a prototype with them, with FU-80 in big letters on the front panel. And they displayed it at that show. People were offering large sums of money to buy that prototype unit... I think users would be shocked if they knew how often demonstrations of new instruments were rigged or simulated. Trade shows create deadlines that don't always line up with whether a product is ready or not. As a result, sometimes you have things as ridiculous as a person behind a curtain playing a prototype while a demonstrator is pushing keys on a dummy instrument out front. Sometimes product development is actually delayed, while resources are devoted towards making a demonstration prototype for a trade show. So let that be a word of warning: Don't believe what you see at shows; only believe what you can play and take home from a music store. SONIK : Can you tell us about your company CyberMotion? CHRIS : Both my wife Trish and I worked for Music Maker Publications. She was a production manager and eventually an art director before deciding to strike out on her own. We called her business CyberType, based on my interest in the William Gibson/cyberpunk movement at the time. She got bored with print, and we started looking at another field to move into. Around 1991, I started playing around with desktop video tools - QuickTime had just come out, and I could see this new way of working was going to eventually scale up from jerky, postage-stamp-sized movies on a computer to broadcast video and film. An exciting application called After Effects had just appeared, which was resolution independent, with image quality as good as or better than any of the pro hardware systems available. We decided to take her company in that direction, changing the name to CyberMedia and eventually CyberMotion. Trish thought her initial jobs would be working on local cable ads. Instead, her first After Effects job was animating graphics for a nine-screen circlevision at the Korean Expo. A couple of years later, she animated one of the first major release motion picture title sequences ever done on the desktop: SFW for Propaganda Films. I worked with Trish in my spare time, sliding over more and more until I left Roland - my last MI industry job - in 1997 and devoted all of my time to CyberMotion as well. Since then, we've worked on a wide variety of jobs, including titles for iWerks motion simulators, broadcast television, and major motion pictures (including Now and Then, Almost Heroes and The Talented Mr. Ripley), a couple of the animations for the four-block-long Fremont Street Experience canopy in Las Vegas, and graphics for a number of corporate videos and trade show events, with clients ranging from Apple to Xerox. We're also writing our second book on After Effects; our first one was adopted as the industry bible on the subject. Interestingly, working with graphics got me back into making music. I played a bit when I was still at Sequential Circuits, but got out of the habit. Then I started composing bits of music for some of our visual jobs, including the opening title for a PBS special (Two Way TV). It's finally progressed to me releasing an album earlier this year (Alias Zone : Lucid Dreams); I'm about to sign with Valley Entertainment to get it wider exposure. SONIK : What aspects of video processing do you think would be well suited to processing audio? CHRIS : I would like to have equalizers that had more of a pure harmonic spectrum user interface, where I could clearly say "restrict your bandwidth to this range" or "reduce this range overall by this amount". In visual tools, I can crop an image, re-position it in a frame, apply a curve to its luminance range. I visualize frequency spectrums of individual sounds and overall mixes; it's an intermediate step to translate these overall shapings into "okay - that means I need a high shelf EQ, cut about 4 to 5 dB, with a cutoff frequency about here in order to reach down to here...". In the visual medium, one of the most important tools we have to combine images are called Transfer Modes. Rather than just mix the opacities of each layer (akin to setting levels of audio), which often results in a muddy, indistinct, tends-towards-grayish mix, transfer modes are more complex mathematical formulas that determine how pixels combine with those underneath. For example, Add mode says add the values of each color channel to the corresponding color channels underneath. Screen is a gentler version of Add, which has a result more akin to two different images being projected onto the same screen. Multiply says scale the intensity of a color channel underneath by your own corresponding color channel's strength. Overlay mode is like Screen for values higher than 50% luminance, and like Multiply for values under 50% - it really adds the contrast and saturation. Color Only mode says take the luminance value of the underlying image, but impose your own Hue on top of that. And this happens per pixel in an image. Think of moving this to frequency bands, so when you mix two sounds together, they enhance and interact with each other. It is like an extreme evolution of the vocoder (a regular tool in my own music, often used in unusual ways). I still do most of my audio editing in video programs. Most of my work is based on aligning events between different soundfiles, rather than aligning each of them to a grid created by a tempo map. It feels more direct to me. And I don't have to build a tempo map to represent what is going on in a recording to be able to then relate other sounds to it (an intermediate step that slows me down when the creative juices are flowing). SONIK : Where do you see 3d animation heading in the future? CHRIS : Well, more and more photorealistic scenes - convincing sets and creatures that would be too difficult to create conventionally, which in turn widens the latitude of what stories can be told. There are obvious sensationalist stories that are essentially built around the technology - like Jurassic Park - but even more useful is the removal of restrictions on the imaginations of conventional filmmakers. Actually, these are not the areas of 3D we use in our own work. We have a mantra of sorts: "no dinosaurs; no spaceships." We use 3D just to help us create additional graphical elements or environments for more abstract forms of art. The area of graphics we are into has more to do with conveying ideas or moods than explicit scenes, so 3D is just another chisel or crayon in our toolbox. SONIK : What would you recommend to people who would like to enter into the computer animation field? CHRIS : Unless you work for a very large company, being a desktop graphic artist means you have to educate both the left and the right sides of your brain. Yes, you need to learn how to master your software, but you also really need to be aware of traditional skills such as the use of fonts, or lighting and framing a scene - this is what separates an "animator" from an "artist". Perhaps the central hub program to desktop graphics is Adobe's After Effects. Whether you are compositing characters into a live action scene, creating pure graphics, or enhancing a 3D render, most projects will touch After Effects at one point or another. Our studio CyberMotion was one of the original development sites for this program, and our business is based around it. We got so frustrated at the lack of good After Effects books available to others, that we took over half a year off an wrote our own: "Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects". It was near suicide financially to do so - writing books pays a _lot_ less than creating graphics - but our book has since become the industry bible, and has sold twice as many copies as anyone predicted. One of the reasons, we feel, is because it's not a manual, it's a relation of our experiences - if we don't use a feature, we skip it; if we do use a feature, we tell you why and where. We're working on a companion volume - After Effects in Production - which contains a number of artistic tutorials and case studies to help people further hone their skills, and see how others work. Part of this left/right brain duality I mentioned earlier applies to the technical areas of video as well. You can be a great artist, and master your software, but if you don't know all the weird kinks involved in delivering a job in film or video format, all of your work will go for naught. And no one teaches you this outside-the-program information in their manuals. So we created a videotape called VideoSyncrasies that goes over all these "gotchas" - many of which caught us out, when we were starting! The motion graphics community is great about sharing. When we started, we knew nothing; we learned because others shared with us. We're just trying to return the favor and keep the tradition going. SONIK : Do you see computer animation becoming part of a musicians performance in the future? CHRIS : When I was younger, I used to listen to music really intently - and quite often, I saw imagery in my head as I listened. So I feel the tie between the two is important. But more importantly, I think many creative people are artists first - they just have chosen a particular mode of expression for their ideas, such as playing a guitar or chiseling stone. I think if it was made easier for them to employ more modes of artistic expression, they will do so. If we can just create the tools that will make it easier, in the future we will expect musicians to also create visual content to enhance their music. A life-changing experience for me was getting the video of U2's ZooTV tour. The massive banks of video monitors, with imagery that enhanced or contrasted with their music - it really opened the experience up to communicating through several channels at once. The opening of the video made from the tour still sends chills down my spine. Aside from something that ambitious, more can be done to make the performance of electronic music more exciting, both for the performer and the audience. Obviously, areas such as the D-Beam controller can make a performance more theatric. But even setting aside the audience, the instruments can be made more physical. For example, it's hard to throw your body into a performance when you have to make very precise movements of slider or footpedal to control your sound. Something as simple as the addition of a stiff spring into a footpedal controller - so you could really lean into a modulation change, rather than delicately control it - would make this music less frustrating to play. SONIK : What are the 10 best CD's in your collection? CHRIS : Boy, that's a hard question to answer - I have several hundred CDs, LPs, and cassettes, and I listen to very wide range of music. So I'm going to give you a few "lists of 10" - the 10 synthesizer albums that had the biggest influence on me, 10 sampling albums, and then 10 I happen to be listening to a lot these days: Synergy - "Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra". W. Carlos - "Clockwork Orange" Klaus Schulze - "Mirage" Tangerine Dream - "Ricochet" Edgar Froese - "Stuntman" Peter Baumann - "Romance '76" Simm - "Welcome" Patrick O'Hearn - "Ancient Dreams" Hawkwind - "Space Ritual" Ultravox - "Rage in Eden" Art of Noise - "Who's Afraid Of" Frankie Goes to Hollywood - "Welcome to the Pleasure Dome" Big Audio Dynamite - "Megatop Phoenix" David Byrne - "Catherine Wheel" Keith LeBlanc - "Stranger Than Fiction" Public Enemy - "Fear of a Black Planet" M/A/R/S - "Pump Up The Volume" Coldcut - "What's That Noise" Karlheinz Stockhausen - "Hymnen" Alias Zone - "Lucid Dreams" Axiom Ambient - "Lost in the Translation" SONIK : Who have been your musical influences over the years, Chris? CHRIS : My tastes have continued to evolve over the years. I'm a roving sponge. I've made an effort to try to keep current with musical trends as well as explore other styles and ethnic musics - both back when I was designing instruments, and now that I'm releasing my own albums. I'm always looking to hear ideas that intrigue me, to assimilate into my own music. Over time, though, a few specific artists continue to stand out as influences for me: Miles Davis: I'm not a huge fan of jazz, but I never cease to be intrigued by Miles. Most pop music, I can hum a couple of beats ahead; I know where the changes are and where it's going. With Miles, I could rarely predict - always a surprise. Another person who wasn't afraid to experiment with fusing different styles. Jimi Hendrix: Another musical innovator, willing to explore new styles and ideas. His guitar solos get most of the attention, but the way he could play in parallel with his singing - he and his guitar were two faces of the same head. Also a great explorer of what the studio could do. John Hassell: One of the first - and probably still the best - to combine first world and third world musics through the filter of modern electronics. It’s rare you hear someone come up with music this original. Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails: Although my own music is more in the ambient realm, I appreciate those who can channel so much raw power and aggression into a song. There's also a great wealth of ideas in the sounds and processing's he employs. Karlheinz Stockhausen: There's a book by Jonathon Cott called Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer that will open up an endless stream of stunning ideas to you of how to explore sound and composition. Ironically, I personally don't like how Stockhausen translated many of those ideas into sound; the exception is his piece Hymnen (noted above) - especially the Fourth Region. Bill Laswell: My number one influence. He is the absolute master of combining different styles, ethnicities, and influences. And not just all-star bands; he creates new syntheses of these styles and comes up with something new, rather than the obvious. An entry point for a new listener would be his Sacred System projects. SONIK : What sonic direction do you think ALIAS ZONE will explore on their next CD? CHRIS : All of the pieces on the first Alias Zone album started as live performances. My role in the band was to fire up sampled loops, and then process and layer them through analog synths and filterbanks, ring modulators, vocoders, etc. The limitation I was up against was the 440's 512k word sample memory, which effectively limited me to 16.7 seconds of monophonic samples. This left very little room for variation loops, additional layers to run in parallel, etc. I've since acquired an Akai MPC2000, with 32 Meg of sample RAM, so I can have quite a few more variations and layers, in addition to higher fidelity and stereo. So one of the most obvious differences you will hear is a much more dense, polyrhythmic beat, with the ability to layer together a wider variety of percussion styles. I think what you will hear will be a bit darker; a bit less "polite" in mood. In addition to my usual barrage of ethnic influences, I've also been bending more and more towards trip hop and illbient. It might even come to pass that there are two versions of the ensemble: Alias Zone, which will be ethnic, and Alias Noise, which will be darker and grungier. Beyond that, the other instruments will probably be more varied in tonality, and some cases less recognizable. The plan is to write a substantial part of it jamming in Richard Bugg's new studio, rather than in front of an audience. This will allow more thought to go into the timbres employed. Richard has a large modular Moog/E-mu synth we really want to try out in the mix; the bassist Lucky Westfall is also exploring different approaches to bass synthesis. I'm really excited; I can't wait to get started! I just hope it doesn't take the 4+ years to become reality that the first album did. SONIK : What internet sites do you like to visit Chris? CHRIS : I spend less time on the internet than you might imagine. It's a fabulous resource - I started using the Web when it was possible to visit every single site that existed - but I just don't have the spare time. That said: amazon.com - main search site for music and books. I especially like their system of suggesting related music, and then being able to hear audio samples of that music - this is how I discovered several acts I wouldn't have been familiar with, such as Simm, Scorn, and State of Bengal. djangos.com and half.com - to fill in my back catalog of CDs on the cheap. hyperreal.org - one of my original favorite destinations, for the dance culture and the electronic music archives. speedvision.com, f1i.com, and rpm.espn.go.com - because I'm a racing fanatic. mgla.org - it's a graphics association I help run; I answer questions on the forums whenever I can. modularsynth.com - I just learned about this site; we need good hubs like this for the analog synthesis community to go see what all is available. And I've been hearing something about this site called SonikMatter.... :-)
CHRIS : Music is actually an escape for me! I spend so much of my time creating graphics, that it's a real treat to go into the studio and fool around with sounds or music for a while. Aside from that, we spend as much time outdoors as we can. We have put a lot of effort into converting the property around our house into a wildlife habitat. If we're not out hiking or exploring a wild botanic garden, we're watching the birds we've attracted to our property - they're an endless source of amusement. And spending time around plants and wildlife is a great antidote for spending the rest of your life using computers. SONIK : Could you ever be enticed back into the development of synthesizers again Chris? CHRIS : Yes. When my career was diverted at Roland into non-synthesis areas, I don't think I was finished realizing the ideas buried in my head. Of course, such a move back into the MI industry would have to be practical from a career point of view - I co-own a graphics studio now, and really enjoy that life - but I can't get over that feeling of unfinished business. The 80s were a great time, but somehow we got diverted from making instruments to making workstations. Let's go back and finish - or at least, continu |
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