Jennifer Hruska

Interview by Brian Cowell.

The early days of the K2000 release was a struggle for many K2 Users. Not only did they have one of the most advanced synthesizers on the planet, nobody was really sure what this synth could really do!

But many on the K2000 USER_GROUP were lucky, they had not only the "official" tech support online, they had the presence of one of Kurzweil's chief sound designer. That person was Jennifer Hruska!

Recently, I had a chance to catch up with Jennifer and ask her a few questions about those early years, and I was pleasantly surprised that Jennifer was still working in the "sound development" field and was on the verge of releasing some exciting stuff. After setting up her company Hruska Audio Productions six years ago, Jennifer is on the verge of moving back into the Kurzweil arena in a big way...
So lets find out what Jennifer had to say!

SONIK: Can you tell us what your education has been?

JENNIFER: I received a Bachelor of Science in Music Education with a Vocal/Choral major from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, IL. Great school even though it is in the middle of the cornfields.

SONIK: How did you become employed at Kurzweil?

JENNIFER: Well that's sort of funny story. I had moved to Boston mainly just to get out of the Midwest and was working various day jobs and studying jazz piano and composition at night. While at a party one evening I met a women who was working at Kurzweil but was quitting to go back to school at Berkely. She told me about Kurzweil's annual summer picnic and suggested I go to meet some folks there. So I did that and came away with an interview.

SONIK: What was your job title at Kurzweil?

JENNIFER: Originally it was working in manufacturing building and testing K250s. I was building power supplies and sanding keys so they'd play smoothly and testing the basic functionality of the K250. A few months later a job opened up in engineering doing Soundware and I interviewed and secured that position. I stayed in Soundware as Senior Soundware Engineer for the rest of my time there, about 5 years in house and 2 years telecommuting.

SONIK: Can you give us a *typical* day for Jennifer Hruska at Kurzweil?

JENNIFER: During the K2000 development we put in some long days. Mostly because it was just after the sale of Kurzweil to Young Chang and there were only about 12 of us engineers. So we'd show up around 9 or 10am and work until lunch, go out to eat together (ate a lot of Indian food in those days), come back and work until 7pm or so, take a break and have dinner perhaps, then work again into the evening. Next day same thing. We were all very good friends so we often spent time on the weekends hanging out as well. Many of the good ideas for the K2000 came about with all of us just hanging out as friends discussing synthesizers and music.

SONIK: How much input did you have in getting certain features put into the operating system?

JENNIFER: We all used the K2000 in our own bands and studios so we were always coming up with things that would be cool to add to the feature set, and the software engineers were usually happy to oblige. But they also insisted on putting features in in a way that fit with the rest of the operating system. Most of the heavy stuff though came from Bob Chidlaw, chief scientist, Ralph Muha and John Teele, software engineers. In my opinion they were really the brains and creators of the operating system.

SONIK: Who else was part of the development team?

JENNIFER: There were only a few of us after the sale to Young Chang. Prior to that Kurzweil was nearly 100 people! So the time around the layoffs were emotionally challenging. The team as I recall was myself, Joe Ierardi and Geoff Gee in soundware, Ralph Muha and John Teele in software, Bob Chidlaw and Jeff Winston doing algorithm design and VLSI chip design, Chris Martirano running marketing and also product design, a few hardware engineers but I'm not remembering who they were now, and a couple of guys working on CAD designs-the look of the synth.

SONIK: At the time, did you expect the K2000 to be around for nearly 10 years?

JENNIFER: Well yes and no. It seems products take forever to get out of the shoot so we always thought it would have to be around for awhile! But, no, I don't think I expected it to be such a hit. And really marketing was so screwed up then that they didn't even do any advertising when the K2000 first came out! So it was amazing to us how it really took off by just word of mouth. We always took our users seriously, especially John Teele, he was really good at listening to what our users were asking for and I think that helped.

SONIK: How many years were you with Kurzweil?

JENNIFER: Well let's see. I believe I started sometime in 1987, worked in-house until 1992. Then I moved to San Francisco and telecommuted for about 2 years.

SONIK: Are you still connected with Kurzweil in any form or manner?

JENNIFER: I still spend quite a bit of time with some of the folks there as friends, especially with Bob Chidlaw who likes to converse on new ideas from time to time. Officially I test and feedback ideas, problems, etc. with new gear as its being developed. I worked a bit on KDFX in this fashion.

SONIK: Did you work on the K2500 at all?

JENNIFER: Oh yeah, quite a bit. I worked mainly on the sampling end of things. I was responsible for most of the recording in the base ROM and on Block B which I guess is called the Contemporary Block. Is that right? Well, I did all the ethnic percussion recordings for that block and a few other things. I also did the recordings for the Take 6 CD-ROM.

(Note : The term "block" is Kurzweil's in-house names for the ROM blocks.)

SONIK: Were you and your team aware at the time that you had so much power at your fingertips?

JENNIFER: Really I think we were learning new techniques along with all of you guys. Like I say, we really used the stuff as we were developing it so people would come in and say "hey, check this out!". That would usually lead to, "ya know, what we really need now is to be able to do this"

SONIK: What *presets* did you program on the original K2000?

JENNIFER: I was mainly responsible for the recording and DSP work on the samples. I did do some voicing but not as much as Geoff Gee who was our main voicer. Then all that stuff got tweeked by so many people, its hard to say any one person did any one program or setup. But most of that work went through Geoff Gee's hands, a very talented sound-designer.

SONIK: When you sat down behind the keyboard to program, what sort of ideas did you want to achieve when you started tweaking?

JENNIFER: When I program, I usually just start with a timbre I like and then program randomly keeping what I like and throwing away what I don't like. This is most creative for me for my own sound design. Of course, when working on specific sounds for work, I voice for exactly what I need to create. I've gotten very fast at being able to program what I hear. But really I love the creative stuff where you can get into the K2000 zone and see what comes out. It's so VAST! that you almost do yourself a dis-service not letting the instrument speak to you a bit.

SONIK: Were you required to follow a predetermined format on programming?

JENNIFER: We sometime divided up voicing work. Like "you take pads, you take guitars, you take synths" type thing. But overlap and creative license was always key. That's how you get the best stuff.

Jennifer in the 1991 K2000 Training Video.

SONIK: Did you do any sampling?

JENNIFER: That was my main job, recording and preparing the samples. We used top end studios around Boston with professional musicians who had great chops and great gear. Sessions were long and often tedious. Then we'd take those tapes and pull every sample, even more tedious. Then work with the samples we chose and process them removing noise, doing eq, compression, looping, etc. The tools we used were proprietary to Kurzweil. Originally they ran on an old VAX computer running UNIX. Then they moved over to another archaic system called the Masscomp also running UNIX. All line commands, no mouse and no fancy user interface back then! Nowadays they run on a Silicon Graphics machine.

SONIK: What music does Jennifer Hruska sit down and listen to at home?

JENNIFER: Honestly, I don't listen to a ton of music because my ears are usually requiring silence at the end of a day in the studio. But when I do, its Annie Lennox, Miles Davis, U2, Depeche Mode, Talking Heads, and Lyle Mays. I also listen to a fair amount of Latin music.

SONIK: Does this reflect in what you program at all?

JENNIFER: Not really. To influence my sound-design work I listen to what's current on the radio or via CD's of stuff that never makes it to radio but is still really happening. Especially all the electronica music that's going on. We listen to a lot of that at work because there's some amazing sound-design going on there. Very cutting edge stuff.

SONIK: What are your favourite types of sounds?

JENNIFER: Oh probably pads since I like to remain as mellow and relaxed as possible! Also, I just love sound that's slow moving and changing all the time. I also tend toward bassier timbres. All this as you know, the K2000 does soooo well. I really enjoy pads with funs that move the sound around in unexpected ways. Again, I like to get the K2000 to talk back to me a bit, not just me telling it what to do. It's really a two way conversation with this synth.

SONIK: I know myself that every programmer has a sound that they sit back and say "Thats the best sound I've ever done". What was yours Jennifer?

JENNIFER: *chuckle*, the best sounds I've done aren't in ROM so you haven't heard them. But yes, I definitely have some favourites.

SONIK: Are there particular types of sounds you won't program because you don't like them?

JENNIFER: Another *chuckle*. No, I'll program anything but I may not spend as much time on the stuff I don't like! In my business I parse work out to who does what best. So I'll typically do the acoustic stuff and I let Dave Quattrini, my employee, handle the electronica and bass and drums stuff since he's really talented at that.

SONIK: What other instruments do you have?

JENNIFER: Oooh, lots of toys after all these years. Some old analog synths, a bunch of guitars and basses, loads of Kurzweil's of course and a studio of outboard gear.

SONIK: Did you feel pressured at all being a *female* in a predominant *male* area?

JENNIFER: Well luckily I grew up with four brothers so guys never intimidated me too much. That's helped because I've always been the only women in a group of male engineers. There were some challenging times with this issue but mainly with older men from a different generation or culture. I never had any problems with the guys at Kurzweil. They are very hip and always treated me with respect.

SONIK: What interests do you have outside of music?

JENNIFER: Lately I'm into things spiritual, like yoga and meditation. Also I'm quite an avid volleyball player and bicyclist. I also really dig nature. My vacations usually consist of me going into the middle of nowhere with my dog Artie and camping out with no electricity, no running water, no cabin. Just remote nothingness seems to revive me

SONIK: You have your own company now. Can you tell us what you do?

JENNIFER: About 6 years ago I started Hruska Audio Productions. We are a sound-design house doing a lot of custom sound design work for large chip manufacturing companies like ESS Technologies, Crystal Semiconductor, Aureal Semiconductor and the like. Its sound design but also a lot of integration work into their specific hardware and software platforms. Then last year we started our Sonic Implants line of products which are sound libraries currently in SoundFont format but soon in all the synth formats as well. We sell these right off the website and they download right to your computer. We originally went with SoundFonts because we were doing so much PC work and the market is really wide open there. But we've been slammed with requests to port the library to the synth keyboard formats because they're liking what they're hearing in our MP3 demos, etc. So we're starting on that now. We're also heading into more mainstream areas doing some Internet sites with sound products for kids and folks who want better audio on their PCs but don't really know what that means. I think its time everybody experienced better audio, not just musicians.

SONIK: Do you have a team of programmers at HRUSKA AUDIO PRODUCTIONS?

JENNIFER: I've got a small team. A guy named Dave Quattrini who's very talented and works full time for me. And then I bring quite a few young programmers just starting out on an internship basis. I also have some folks that I contract with when things get too busy. A guy out in California named Mike Struble and a composer out in Seattle named Guy Whitmore.

SONIK: Will you be supporting the Kurzweil format at all in the future?

JENNIFER: Yes! Check www.sonicimplants.com in October. The whole library will be available. When that's up you guys should email me and mention this interview and I'll send you a discount coupon and maybe a few freebies for being such K2000 fans!

SONIK: Will we see Programs & Setups programmed by Jennifer Hruska in the future?

JENNIFER: Well, you'll see and hear them in Sonic Implants!

September 1999