John Bowen

Interview by Brian Cowell.

What does a PROPHET 5, the term "multi-timbre", and the WAVESTATION keyboard have in common? It could be only one person: John Bowen.

After forging an early career and stamping his name forever with the products that Sequential made, John Bowen has become one of the most sought after men in the synthesis business. From software emulations, to new hardware synthesizers, John's talents branch over many generations of synthesizers.

With all the changes going on in the music industry today, Sonikmatter caught up with John to get some of his thoughts on how the industry has changed, and where he thinks it may be heading.

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

JOHN : In the early days of trade shows, there was only the big Consumers Electronic Show (CES), which took place in Chicago every June.

One would hear rumors in the months following these shows about new goodies that would eventually grace the keyboard sections of our local music stores, but I wasn't content with waiting. I wanted to be there in the middle of it. Knowing about stuff before it came out (as most of us are, I think).

However, around this time the musical instrument manufacturers had decided to split off from the CES event and have their own trade show, called NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants). They continued to have their main show in Chicago in June as well, but in 1971, a number of music dealers had complained about having to go to Chicago, and so a Spring NAMM show was proposed, to be held in San Francisco March of '72.

That October there was a public "trade show" at the Cow Palace in SF, which promised a glimpse of all the new technology that had been introduced at the previous NAMM show in June. I had to attend, my curiosity about new synthesizer developments increasing.

Much to my disappointment, Moog and Arp were not there, but a new company, ElectroComp, was showing a small modular package called the EML-101. It looked fairly complex, but quite powerful.

The idea had occurred in my brain, that trying to become part of a synthesizer company would be the way to get an inside track on the development of these new, cool toys. I quickly approached their President, Norm Millard, about the possibility of representing his company on the West Coast. He barely had any sales to speak of, and told me there wasn't much if anything he had to offer. But the seed was planted...

In January, a small club where I was appearing weekly had a visit by a banjo-playing guy named 'Doc' Bochenik, and I learned that he was recently hired by Moog Music to rep their products on the West Coast. When I asked him how I could get involved, he told me I would need to talk with his boss, David Van Koevering, and as it turned out, there was an opportunity coming up to do so at the Spring NAMM in SF.

A few months later, there I was at the NAMM show, talking with 'Doc'. He brought me over and introduced me to Mr. Van Koevering....and I must say, this man had the most incredible charisma about him. He immediately made me feel that I could be a part of "the greatest synthesizer company on the planet", and encouraged me to send him a resume, plus anything recorded to show what I could do. When I left that afternoon, my "side trip" down the road to being a part of synthesizer history was put in motion...I sent him the tape of my live performance attempt to recreate ELP's 'Tarkus'. A few months later, I found myself with a ticket to Buffalo, New York, and a first-hand introduction to the world of Bob Moog.

As it turned out, Dave van Koevering was no longer there! I couldn't believe it - this guy had just invited me out to discuss working for him!! I was pretty confused as to what might happen, but the people there were extremely cordial to me, and all progressed smoothly. It was with the most childlike anticipation that I toured the Moog factory, waiting to catch a glimpse of the man who had created it all...and of course, I expected someone in a white lab coat, like a 'mad scientist'.

When we abruptly came across Bob Moog as we toured the facility, I was 'star struck' to meet him...and he was just very normal, "no big deal", as he would say. I was impressed. A genius, and humble as well!

After a few days of checking me out using a Minimoog and something called a Sonic V (a synth from Musonics, a company who had bought out Bob Moog the year before, as I later found out) they presented me with an offer to go to the June NAMM show in Chicago and do presentations of the Minimoog. (Of course, I was to do it for free, but the thought of getting paid for something I was enjoying so much never entered my mind...and I was to be there representing Moog Music!!!). I couldn't have been more thrilled.

Things went well over the 5 days of that NAMM show, but at the end, I still hadn't been offered a permanent position with them. As the guys were packing up the show booth, I was getting anxious. I had 2 airplane tickets - one returning me home to California, the other back to Buffalo...and time was running short if I was to get to the airport for my California flight.

I finally got the attention of Dave Luce, VP of engineering, and asked him which ticket was I going to be using. I watched nervously as he went around the booth, discussing my fate with each of the key people there. When he returned, he said with a smile, "I'm happy to offer you a position with Moog Music as our first official clinician"...and so, I went back to Buffalo! My path had been altered forever....

SONIK : Which companies have you worked for, and what have you worked on?

JOHN : The following :

Moog Music 1973-1976 - first 'clinician' for Moog. I also worked on the Multimoog and Poly Moog I proto.

Sequential 1982-1987 = Product Specialist.
Prophet 5, Prophet 10, Prophet 600, Prophet T-8, Prophet VS, Drumtraks, 6-Trak, MultiTrak, Tom, Max, Studio 440, and the Prophet 200 and 3000 libraries.

Yamaha division DSD - 1988-89 = Product Specialist (brought over with some of the Sequential team).

Korg R&D - 1989-1998 = Product Manager.
Wavestation EX, Wavestation A/D, Wavestation SR, OASYS (UI design), Z1 (voicing).

Creamware - 1998-1999 = developed Modular system used in Pulsar/SCOPE.

Zarg Music - 1999 - current.

With Moog, it was a full time job only for 6 months, then Moog was sold to Norlin Music, and all of the sales and support team were let go. A year later they called back, and had me doing demos/clinics on a per diem basis...but my real focus was the band I was in - Nielsen/Pearson Band - during the time 1974-1980.

You can see a review of a CD release last year covering the 2nd & 3rd studio albums that I worked on here: http://www.bluedesert.dk/np.html.

After the 3rd album, I moved to LA to try my hand at doing studio work, and got involved with composer Gene Hobson, working on 3 small budget movies - Night Vision, Access Code, and Terminal Entry.

During the time from 1976 on, I made the acquaintance of Dave Smith and helped develop things with him (the Model 700 programmer was my request to help our on-stage performances with the Minimoogs, and then the Prophet 5, of course), but I was not an employee of the company. I was just doing it because I wanted to have free equipment!

After the debut of the Prophet 5 at Jan. NAMM 1978, Dave gave me 4% share in the company.

In August 1982 I was still struggling in L.A. studios, when Dave Smith called with an offer of Product Specialist as a full-time position at Sequential Circuits, which I took.

SONIK : Were there any alternative names for the instruments you've worked on?

JOHN : Well, for the Prophet there's a good story... we had a special visitor drop by to Sequential.

It seemed Rick Wakeman had gone skiing in the Lake Tahoe area (about 6 hours north of San Jose), and had made a call to Sequential Circuits (I think he was using the both Model 700 programmer and Model 800 sequencer). Dave invited him to come by and check out "something really special".

I wasn't there, but Dave told me of Wakeman's response: "It was going to be the biggest synth on the market", and "whatever you do, PLEASE give it a name, not a model number".

The synth was going to be called, "the Model 1000" synthesizer and Rick was adamant that it have some personality, so kind of name instead (and I think he was quite correct!). So, I went back in late December to discuss the naming of this new beast.

There were a number of us sitting around, trying to brainstorm about a good name. I don't know who came up with the name 'Prophet' (probably Dave), but the idea was along the lines of something "magical" built by "wizards", etc. We all made a list of names, and then Dave collected them, put all the names on one big list, and we went through and voted.

My list included 'Seer', 'Wizard', 'Mystic', and 'Orb' (actually a name of a product that Dave and I had discussed a year earlier - the Orb was going to be a spherical controller that you would hold in your lap. It would have touch surfaces that were pressure sensitive, so you could squeeze it to generate control voltages).

Anyway, we all kept coming back to 'Prophet' - and my only concern was that people might hear the name without seeing it first and think it was "Profit...but, that aside, we all agreed, so Prophet it became!"

As for the Wavestation, that name was suggested by Jack Hotop. We all thought it was brilliant! There was never any question - it was like the first suggestion, and we all went, "Wow! Great!"

Jack's a great mind, a terrific synth programmer, an incredible pianist, too!! And a good friend...

With the OASYS, there were several names...I suggested 'Chameleon', and Dave Smith's idea was 'Softstation', building on the 'Wavestation' name.

SONIK : Did you ever think that technology would be where it is today when you were working at Sequential?

JOHN : Absolutely no idea!

I didn't know that computers could generate algorithms that would end up making decent sounds!

One of the things that I did 'predict' however, was in voice processing.

At Sequential I used to talk about having a box that had "style presets", i.e., 'Sinatra', 'Streisand', 'Tony Bennett', 'Judy Garland', 'Elvis', 'Otis Redding', etc., and you just plugged in your mic and sing, and it would somehow add the tone and inflections, remaking the voice.

I thought it probably would be impossible to 'superimpose' things like vocal phrasing and such, but you can see this sort of direction now with the new device by TC-Helicon, the VoicePrismPlus.

Also, Harmony Central recently posted a similar idea in an "ad" as an April Fool's joke, which you can read here: http://www.harmony-central.com/Newp/2001/SAP-1.html.

I think there's a lot of interest in bringing the organic appeal of the human voice into synthesis, such as with Roland's Variphrase technology (and vice-versa; note the overused pitch corrector effect from Antares, i.e., Cher, N'Sync, et. al.).

SONIK : How close does the PRO-52 compare against the original PROPHET 5 presets?

JOHN : When they first contacted me to do a final consultation on the Pro 5 product, they assured me that the model was "99% perfect". When I got it, I found it to be more like 75%, and so wrote a list of a number of points where things were off.

Having heard so much about Reaktor, I was surprised at the lack of high frequency range of the filters/oscillators, and some PolyMod problems, etc..

Their response regarding the frequency response was along the lines of, "Well, it's as good as it needs to be for the target market of this product...", something like that, and it was at that point I realized how much the requirements and demand for sonic quality of the current market had changed since I first started in this business.

Regarding this point, I think many of those who worked with the OASYS development have been very disappointed, as it was one of the main things that we at Korg R&D always kept in mind - to produce algorithms that would give the highest quality of sound results. Doesn't seem to be so important to today's users...

As for accurate comparisons to a real Prophet 5 - I spent a month A/B'ing the OASYS model and rev.3 Prophet 5 I have, and I got EXTREMELY close to it...it was so I couldn't tell which was which with my eyes closed!

Anyway, to answer the question...I'd say I was about 80% close to the Prophet 5 programs, by the time we were done tweaking the Pro-5 (now Pro-52).

I definitely found the Reaktor engine unsatisfying for me personally but the people there are really smart, and I hear that they've done some major algorithm updates with Reaktor v3.0. Hopefully it sounds much better now.

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

JOHN : Ah, I obviously love the freedom that the software has given me.

I've struggled with design limitations through Sequential, Korg, and even Creamware, because I needed others to provide the engineering expertise, or had limitations due to marketing choices or other decision makers. Now I have (almost) complete freedom to design whatever I want, and without a steep learning curve (such as SynthKit from Korg, or N.I's Reaktor).

There's still the frustration of not knowing how to program DSP blocks to get exactly what I need, so I'm still a 'captive' in that sense. But I also don't have the patience or time to stop and go get an electrical engineering degree at this point...so a tool like Scope is really the ideal situation.

However, the biggest problem (and we had this in the OASYS keyboard in a major way), is providing the user a decent interface to control all of the parameters needed to craft their own, personal sounds.

A computer screen gives you much more surface space to do this in, so that's great. You're not limited by a hardware piece that has only a certain number of knobs and switches available, where you get to the end of the design and you find you need to add 2 more buttons somewhere, etc...but still, the hardware interface is so much easier and quicker to use than "mousing" around on a screen, that I noted early on remote hardware surfaces would be the big thing, once all of these software programs got to a sophisticated enough point.

So the question is, can a generic hardware control surface provide all that a user needs to interface with the software device (you know, 8 by 8 rows of knobs, or whatever), or do people still prefer custom hardware configurations to go with a specific piece of software? Of course this would be a lot more expensive for the user.

Currently, I'm investigating the possibility of some custom remote surfaces that would be replicas of some of my synth designs, and they would basically be custom MIDI controllers for each synth.

As for the sound quality, it seems the pure hardware approach is still better for the 'analog purist', but this is also very expensive, and I think the demand will move to more variety of sound generation, which demands a software approach (such as the Absynth program).

What you really want is highly accurate mathematical models of all the old hardware components, and there's still a number of limits in the digital world regarding this.

Hopefully as computing power gets greater and greater, solutions will be provided to overcome these limits.

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

JOHN : The most interesting and wonderful-sounding thing I've heard recently was "Absynth", by Brian Clevinger.

As you know, he sold the program to Native Instruments, and as I said, they are great guys and very smart, and what I saw at Messe looked and sounded very exciting!

I'm not positive of all that the program does, but there's a number of AM and FM style elements in there (which is the key to a lot of my current favorite sound approaches, even in the Prophet 5 days to now). The presets sounded unlike any FM synth I've ever heard! VERY impressive!!!!!!

Another area is in physical models.

With the OASYS we had a tremendous amount of work done by several people early on, and what it showed me was how incredibly difficult it was to design a physical model algorithm that could be musical, i.e., sounded good and was expressive and playable. This form is still in its infancy, I think.

SONIK : Do you see dedicated "music computers" coming back into fashion in the future?

JOHN : It kind of already is happening, specifically for the DAW market.

There are several places you go to get a "special" system created specifically for this purpose, and if you read users groups, such as PC-DAW, there starts to be a fairly strong consensus as to what systems will work with which software. See http://www.audiocomputing.com/.

SONIK : What do you think of new synthesis methods like "Re-synthesis"?

JOHN : Re-synthesis will be a very attractive way to go, once it happens so fast that the ear can't perceive the 'slices' of the sound being put back together.

SONIK : What's your opinion of sampling versus synthesis?

John: What really surprised me about sampling was how big of an after-market these Loop CDs have become...incredible that so few people aren't motivated to make their own things, but to buy and manipulate someone else's work.

This is just the opposite of the mindset that existed when I started with synthesizers. There was a tremendous pride in creating your own things from scratch then. For me, pure synthesis has always been much more intriguing.

SONIK : Looking at all the sounds you've programmed, is there one that stands out to you and you think, "that's got to be my best"?

JOHN : This is really impossible to say - the sounds and synths are like little 'children', and most of us work quite long to get the sounds to be as satisfying as possible - and I don't know if one is ever 'finally finished' with a sound, but it would be hard to pick a signature sound for me that stands out. Besides, it changes as the years go by.

When I went through all of the old Prophet 5 factory programs (for the Native Pro-52 project, and also for the OASYS version, which is just called "Pro Synth", I believe), I wasn't very happy with them...I mean, if I were coming to it for the first time as a young synth guy, I would probably say, "so, what was the big deal about the Prophet 5?".

But I guess, for the time, they were decent enough.

SONIK : Do you have any particular sounds in mind when you set out to program?

JOHN : Hmmm, this is the key question...

I would say, I start with a design idea, and try many little nuances and variations before I get what I'm looking for...but you can definitely get sidetracked along the way, because the sound can take you on its own exploratory trip, you might say.

I just explore a certain direction, which often times can lead to a totally different result as I proceed. The problem is, you find so many interesting variations along the way, and it's hard to say when it is finally "finished", as I said before.

SONIK : Can you see a product like the original "envisioned OASYS keyboard" being manageable in the future?

JOHN : Yes, I think you will see something like that come out in the next few years.

Also, you have things like the Chameleon from SoundArt, which is similar to a concept we were talking about in '92 at the beginning of the OASYS design.

SONIK : Do you think keyboards like the WAVESTATION are ready again to made into fully fledged products again?

JOHN : Hmmm, well, we tried several times between 1995 and 1998 to convince Korg Japan that we should make a "Wavestation Pro", which would have the res filters, plus a number of other goodies (user samples, no partitioning of "banks" of programs, patches, sequences, and a disk drive or something better).

I guess the downside of the Wavestation was the polyphony - it was a victim of the "well how many notes can it play at once" wars back then.

If you stacked up programs, and used wave sequencing on several layers, you often ended up with 4 or 8 voices maximum, even though the voice architecture provided for 32 oscillators.

Now with some of the software and 'virtual analog' synths, consumers have become reacquainted with the fact that you can't have 128 voices in these devices - at least not yet. And the Wavestation is VERY complicated - there's a lot going on, just as in these heavy-duty DSP synths that I build now (like my Ambient synth). But it seems there's an acceptance of these limitations a little bit more now, if the tradeoff is for new and unusual or particularly interesting sounds.

So, a 'Wavestation Pro' is something I'd very much like to do, but I don't know how much DSP it would use - it would probably be even more DSP intensive than the current stuff I've been making.

SONIK : Did you regret not having resonant filters on the WAVESTATION series?

JOHN : The short answer is, yes, of course I missed having resonant filters!!!!

Here's the deal - we (Sequential) were bought out by Yamaha (for what reason, I still wonder)...we basically sat around for a year, but did start on a new design that was the genesis of the final Wavestation concept, and it had those Yamaha filters that were pretty flexible ( I think they were the ones used on the TX16W?)...anyway, after a year, Yamaha closed down first its operations in San Rafael (the group from Stanford lead by John Strom), and then us...but they also had told Korg's head guys to come check us out, so a day after we got the notice, Korg guys called and flew out.

So it was, "You're cut" on Monday, followed by "can we fly out to talk" on Tuesday, with meetings on Thursday, and Korg contracts signed by Friday! This was the first or second week of April 1989.

So, there we were, a new "division" of Korg, and we made a short presentation to all of the Korg family in New York in June that year. The main discussion was what should we do, and so it was decided to see if we could produce a new keyboard in time for NAMM 1990, which means we had 8 months from start to a working proto design! We started with the concept we had been working on, but had to redo a lot of things, since none of the parts we were going to use were now available to us...basically Korg said, "OK, start designing, and you have to use these components".

As you may or may not know, Korg did not have a resonant filter in their design at the time, and so that was the first thing we had to eliminate (and yes, we were all pretty amazed about that!). The second thing was the oscillator chip we had to use was, how shall I say, less desirable than what we had been working with...more aliasing because of a different interpolation scheme. So this also added to the difficulties.

I though the only way around the resonant filter thing would be to take some samples of res. filter sweeps and "time slice" them with Digidesign's TurboSynth software, so this is what I did. It was pretty frustrating, but it provided "something" along the lines of the effect...but I always wanted to make a version with real filters!.

One of the results I totally DIDN'T expect was the 'rhythmic wave sequencing'. When I first conceived of wave sequencing, it was an extension of what the VS did (smooth crossfades). What I wanted was to change each 'corner' of the VS waveshape 'diamond' to a new waveshape, as soon as the joystick had 'panned away' from it. So you could move the joystick around from oscillator A to B to C to D, and when you came back to A, it would be a different waveshape. But with the VS design, when you selected a new wave for osc it would reset the voice chip, which was providing all 4 oscs, and hear a glitch in the sound.

So I had to abandon that idea until we started in on the first design for Yamaha.

By the time I got to actually play a wave sequence in the lab, instead of an extended VS effect with smooth crossfades, it was just this abrupt 'jump' from wave to wave, and I immediately realized how it was going to be used - much more in a rhythmic way than a smooth, crossfaded way, just as a little step sequencer effect. It was a lot of fun to play from the keyboard, too! Still, a big unexpected 'benefit' from the design - totally unintentional!

SONIK : What are two sounds you programmed on the WAVESTATION?

JOHN : "ZZLead" and "Chronos".

SONIK : What instruments do you have in your own personal studio?

JOHN : Let's see...

Pro One
2 x Prophet 5s (Rev 1 and Rev 3)
ARP 2600
2 x Minimoogs
2 x Wavestation racks and one Wavestation keyboard
2 x Prophet 2002's
2 x Prophet 3000's
Studio 440.
There's also a Yamaha TX-7 and an 802 rack around somewhere
A Moog Vocoder...and that's about it.

For software - of course I have a Pulsar system, and an OASYS PCI card.

I probably like the Wavestation's the most (because of the interesting sonic movement you can get), and the Studio 440 is still what I use if I need to do any sequencing. It's fast and easy to use, without all of the mess of configuration a computer-based sequencer requires.

I don't use most of the other stuff, actually...no sampling or anything like that. For the last 2 years I've been primarily focused on instrument design using the Creamware tools.

I can build all kinds of great softsynths so easily with the Creamware system, whereas the program to do so for the OASYS (SynthKit), is much, much harder for a non-engineering person such as myself.

SONIK : Can you tell us what you do now at ZARG MUSIC?

JOHN : Well, basically I design synths out of my head with the Scope program.

I'm not trying to 'emulate' any vintage synth or sound, I'm trying to come up with designs that I think would be interesting. It's an absolute ball, as they used to say...I LOVE doing this! And the Scope platform/building tool is so easy to use.

I do wish the Korg algorithms were available in the Pulsar platform, as Charlie & Andy at Korg R&D have had years and years of doing these algorithms now, whereas the Creamware guys are only 2 years into it... but they are getting better as well. In fact, just recently they made a custom oscillator for the Pro One model I have coming out, and it is a huge improvement in sound accuracy!.

Why I started Zarg?
Well, as you may know, I left Korg in '98 to work for Creamware, and I was the only guy they agreed to have 5000 miles away working for them as a full-time employee. While I enjoyed working with the guys there (I spent the first 7 weeks in Germany training), I have to say, language communication problems and not being there in the office for current updates, product discussions, etc., was a very difficult arrangement.

In the end, I decided it would be better if I went independent and designed things on my own. So, there I was, on my own, and a number of synth designs left over that were in very early design stages, and I thought I should make a go at it, to see if these designs would sell, or if I was totally crazy!.

So, I set up the Web site, and announced the first series in November of 1999. I didn't actually start selling anything until January 2000, and that was with the first synth, the Orion.

This was meant to be a 'lead synth' design, and it has it's origins in a Prophet 5 type approach, with an added AM section. (This is also the only version I have made for the OASYS platform as well).

The next product was inspired by a synth in the OASYS collection. They had a small synth with a comb filter, and I asked Creamware's designer if he could build me one (this was while I still worked for CW)...so he did, and my idea was to have the comb filter like the OASYS version, PLUS another filter - probably a multimode...so I ended up calling my version the Comb Plus.

It was also meant to be a simple design, but as I worked through it, I wanted to add features (this is typical for a synth designer, which the industry calls "feature creep"), and since I didn't have to answer to any marketing or other decision makers but myself, I added them! This became the CombPlus Pro. And I put both on the Website.

Interestingly, since most people say my stuff is expensive, I thought the cheaper CombPlus would sell at least equally as much as its bigger brother, but I hardly sold any at all. They all wanted the bigger version.

The next synth was a spin-off of my bass synth design I had worked on at CW (which they finally molded into the SB-404), and I wanted to put in all kinds of filters - one of each that CW provided - and this I called the Dark Star.

It has a tremendously beefy sound, and I really like the things you can do with it, but it does require a lot of DSP power.

Same for the Ambient, which was the biggest project I've done so far. This started out as something inspired by the Waldorf Q, but I wanted to take it to a different direction with some of the unique modules available in the Creamware library. Also, I was getting quite concerned about DSP usage, as you can imagine - putting a ton of functions in costs a lot in terms of DSP power.

So, anyway, I was at a major decision point in the design, having tried to keep it smaller, but not being satisfied with the results, so I sent out an e-mail to all of my customers who had pre-purchased the entire bundle of 4 synths...and I explained the situation, asking them basically, "Do you want more features or more polyphony?", warring of the DSP usage and trade-offs, etc., etc.

Every single one of them said "More features", and so I went the route of just putting everything in that I wanted, no constraints. It was pretty crazy, and I ended up doing a LOT more work on it than I ever could have imagined. I have no idea how many hours I have spent on these things, but it would go late into the night for weeks (3-4AM). In the end, I was exhausted (from doing all 4 over a period of 6 months!), but, I was also very satisfied with the results!.

The Rotor 48 is the last of the projects I had started in my mind back then...I just had never the time to put it together with some logical thought. It is the first one that steps away from the 'virtual analog' type synth, offering something 'different' in the Pulsar world. It's based on a CW module conceived by Michael Ruf, the Lead Designer of the whole Scope concept.

They actually showed a device in the very early stages of Scope that made use of this rotor thing, but they never used it in anything. I thought it was a brilliant, simple concept...kind of like a 4 step wave sequence, but which you can also run at audio rates tracking a keyboard. A very interesting device.

The most recent design is the Red Dwarf, and this idea I got while musing over what I could do to take some of the design decision out of my hands, and put it in the user's hands. A modular system is the ultimate in flexibility, but for many, it's very hard to grasp what's going on with it, especially if you want to make some simple modifications of someone else's module arrangement.

Also, I had this one guy asking me to customize his Orion, and he kept asking for different things each time I finished a mod. So I thought, here's a way to allow the user to put in whatever oscillator type or filter he wants, and I will just provide a simple structure to work in.

A lot of the times people say they want to be able to do everything, and we tried to do that with the first OASYS keyboard design...but I came to the realization that people need some structure, some limits, even, to make sense of their path, their surroundings, their goals, especially when it comes to designing sounds. Sometimes it's very helpful to know you have only 'this and this' you can do, and you push yourself to see how much you can get from that system. In fact, it's probably one of the 'problems' with the Red Dwarf; I could never be finished with the presets, since each preset can totally reconfigure the synth! So, finally, I decided I would just do a basic set of presets that came from the Comb Pro, and add more as time progresses.

SONIK : Where did the name 'Zarg' come from?

JOHN : Well, as I think I told you earlier, I don't make music anymore - I just design synths and sounds that I like.

This is something I need to change, as it's seems kind of crazy to be designing these things without using them in a practical application, doesn't it?.

Anyway, when I sit down and work on sounds, I guess this would be the place any influence
comes into play, and I would have to credit Michael Stearns for my biggest inspiration. His
timbres are just so deep and incredible! Get a copy of CHRONOS for an example.

Also, Robert Rich is great - a real "tone-meister". I don't know if you've heard of him, but he makes fantastic sounds. Check http://www.amoeba.com/.

In terms of my 'lead synth' playing style, I was quite happy to hear Jan Hammer in the early days, as he was playing the same style that I was (but he is SO much better, of course!!).

SONIK : What are some of the "non-musical" related internet sites you like to visit John?

JOHN : Hmmm, I'm a Star Wars fan. So I'm often checking the official site for Episode II news, as well as http://www.theforce.net/.

There's a Star Wars 'Rap' that's pretty funny!

I've also spent quite a bit of time investigating Bob Monroe's materials and the Monroe Institute, starting back in 1972 (!) - http://www.monroe-inst.com/. This is another area of great interest to me (though it's not strictly "nonmusical", as you'll see).