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John LehmkuhlInterview by Brian Cowel. Over the years, KORG has produced some of the best synthesizers made. In order to show the potential of these devices, great sounds have to be sold with the machine. One of the many people, who program these high quality sounds for KORG, is John "Skippy" Lehmkuhl (pronounced as "Lem-cool"). Since the late 1980's, John has "voiced" (the term used by soundware people that program synthesizer sounds) just about everything from cards of the M1 to the TRITON and KARMA models. So with over one thousand sounds under his belt, Sonikmatter thought it was due time, to catch up with one of the people who make that famous KORG sound, and ask him a few questions. This is what John had to say while he busy working on the music for his band KOI. SONIK : Can you tell us how you got the nickname "Skippy"? JOHN : A fellow product specialist at Korg in 1988 - he saw one of my first product presentations and felt I didn't act much like someone simply named John. I actually fought the nickname for a number of years, but I finally gave up - now many people only know me as Skippy (or Skippy-san when working with Korg in Japan). My drum loop libraries are called Skippy's Big Bad Beats and my new one coming out later this year is called Skippy's NoizBox. So, I've pretty much accepted the nickname at this point =).
It's been that way ever since. SONIK : What has been your work history? JOHN : All my life, my parents worked in sales at various music stores in Idaho and Oregon (mom also taught music lessons and played organ/piano at our church). They opened their own music store in Ontario, Oregon named Trendsetters. When I was 12 years old, I went to Portland in 1981 for the introduction of the DX-7 while working for them and met Bo Tomlyn for the first time). We got in a DX-7 and the RX-11 and I hooked them up via a MIDI cable and started learning about all you could do with MIDI. I graduated with an AA in music performance from Treasure Valley Community (home of the Chuckers). In 1985, I moved to Seattle to work for Evans Music/MIDI City for 3 years (teaching Yamaha Education Course on organ and selling MIDI gear). I was offered a position as product specialist with Korg USA and moved to Los Angeles in 1988. Since 1999, I've been a freelance musician working on films, records and commercials. I have drum loop libraries that are selling around the world and I still have a programming contract with Korg doing product development and voicing work for them. SONIK : How did you eventually become employed to work at KORG? JOHN : While in Seattle working at Evans Music/MICI City, different companies would send a product specialists to come by every couple of months with new sounds and support. Well, I programmed my own sounds for the instruments I sold ("Sure Mr. Customer, you could mail order that M1 from Miami, but you don't get me, my knowledge or my SOUNDS".) I sold tons of products and had a large group of loyal customers with this long forgotten sales model. Anyway, an opening was offered to me from Korg to help out Ben Dowling who was doing the product specialist gig for the whole West Coast by himself. I flew to New York via a red-eye flight (first BIG flight ever for me) and did a "Dog-n-Pony" show the next morning for the crew at Korg NY. They were impressed and offered me a position; I moved to Los Angeles 3 months later. SONIK : What did you do as a " Product Specialist"? JOHN : First and foremost, I learned everything I could about all of Korg's products and then went to music stores to share my knowledge and enthusiasm with the sales people and customers by doing music clinics and in-store concerts. I also created demo sequences and product support that we then left at the stores to help them more effectively sell our gear. SONIK : How did you end up becoming part of the "MIDI-patch-boys" voicing team? JOHN : When I joined Korg, I already had a fairly large number of cool M1 patches I had created while in Seattle (I sold over 30 M1s in the first month the M1 was shipping alone). I sent these sounds to my boss in New York and he sent them off to Japan. Next thing I know, I'm flying to New York to work on the M1 Drum & Percussion card as well as to work on the Voicing for the T-series. Next I was asked to work on the M3R and the Z3 FM Guitar synth and was on my way to work in Tokyo Japan. From about that time on, I was more involved in the programming/development side of Korg products rather than the product specialist/support side. MIDI Patch-Boys (MPB for short) is the self-given nickname for the team that does the voicing work on most Korg instruments. Actually, those same core members that did the voicing on the M1 are still programming with Korg working on their newest and coolest products. I'm very honored to be on this great team, which includes Jack Hotop, Steve McNally, Michele Paciulli, Michael Giesel and Ben Dowling. There are other people that are great assets but it's pretty cool that the family is still hanging from way back then. SONIK : Describe a typical day of work for John Lehmkuhl? JOHN : It varies depending on the projects that are happening and the deadlines. Lately it's been lots of programming of sounds and editing of samples. I hope to have my next drum loop library shipping by fall of this year. My musical project Koi, is performing live for the first time here in Los Angeles on July 18th - I got a lot of work to do!!! SONIK : Tell us some of your favorite artists and what musical influences you've had over the years? (Ten of your favorite CD's if you can). JOHN : I love almost anything as long as I can find some sort of musicality to it. This could be Rock, Trance, Pop, Funk, Classical, Hip Hop, Trip Hop, Jazz and even some country music. I own over 400 CD's, tons of cassettes and records… Listing just 10 is totally IMPOSSIBLE - however, here are some of my favorite CD's - wow, this will take a min. to decide: Scritti Politi - Cupid and Psyche '85 The above artists have more than one record and most all of them are amazing - one reason why they're on my list. There really are so many musicians that have inspired me - Elton John, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheney, Nik Kershaw, Egg, Bruford, Brand X, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Yellow Jackets, Miles Davis, Coltrane, The Eagles, Def Leppard, Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Thomas Dolby, Prodigy, BT, Sacha, Daft Punk, Bizet, Towa Tei, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Peter Gabriel, Scritti Politi, Supertramp, Mozart, Bach, Rachmaninoff, and on and on. SONIK : How does this transpire into your sound creation? JOHN : When I'm making a sound, I am learning about a new electronic musical instrument and finding it's unique strengths and working towards emphasizing them. There are categories of sounds that need to be made, but I enjoy "surfing" with a new synthesizer with no real destination sometimes. New sounds and new applications of sounds are born through these types of sessions. I usually don't listen to a record and try to nail that particular patch for a factory sound - I do this all the time for programming sessions but for the patches in a new machine. I want the sounds to be so new that people will be using on their NEXT record. SONIK : What synthesizers have you voiced over the years John? JOHN : Remember - there is always a huge team involved in these projects: M1 PCM cards, M3R, the T-Series, O1W, Wavestation, Wavestation SR, S3 drum machine, Trinity, Z-1 DSP synth, Wave Drum, Triton, KARMA - probably 30+ Program and PCM Card sets for the above machines and 3 expansion boards (Future Waves, Loop Construction and Vintage) for the Triton. I've also worked on instruments for other companies (I have a bank of 100 patches for the Nord Lead that many people love) - but for the most part, I'm a Korg-kind-a-guy. SONIK : Can you tell us some of the outstanding patches that stick in your mind when you look back at them? JOHN : Oh geez - I've made thousands of sounds and am proud of them all. I don't really remember that many M1, M3R, O1W patches so I'll start with the Wavestation and go from there to present. Wavestation - Cascade Falls, Blow The Bottle, AnalongLoveThang, Ballerina Bells, Midnight Run, SunGlasses Kid, Guardians, SuperClav, Toy Box, Vulcan Harp, Gig Split, Excalibur, Mahogany, Sustain Pedal Jam, 20 sec. Invasion and of course SKIP'sBoomBass !! I also did somewhere around 8 cards for the Wavestation - the original Drum&Percussion PCM card set for the WS keyboard is 100% me (PCM and Programming) - I programmed the Dance, half the Ethnic and part of the Synth PCM cards for the WSSR 100% from the FRONT PANEL. Trinity Combis - Old School Split, JamYourButtOff!, Meet Thy Doom…., Lonely Alien, Massive Bell Pad, many of the drum kits. Above is only a partial list of my favorite Combis - I also contributed to the single-program, drum kits and PCM development work. SONIK : Can you tell us what how long it takes to "voice" a synthesizer and a sound in general? JOHN : It can take minutes for a patch, or it could take days. For the Wavestation with 4 oscillators, I've worked 14+ hours on one sound before. It really depends on the patch and what you are hoping to achieve. I've been to Japan many times for the "birthing" of these instruments. Many times, the coolest sounds are made in this high-pressure environment at the last minute. There is something about 5 guys sitting in a single room, wearing headphones and slamming the keys that really motivates and inspires you to do your best. Knowing that there are 4 other people that are working as hard as they can to make the most amazing programs that they can possibly make - It's all a very religious and inspirational experience. For the Korg Wavestation, we literally lived in Milpitas (close to San Jose) for months and months - working all week including weekends. In fact, I even met my wife, Caroline on a blind date while working on the Wavestation keyboard in Northern California!! The deadlines and goals that are set are usually insane and require us to go into our little programming rooms and not talk to anybody for that period of time - it's actually really challenging - your goal is to get the most musical programs that nobody has ever heard before out of a machine you've had for maybe 2 weeks and there is no documentation for even how it works!! We usually have a total of 2 - 3 months to do the programming for a particular mode of the machine - not a lot of time to produce 100+ new sounds. SONIK : How do you approach voicing a new synthesizer? JOHN : After 12 years With Korg and the MPB's (Midi Patch Boys), we pretty much know what each of the main programmers are going to bring to the table for the meetings in Japan. My focus is more on the synth sounds, special effects and drum kits. But we all dabble in all the various categories - once we get to Japan we look at what we have covered, and what we are still needing then we go from there. One thing I really love with Korg instruments is the true musical response you get when you play it. There are not a TON of parameters, but the KEY parameters for making instruments musical (Velocity control of Envelope times is HUGE in the making of musically responsive patches) are what you find, and have always found since the M1. SONIK : There is a raging debate these days on "software versus hardware"; what are your thoughts on the matter, and how do you see things in the future? JOHN : I don't know, to be honest, I'm happier than a pig in slop with everything that we have at our disposal today. The tools and options are so VAST that it's finally coming full circle again - it's about the SONG, not the production. Almost ANYBODY can produce something that sounds really great, so now people are starting to look beyond the production and are trying to get under the skin and see if there is a SONG to be found. Even techno is growing - there are some great new import CD's called "Future Techno" that have some great musical ideas along with HUGE grooves. It's an exciting time. As to the Analog/Digital debate - I think that the Synergistic mix of BOTH is much more powerful than the sum of either one. For example, I like to send the final stereo mix out of my Korg 1212 card into my Tube-Tech analog tube compressor. This gives the final mix a more round/warm sound - what this lil' box does is truly amazing. My mixes are THAT much better due to the Tube-Tech's contribution than without it. Also if you have to have ultimate synth bass, there is very little debate that NOTHING else comes close the MiniMoog for monster bass sounds. To me, it's more about understanding the strengths of each medium and taking advantage of those whenever possible - to stay solely in the Analog world would mean not knowing about some pretty amazing and exciting developments in the Digital world… I will say this though… we need to hurry up our butts up and get a better standard of communication on keyboards other than MIDI. My USB mouse on my G4 communicates faster than MIDI does. Firewire/Mlan is looking very appealing to me… SONIK : What instruments do you have in your studio? JOHN : The Center of my workstation is my Apple G4 dual 500Mhz computer. I have 576MB of RAM and 36 gigs of HD space online. The things you can do with a single computer is quite staggering. For Software: Logic Audio 4.7 is the only sequencer I use. Other software I love very much: the Emagic EXS Sampler, the Emagic ES1 synth, Reason, NI Dynamo, Recycle, Rebirth, Pro 52, PPG 2.V, Waves Gold Bundle, Peak 2.5 VST, MetaSynth and top secret toys I can't mention… I have the Access Virus (truly an amazing box) along with the Nord Lead, Korg Z1, Korg Triton (2nd most amazing box), Novation Nova, Alesis DM Pro, Wavestation A/D, WSSR and the Roland S-760 for doing my MIDI work. However, since hard disk recording has become so easy on the computer, EVERYTHING is now recorded to the computer as audio - there is simply so many ways to take the recorded part FURTHER than if it was left being played by the original instrument. SONIK : What have been some of the funniest/strange things you've seen in the industry? JOHN : I'm not really an "Industry" person.. but here's a great story that involves Mr. John Bowen! We were working on the O1W project and had the opportunity to continue the voicing work in We get to Frankfurt and survive Musik Messe, we then go to this little town in Germany where Musik Meyer (the German Distributor for Korg) has their offices. They had set up reservations at this very cute little hotel called the Belleview for us to stay and use their "convention" room for doing the voicing for the next week. First off, the tennis shoe convention that had been using the "convention" room as well as the hotel rooms where we were to sleep decided to stay for 1 more day. Some of us didn't have a room to sleep in for the first night!! Steve McNally (from Canada) and Michele Paciuli (from Italy) had to share a single twin-sized bed (we still joke with them about "who got to eat the chocolate" - the cleaning maids leave a single chocolate on the beds after cleaning the rooms). John Bowen and myself slept on little funky recliner chairs that were in their kitchen. Not the most comfortable. We had to take showers in the back, which was more like being in a gymnasium shower was totally nuts. Well, we made it thru the night (not much sleep) and we start to set up the "Convention" room after breakfast. We¹re setting up all the prototypes on keyboard stands and connecting sustain pedals and headphones. All of a sudden, there is a HUGE POP sound - we all stand up and stop what we were doing. John Bowen had plugged the NEC computer (110 volts) into the German power socket (220 volts) and turned it on resulting in totally blowing up the NEC computer. ALL of our back-up files were LOST and we had to start all over again it was nuts, but luckily we were in great moods and the food was pretty good at that hotel, so we got to work and all the patches and wavetables again. Today for the most part, we do the voicing work in our own studios, email the files to Japan and only meet in Japan to assist in the final voicing stages no more 2 or 3 weeks programming together as a group somewhere - I kind of miss those days. SONIK : Do you think the "workstation" keyboard concept needs to revised by many of the music manufacturers? JOHN : There are a lot of interesting attempts to show "a difference" between company A's product and company B's product (sliders, buttons for controlling your computer sequencer or programmed towards a specific genre etc.).. I'm old-fashioned in my thinking on this: SOUNDS SELL. I think people want machines where programmers have pushed them to their physical limits and come up with new and interesting sounds no one has ever heard before. If you have cool, new exciting and inspirational sounds, you¹ll sell as many as you can make. If it has an easy to use interface then you¹ll have even more success. That¹s one concept that Korg has mastered which most other companies still don¹t understand. If the instrument is not easy and intuitive to operate, why should I spend the next 4 months learning all the quirks in order to write the music I wanted to write in the first place? Of course, I feel Korg has the best sound programming team in the world and our track record pretty much speaks for itself. SONIK : What forms of "synthesis" do you think should be explored more? JOHN : I'm blown away on a daily basis by what is happening to synthesis in the Software "Virtual" synthesizer world. There are so many ways to get new sounds that no one has heard before. I think the hybrid concept of having the key elements of a lot of different types of synthesis inside of one huge synth engine is very powerful and offers almost unlimited exploration. I'm a big fan of John Bowen's Pulsar Synthesizers - they are very cool because they are taking cool and different elements that haven't been put together before and getting them to work - be nice if they were VST Instruments though, John. =). Software synthesis is so exciting to because of this flexibility and "what if" attitude the developers are adopting. Native Instruments Reaktor, Dynamo and recently acquired Absynth are also pretty amazing programs that are pushing new windows of sounds into the forefront. Absynth is especially exciting since it has such an organic quality to the sounds it produces. So, to answer the basic question, I think that we are at the very beginning of a whole new generation of synthesizers. The mixing of traditional synth concepts with new and very complex DSP algorithms is the right direction we are and should be heading. However, I'm not convinced that Hardware manufactures are going to go in this same direction. Traditionally synthesizer customers are very fickle. If the keyboard doesn't have an AMAZING acoustic piano, great drum sounds and a large range of sounds, then it won't sell as well. Now the Virus, Nord and Waldorf instruments are changing that model due to the very unique and large variety of sounds those instruments make, but they're not workstations in the same way a PCM based machine is. It really is a great time to be an electronic musician. SONIK : When you get some quite moments to yourself, what sort of music do you play for your own enjoyment ? JOHN : (Jazz, electronic, rock etc.) Actually, I'm really excited to be involved in a new musical project called Koi (pronounced Ko-wee) - we have 7 songs completed and we're putting together the live show. The music is a cool mix of Pop/Techno/Orchestral/Jungle - kind of like Everything But the Girl meets Enya with a dash of Massive Attack. I've never really played many live gigs (at 37 years of age - can you believe it???) so this is all kind of new and exciting to me right now. We're planning on having a guitarist, drummer as well as myself playing with my partner, Koi singing - it's coming out really amazing!! I also love writing in lots of different styles from Ambient to Fusion. Each day I usually try to sit down and write SOMETHING - Anything. With this approach, I like to head off in different themes and styles from day to day. Some I save to develop further at a later time, usually though, I quit Logic/Reason/Dynamo/ or whatever and don't save it - it's more for the exercise IN writing than for the outcome OF the writing. SONIK : What are some of your favorite TV shows? JOHN : Believe it or not, I was really into the Survivor TV series. Right now, West Wing, Sex and the City and The Sopranos are also programs that I'll stop working long enough to watch. I'm really into Basketball so March Madness and the NBA playoffs were great (Love to watch the Lakers), I also like watching the major Golf tournaments - especially when Tiger is doing his thang… Old shows? Seinfeld, Star Trek (the original as well as some of the Next Generation episodes), Aeon Flux, Ren and Stimpy and even Pee Wee's Playhouse are fun to watch as well. SONIK : What do you do to "get away from it all" and re-charge yourself ? JOHN : I now have a 9 month daughter named Hannah Grace Lehmkuhl. She is one of the most amazing experiences in my life. I love spending time with my wife Caroline and her - watching her grow and develop into more and more of a real little person everyday has been quite the trip. I'm actually a very driven person that does almost nothing but work (ask my wife) - to cool off, I love to listen to music and play video games. I've played video games since Star Trek on the early Texas Instrument computers (remember cassette tape back-up??) I also love to play golf. I love to watch the NBA on NBC. I love to yell when Kobe makes a stupid shot and cheer when Shaq slams someone hard too… My wife Caroline loves to travel and while we don't get away enough, she does a pretty good job getting us out of the house a couple of times a year - just going away with no MIDI this or SCSI/USB that to deal with is really nice. I probably would never leave my studio if it weren't for her. |
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