Sue Metro

Interview by Brian Cowell.

Kurzweil have always been able to release there machines over the years with great pride that there instruments are sound and stable. Behind the scenes, a small team of "bug catchers" make sure that nearly all of them don't reach maturity and drive us all insane. They are the Kurzweil R&D QA testing team.

Leading that team is a woman who has modified guitar equipment in the past for big bands like BOSTON and ZZTOP. She is Sue Mattraw.

Sue takes delight in torturing her Kurzweil equipment knowing that what she does, makes life easier for all of us.

SONIK had a chance to catch with her and ask her some questions.

Here is what she had to say...


SONIK : What is your job title at Kurzweil?

SUE: Quality Assurance Group Leader

SONIK : What is a typical day for you at work?

SUE : I tend to come in pretty early. As soon as I get to my office I check my email and see what the software and soundware departments have churned out for QA testing. I also check for bug reports from beta testers or other outside sources.

If there is a new OS or object file ready for testing it gets loaded into whichever product is in development and the fun begins.

Sometimes there are new features and/or sounds added that didn't exist before. That is always exciting new ground to cover. Sometimes lots of things have been fixed that were reported as bugs which need to be verified. Sometimes, as a result of the fixes, other things may not be working as intended.

Finding ways of totally crashing the machine is what we are after. We want to be really, really sure that a crash doesn't ever happen once we've released anything. When a QA Tech does crash a machine, no matter how convoluted or obscure an operation, we then need to document it and provide detailed instructions for reproducing the failure so the Software engineers can troubleshoot the code.

The QA team tends to get very excited when we can crash a unit. We try not to show this excitement too much because it bums out the Software folks who've worked really hard to made the system as stable as possible.

Sorting through the entire OS takes a great deal of perseverance and patience. Anything could happen and things are always changing so stagnation or boredom are never possible here.

SONIK : How many people work in your QA team?

SUE : It's a small department: there are three full time employees and a handful of beta testers who vary from project to project.

SONIK : What has been your employment history in the music industry?

SUE : I started as a Guitar Test Technician at MXR Innovations. I got to play guitar all day testing effects boxes and the fun rack gear that they made. I was thrilled. Rock stars like David Bowie and the Pretenders would come in for tours. It was a great place to work.

After that I took a job working for Tom Scholz (of the band Boston) at his company, Scholz R&D, which made portable Walkman style multi-effects guitar amps. I worked there for many years as the sole product support person and repair technician for the US. This was another great place for a musician to work. I got to do a lot of custom modifications for people including ZZ Top and, of course, Boston. The main product was called the Rockman.

We made one for Bonnie Raitt called the Rockma'am. The company was eventually bought by Jim Dunlop (who also happens to own the MXR line) and I worked for him over a brief period as consultant and product historian. I thought, after that, that I wanted a "real" job. So I went out and got one.

The novelty wore off in about a year and I enthusiastically came to work for Kurzweil Music Systems.

SONIK : How long have you worked at Kurzweil?

SUE : I've been here at Kurzweil for 2 1/2 years.

SONIK : What sorts of things do you do to the machines in "bug" testing?

SUE : We start by performing a physical check and function test of basic operations: buttons, switches, sliders, pedals, keys, scrolling, edits and saves, etc. Then we thoroughly go through each function, it's pages, fields and parameters.

We do a lot of critical listening. We ask lots of questions. We check for the minuscule discrepancies too, like wrong numeric values or misspelled words on the screens, awkward navigation, anything that will make the user's experience a drag we consider to be a bug.

Systematically a number of external MIDI devices and drives are connected, transfers and midi operations and compatibility for third party software/hardware are verified whenever possible. We use the nifty MIDI Scope program (you can get it from our web site), which was designed by Ralph Muha, long time Kurz man and our Chief Systems Architect.

This program is useful tool for checking that MIDI controller information is being sent/received correctly. This aids in our quest to pinpoint problems. We check against the manual, as it is being written, for correctness and clarity and often add useful information to it's contents.

As the OS gets more stable we get more aggressive with testing, approaching things from a variety of angles and attempting things that are not sensible in the off chance that it'll cause a crash or data loss. We lose sleep wondering if any hidden destructive problems or major annoyances have been left undiscovered.

SONIK : Do you ever have bugs/faults reported that are actual features?

SUE : Definitely. In testing new products the QA department routinely gets stumped. There is always room for confusion in such an open architecture synth, especially during the development phase.

Usually it's just a matter of documenting the hows and whys of things. This is actually how a lot of information ends up in the manual or on our web site. Sometimes we like the way something works better when it is not functioning as originally intended. The pros and cons get weighed and a round of testing will take place to help determine what is the "right" way for a feature or operation to work.

SONIK : How many "beta" versions of software do you go through before a release?

SUE : Dozens, and potentially scores.

SONIK : Do you do any programming on the K2's?

SUE : I do some programming, mostly for my own needs and purposes.

We need test programs for doing QA work and programming the K's is just a normal part of the test environment. Of course, one thing leads to another and before I know it I've saved program after program that I find useful or unusual. Most of the programming that ends up in the machines is done by our amazing team of Soundware engineers.

SONIK : What instruments do you play Sue?

SUE : The guitar has been my main instrument since I was a teenager. Before that I played recorder, ukelele and chord organ.

Basically I would play anything that I could get my hands on until I got my first guitar. It was an acoustic guitar because girls just didn't play electric guitar when I was a teenager. One day a friend had me come to his rehearsal space, gave me an electric guitar and plugged it into a distortion box. Life has never been the same since that day.

One time, many years ago. A friend and I bought a Heathkit Theremin and built it. We sounded so bad we threw it out.

Currently I am playing lap steel and autoharp (yes, sometimes both at the same time) in a sort of rootsy, rockin' alt-country band called Lucky 57. I also play bass and, since I work with synths all day, I do play keys but am not a piano player - yet.

SONIK : What sort of music you into?

SUE : I have quite a wide variety of favorites ranging from experimental electronica to rootsy pop. There's a great subway artist in Boston named Eric Royer who does a one-man-band thing and plays a self made contraption called the Guitar Machine.

You should check out his web site. I think it's: http://www.guitarmachine.com/.

Another fave is the band Cul de Sac. Who are an instrumental band making use of several synthesizers, Theremin and exotic guitar tricks. I'm really bummed that they didn't pick me to be their bass player but you should check them out anyway ;-)

Their CDs are available worldwide.

I also really like Lucinda Williams. Then there's Tom Petty. Really, I could go on all day about this.

SONIK : What are some of your hobbies outside of music?

SUE : I'm an avid traveller and an amateur photographer. I never travel with fewer than two cameras. I have a small dark room in my home which is great when I need some time away from listening to and playing music - which is something I do a lot. I also dabble in building mysterious electronics projects in my basement.

SoniK: May 2000