Insights In Sound 202 – Robert Margouleff, Producer/Visionary S21 E2

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I’m here with Robert Margolof at East West Studios. Robert’s got a memoir
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coming out very soon called Shaping Sounds.
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For those of our viewers who don’t know, Robert’s history dates back to well, we
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start with Tanto’s expanding headband and then we move into a lot of work with
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Stevie Wonder, with DVO, with Ogoingo Boingo. So, we’re going to walk through a few photos and a few little um
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recollections of the past and then we’re going to catch up and basically talk about what you’re doing now at the ripe
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age of 85 and still have ripe, I’ll tell you that.
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I ripen as we speak. Oh, well, I’ll back up then. Yeah.
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So, I I I had this wonderful head shot of you here, which I think is really really great. Yeah. And then
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good one. One of the things that you and I talked about the last time we we um did an
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interview was that you had actually started out as a youngster uh as a choir boy and a chist.
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Fifth grade. Yeah. I I was making my way to sixth grade and that picture is kind
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of unique. It’s me standing on the boardwalk at uh Atlantic City and we’re there at a music teachers convention and
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the Kensington School orchestra of which I was uh the second chair second chair
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of the cello section. I mean that orchestra when we started playing your
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teeth could fall out easily. It was something else. But I love
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playing the cello. My sister, who’s uh I guess seven years older than I am,
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she’s still kicking around, by the way. 94 years old now,
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uh was at Giuliard during that time when I was growing up and I got my cello.
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I love it. And she would play the piano and I would play the cello and we would play
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together. As she says, “My ears used to turn bright red from the excitement.”
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There I am on the boardwalk in my little orchestra uniform, my little white suit
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with the bow tie with a little dab of Br. I see dab of cream will do me. Glaring into the sun
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with my cello under my shoulder. I thought I was destined to become a chist, but I never really was able to
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find my voice. I went through piano, took piano lessons and everything else.
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I mean, even as a little boy, I when I was like 15 or 16, there was a guy down
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the block, Gordon Radio. He had a radio store in an air conditioning place, but he had a lot of old loudspeakers around.
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And I ended up putting loudspeakers under all the furniture in our living room and in the piano room and the
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dining room. And I would playchaikovsky and Rahmanov and the music would come out from under the chairs. Of course, it
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was completely juryrigged and kind of silly, but there I was in my first days
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still playing with wires and sound. And here we are still playing with wires and
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sound. You invented the subwoofer, huh? You invented the subwoofer. Yeah, you
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might say I invented the subwoofer, but uh I’ve always enjoyed recorded music
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and uh it really started with that. It really started with playing the cello
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and then uh I got my sister’s piano teacher, Mr. Grain, who’s a very
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interesting old man. He could sit at the piano backwards with his back to the piano and put his hands behind him like
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this and play the piano in reverse. Uh-huh. And uh I was very fascinated by that.
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But even as a little kid with my sister playing Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven all the time.
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Uh I would end up sitting under the piano. It was a grand piano, Steinway.
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And I’d sit under the piano and listen to her practice for hours and hours. And to this day, I am still very partial to
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piano music. I still listen, even when I’m working out, I’m listening to Bach.
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I love it. Mhm. Preludes and the inventions and
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I don’t know some something just really connects with me with piano music. It’s a very interesting instrument in so
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many ways, you know. I wonder now because when you discovered the
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synthesizer, it was based on a piano keyboard. Was that one of the things that drew you to it?
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Well, the synthesizer really is not based on a keyboard. a
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keyboard. Well, the interface is what I’m talking about. Yeah. Well, it’s uh it was sort of uh a
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side motion in a certain way because it’s simply a controller that changes
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voltage in a stepped way. Mhm. And uh it drove people to saying, “Oh,
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it’s an organ. It’s uh you know it’s and we’ve treated it that way for many many
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years as well by creating a polyonic keyboard
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uh and uh it went from switched on Bach to uh where we are now. I mean, you
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know, it’s uh it’s an evolving instrument, but we have ceased with the
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you with the Euro rack designs much like what we see here in this room, which is
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a big rack of gear with the twin zone power supply and 110 volt things in the
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back and everything or stuff that’s on board uh inside of ProTools and so
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forth. Uh we’re starting to leave hopefully and completely leave the
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concept of it’s just a something that adapts to old song forms that are fixed
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pitches from one note to the next and to live into in a uh 12 note tone row.
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Were you attracted to um a lot of that stuff? Were you attracted to alternative controllers, you know, like the the Don
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Bulas stuff and things like that? I like sequencing. I like uh free play.
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A lot of the music from Tanto was uh the first piece Aurora ditched the whole
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concept of eight bar phrases. Uhhuh. Um and sort of freed ourselves to move
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into uh into a much freer form of making music and now it’s 60 years later and uh
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60 years later. Amazing, huh? Yeah. It’s 60 years later and we’re uh
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we’re finally beginning to free ourselves from totally keyboard oriented
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pastoriented song forms. You know, it’s uh it’s been an evolution. I mean, you think about Bach
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or even earlier music for keyboard where the scales weren’t tempered. Okay?
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Right? A lot of pipe organs weren’t in tempered scales. It was Spa who wrote the
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well-tempered Clavier, but we play Glenn Goo Gould plays played uh he’s he’s
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stardust now sadly, but uh uh he plays played Bach on the
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piano forte, which wasn’t invented when Bach wrote that music. Okay. So, there’s been a constant
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evolution in musical instruments. I mean if you even look at the early piano from the 1800s like for example
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which is a brand that was built overseas uh the piano itself has a big evolution.
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A lot of the music that’s written today cannot be performed on an early instrument.
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Yeah that’s true. That’s true. Well, and the reason I asked you that question was because I know that you were at one
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point you had this this sort of uh epiphany in discovering the synthesizer
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and really finding your voice with that. And I wondered what it was that drew you to it. Was it the interface? Was it the
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um Well, my first draw to it was Ne. Uh I was making a
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feature motion picture in New York in a very scary way called Chia Manhattan
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and uh it was with I somehow had fallen and I
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came back. I was living in East Village. I’d been in the army for a couple of years where I’d been trained as a
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cinematographer or basically a uh a uh combat combat camera.
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Uhhuh. That was supposed to go into the field and photograph people fighting with each
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other and uh combat cameras and I became very fil and fascinated with it. My love
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of photography followed me from my grade school days. I
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my original camera was an Argus. It was from the drugstore. Uhhuh. It was a little box camera.
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Mhm. Made of black plastic with gray buttons. And uh I was uh
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always taken with it and I had a choice. I could wait to be drafted and go to Vietnam and die, which would be a I
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wouldn’t be here, right? Mhm. Or I could enlist. And if I enlisted,
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they would allow me to go to uh the motion picture photography school at Fort Dicks, New Jersey, and to be
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trained as a combat photographer. Rough choice, huh? Yeah, rough choice.
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So, I took the rough choice. And since I love photography, the school was very
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vigorous. And um we learned no history, no aesthetics, none of that. But what we
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learned was how to aim the camera correctly and how to use any camera under field conditions.
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Useful skill. Yeah. Yeah. So when I came back out of the service, I’d already been living for a year on
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the economy in Stogart where I’d been stationed and I was working as a still
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photographer. So when I came back, I decided to settle in the East Village in New York and uh
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uh got a floor through walk up on the fifth floor just around the corner from
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uh just around the corner from the Fillmore and I know the neighborhood’s
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opening thing. I walked over there, watched Kip Cohen and uh run around over there, smoke joints
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and watch them set up for the Jefferson airplane. I love it. It was one of my first concerts. In fact, I um I lived at
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I had an apartment at Second Avenue in St. Mark’s Place, so right around the corner. Yeah. Although I think I was probably a few years after
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you, but yeah. Um live between Second and Third uh Second and Third Avenue.
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But there was a lot going on in that in that neighborhood in that I mean it was amazing times.
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Transitioning from an old Jewish neighborhood into a hippie paradise.
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Mhm. And uh one night, getting back to your original question, one night I
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found myself drifting around, cruising around the Lower East Side and uh it was
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already becoming active in Lama, which was what theater on the second floor.
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Ellen Stewart was the Empressario, and a lot of major people came out of her
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theater, which was on the second floor directly across the street from the Fillmore. Uhhuh. So it was like a really hippie
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community. Had a beautiful Jewish pe delicatess down there. Pastrarami sandwiches and lots of Jewish people
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hovering around and everything. And uh I walked into a club. I heard
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this strange uh bleeping and blooping one night and my principle in making
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Chow Manhattan was to give the cameras to the artist themselves and bypass the
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entire uh hierarchy of film making. That’s brave. You know, I can go to like Warner
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Brothers or something in the I just got out of the army and uh I’m a
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combat photographer and I need a job. Well, well, you well, young man, you you
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can’t get a job without being in the union. So, right, toddle over to the union and they say,
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“Ah, you’re a combat photographer, huh? Well, we can’t employ you and give you a union
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card unless you have a job.” Right. Right. So, it was all about protecting the guys
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that are there. So, anything you did, you had to do on your own. And Andy was doing a lot of uh stuff at the factory,
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Andy Warhol, with the news cameras. Mhm. And making films like Empire and a whole
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bunch of other stuff. Never paid anybody. Everyone was hanging out and using drugs and stuff.
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Mhm. And vitamin shots from uh the wonderful Dr. Bishop.
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I walked into that nightclub, but I I first given all the artists the people
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who came over from the factory. I I had a little budget, so I was able to pay people, which was very attractive.
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Mhm. I signed Edie Cedric for $800. I gave her a first contract. It’s
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a small fortune. And uh we started to make a uh a film based on uh the life of the underground
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in Manhattan in New York, Max’s Kansas City, and the factory and this the the
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makers and the breakers and the drug addicts and the dealers and all of that stuff. But I gave cameras
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which are now much more portable. I gave the cameras to uh the artists themselves
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and said we’re gonna get rid of all this middle thing union this that and the other. And I made friends with this guy
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at a company called Gordon Audio. And he said you can have any I really like what you’re doing. You can rent anything you
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want and deliver it if you need help. Blah blah blah. And it was the time on
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the Araflex 35. I was going to give young creatives the
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professional tools and the professional tools were Aries and Motorola uh uh mo movieas and uh
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stuff. So I ended up with a studio through variety of means. You start
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shooting commercials with a guy named Don Cohen who was an established uh
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cinematographer. We went up town and uh we built a little studio on 47th Street and it was like
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flies to honey, the bees to the honey. And uh I scored and uh signed Edie.
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That’s a long story in itself. I ended up living with her after she set fire to
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her apartment at the Chelsea Hotel. Oops. Yeah. He was, we used to call her the
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Q-tip cuz both her hands were bandaged and I had to have somebody around to help her at the bathroom and bathe her
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and everything else cuz she couldn’t do anything for herself. She was in pretty miserable
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shape. But nonetheless, uh, we ended up with cameras and stuff and we started
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shooting a film called Chia Manhattan. In the process, I wanted to think about
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doing music for it. The alternative would be a studio like this. The union players come in, the union players go
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out, the guys write the contracts, the engineers do the engineering, and up is
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louder and everybody’s doing things. And uh I wanted to see about how I could
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bring the music closer. And I walked into a club that evening
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and uh the club was called Cerebrum. And strangely enough, who built cerebrum?
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John Stok. It was one of his first Oh, I love it. Yeah. It was one of his first uh
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efforts. Uhuh. And sitting under the DJ booth was a synthesizer, pieces of a Moog
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synthesizer that had been fire damaged. And uh but nonetheless, they were
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playing it uh in between the music sets and it was doing its own thing, you
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know. It was kind of like [ __ ] itself. Mhm. And uh
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I think that’s where the expression go [ __ ] yourself comes from. I see. I had no idea. Yeah.
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Okay. So uh little known history facts here, folks. Yeah. Little little.
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Uhhuh. But when I heard it, like the light bulb went off in my head and I said, “This is
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the way I can make music for the film utilizing the people who are around me.”
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Oh, one of those people was a guy named Gino Conerio. Mhm. Who was a model, a gay model, killer
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look at Ford agency model, but he was also uh a graduate of Giuliard or
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Manhattan, I don’t remember which. Mhm. He could read a piece of music upside down.
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And uh when I showed him the synthesizer, he had come over as part of the the gaggle from Andes.
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Uhhuh. He saw it, he went crazy and we said, “This is the way to make music for
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Chiao Manhattan.” And once I got the synthesizer, Bob Moog came down with it and I went to
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the uh NAM convention was at the old coliseum on Columbus Circle.
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Oh wow. Okay. And Walter Seir, we went on to have a wonderful
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Yes. studios in New York. Walter uh also had a tuba factory. that
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but that’s another story for another day. Okay. He was a champion tuba player. I had no idea.
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Yeah. And he showed up and uh uh he showed up with a henchman to help
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him move the synthesizer named Tom Fly. And Tom Fly went on to become the major
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engineer on his in his own right. Record plant chief engineer for many Oh, that’s where I know the name. Okay.
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Mhm. and uh also played did all the recording for the dead and a lot of
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stuff. But he started with me. He was also in Shiao Manhattan. He played a priest and a chauffeur in Shia
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Manhattan. But we started making music there and slowly but surely I really
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suddenly realized that I had found my voice in music. I was never going to be a great concert pianist and certainly
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not a chist by any shape or way shape or form.
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But it uh it sent me on my journey because I found that I could leave the
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reality of a tone row. I could create sounds that people never heard before.
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Uhhuh. And uh I found it fantastic. The first record I made with it was a record I
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produced with a band called Lothar and the Hand People. I remember them. Yeah. Yeah. You remember Machines? People are
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still playing that song. Yeah. If you listen to Machines and then you listen to DVO to like Whip It,
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you’ll see that there’s a kind of a strange relationship between the two. There is a continuum there. Yeah, I can
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see that. Yeah. So, so, uh, I worked with the band and we did it, we recorded
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a lot of it on a four track in my little studio, an Ampex 440B.
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Mhm. And then we went over to another studio where there was an eight track and finished overdubbing over there and
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mixing and uh, the record came out on Capable. Although they were very excited
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but what we came up with they they didn’t really understand what we were doing in a lot of ways. I don’t think
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the album did very well but didn’t do badly. It made some noise but uh it
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really was my first foray into electronica and uh uh I loved it and I ended up also
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uh making uh TV commercials which which makes sense. Yeah. A lot of um
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there were a few people who were doing TV commercials when the synthesizer came out. Any batteries or whatever it was.
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Uhhuh. Bing bong boom. Yeah. Yeah. Did that Pepto-Bismol, Ford Torino,
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TransCaribbean Airways, which is just for trans people, I guess. Of course. Yeah.
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Who were going to to the Caribbean. Of course. Yes. Yeah. You were very involved in the development of synthesis
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from from the Lothar and the Hand people phase. the phase where people didn’t really know what the hell to do with it
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to the point where it became a vi a viable musical statement and then an art
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form in itself and part of the vernacular and you know part of that was tanto for example. Tell us a little bit
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about the evolution of that with your partnership with Malcolm Cecil and how that all evolved. Well, I was uh
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obviously uh the Tower of Babel that I built at Centaur Production with Chia
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Manhattan finally got to a place where it uh self-destructed basically before I was
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able to finish. The original Chow Manhattan was shot in black and white.
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Uhhuh. And uh I liked it very much. I liked the sort of the
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kind of vibe of New York in black and white. It was it’s classic. It was classic. Yeah,
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it was correct. But it got wandering away and finally I
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ran out of money after a huge collection of cash from my family.
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My father and mother stood behind me. God bless them. I never really thought
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that they would ever fly fly in it. But my father became Mr. Videio in Shiao
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Manhattan. The mob. Really? Oh, I love it. I just, you know, very supportive. Yeah.
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Say, now look here, Mario. Uhhuh. You’re just a wart on the ass of
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progress. If you don’t take care of your business with me, I’m going to take care
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of you. Mario, Mario, Mario, what are you doing? He would write lines like
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that just off the top of his head. He constantly amazed me. Oh, but uh Chow Manhattan had sort of fallen
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off the thing. I ran out of money. People were running in every direction. Edy was a serious drug issues and
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yeah, she was a bit of a train wreck. She was really uh trying to find her way. I was busy more
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fascinated with the synthesizer than I’m turns out than I was with Chia Manhattan. And the bottom line was also
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uh the synthesizer was a real object. Chia Manhattan was this nefarious.
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It was a concept concept. Yeah. That was populated by people who are like mice dipped in paint and you’re
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trying to tell them which way to run on the canvas to take a picture. It was like completely out of control.
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Mhm. But the synthesizer was concrete. It was there. It was in front of me. You could understand it.
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I could understand and I loved what it did. And uh I started uh uh Centaur closed and I ended
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up at a place called uh Broadway Recording which is in the same building, the Ed Sullivan Theater building where
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Yes. Yes. Yeah. On the seventh floor. I think Howie Schwarz was in there for a while too, wasn’t he?
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There. Yeah. Uhhuh. It was filled with little Warren of recording studios and stuff.
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And uh I started to get my feet wet. The guy that owned it was a really old time. His name was Pat Jakes, who was a real
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oldtime recording engineer from the like the water powered days, you know, like really stuff, you know, with slate
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surfaces and big knobs and things. But he taught me and he gave me he had
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his first 12 track. It was a Skully. Oh. Uhhuh. and uh Richie Havens was a
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client and Tito Poente was a client and I started making some sounds for them and people started coming around
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and uh I ended up selling a concept to do uh some religious music caldera from
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Caldera for would you believe Buddha Records of course what’s his name it was during the time
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of uh uh of switchbas around that time I also
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recall a story uh that Ed Stasium told me that uh he his band came in there at
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one point and you were the engineer and and basically they didn’t have a producer and so you essentially started
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producing them by default. Yeah. Then at work was the band. Yeah. Richie label uh um Stormy Forest
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Records. Yes. Yes. So you really had a finger in all sorts of things at that point. Well, I haven’t heard from Ed in a long
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time. He’s a very good guy and a really wonderful wonderful fellow. Yeah. The one advantage he had over me is when
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I ended up at media, he was already at media and he understood the console
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which I to this day was a mystery because in those days every major studio
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built their own console, right? Okay. Right. Nobody had an Eve or one of these puppies, you know.
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Mhm. Uh, everyone built it and it was the console at the record at the media
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sound had a lid and you opened it like this. It was like a piano that was bent
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in the middle because all the wires hanging off of it and uh but I went
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through uh Broadway first and then I got invited to come to Media Sound. Media
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uh was where I ended up. I was invited to go there. media was owned by uh a
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group of financers who also financed Woodstock. Uhhuh. So they really understood me because I
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was really a freak of nature and uh you can see you know that’s a very uh that’s
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a that’s a very puppy picture. I think that’s a very nice photo. Yeah. But tell us about
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very proper. Yeah. Well, I want to hear about how how this evolved into uh I think I have a
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picture of it here. how this evolved into this. Well, that’s a long story off a short
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tier. Uhhuh. Uh I think uh what happened was uh I had a long about
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and stayed about I guess about a year at Broadway and then I and I was learning
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and I started to write some electronic music and I started writing a song. Not
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a song really. It was 27 minutes long, but a soundsscape called Aurora.
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Uh-huh. It was very long and very uh went thousand different places. Didn’t use
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keyboards, used the synthesizer itself to create atmospheric just playing with filters and and
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whatnot. Yeah. Uh-huh. It was basically I could and I could transpose the entire instrument from key
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to key and uh had sequencers and stuff going. So, it was art. Yeah, it it was sort of
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an open notice of freedom from uh John Manhattan and my liberation piece where I was really learning how to
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use the 12 track in the console and uh I got invited to work at media.
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So I packed up my Moog synthesizer. I went to media sound and I was there I
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guess about six months and I had my synthesizer on a gurnie like a hospital gurnie.
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Uhhuh. And I was able to roll it out into Studio A, which was uh sort of an
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impressive studio, sort of like this place. Mhm. Impressive in its own way. It was an old church. It had the big uh
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Oh, the peak ceiling and everything. Apartment building. Oh, nice. Yeah. Okay. It was But but it had the big roof with
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the big wooden beams and stained glass windows and everything. Uhhuh. So when I went out there dressed
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like a space cadet with my synthesizer at night in there with the lights on it,
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it was really I really was on the bridge of the Enterprise and I loved it.
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Uh-huh. And one night I came in to the studio to work and the console was wide
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open and there was this really skinny guy with a huge black Q-tip
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head with a tool belt around his waist and he turned around. He looked like an owl
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with these big glasses. It was Malcolm. Uhhuh. And I said, “Uh, you must be the new
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chief engineer here.” And he said, “Yes, I am. And you must be the guy who has that thing in the ISO booth.
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And one thing, a friendship was born immediately. No doubt. Yeah. I would use the downtime at night to
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write. Uhhuh. Okay. And I’m doing the commercials during the day and making enough money
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being that I was completely broke. Mhm. to uh I had the synthesizer already and that was all paid off and
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everything, but I was making enough money to uh do some couch surfing and to
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sort of get settled down. Mhm. And I had just I think around that time I had just moved into the Ansonia Hotel
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where we luxury before shot the pool scenes for Chow Manhattan.
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Mhm. And now the Ansonia became the Continental Bass. Uh-huh.
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Where B. Midler used to sing with her keyboard player. Yeah. Uh, yeah. What’s his name? Uh,
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Barry Manalo. Barry Manalo. Barry Manalo. Ah, yes. Barry. And they called her Bath House
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Betty. Yep. And uh I would walk down from uh there
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to 57th Street and back at night in the snow. Nice. 4 in the morning. Park. But uh I walked
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in, there was Malcolm in the studio and uh we really hit it off and uh we made a
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deal. I said, “If you show me how to really get around on the sport a little bit better,” he said, “I’ll I’ll do
30:42
that, but you have to teach me how to play the synthesizer.” It wasn’t tanto then. It was just the
30:48
It was just the Moog. Uhhuh. And uh but uh once we started working together, I
30:54
played him Aurora and he said, “Oh, this is a really interesting piece of music.”
30:59
I said, “Malkey, I don’t I’m not even sure this is music.” And he said, “Well, it’s music.” All right. And uh Malcolm
31:08
was a superb not only a superb technician, but a superb uh a superb
31:15
musician. Uhhuh. I should really play. He played he was in the line band in a place
31:20
called Ronnie Scots in London. Sure. They had a back back legendary. Yeah.
31:25
Legendary players used to come and uh play there. They come from New York or from the east
31:31
coast and they couldn’t afford to travel with the band. So Ronnie Scouts had a backline.
31:37
Right. Okay. Right. And Malcolm was in the backline and he uh uh what was the name of the band? the
31:44
blues. Uh,
31:49
is that the um was that the same band that John May all came through? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of players came through there,
31:55
including Beck, including Herby Man. Sure. Including a whole bunch of American jazzers.
32:00
Yep. And he was uh he played with Lonnie Hall here and uh
32:06
uh not Lonnie uh what’s his name? Uh uh uh don’t forget
32:13
pianist. Huh? Uh pianist. No. Uh so I was thinking Lonnie Liston Smith,
32:18
but that not might not be the guy. Not important. But he was out there playing with uh people
32:24
at night a bit. Uhhuh. And we really fell in with each other and we started talking about how we
32:29
could make the synthesizer a real time instrument. Uhhuh. In the meantime, we started cooking on writing some music. And uh
32:38
uh he said, “You know, Aurora is a little on the long side. It’s like 27 minutes long.” And he said, “All it
32:45
needs is a a little judicious editing, right? Judicious editing.” The song
32:52
ended up seven minutes long. That’s pretty judicious. Yeah. Judicious. Yeah.
32:57
But uh we uh we started working together and uh we
33:04
had this wonderful uh Chinese, Japanese, uh Spanish restaurant
33:11
across the street from the studio where we would for gather at night. It was a terrible the food was terrible, but it
33:18
tasted really good cuz they filled it up with monos sodium glutamate. Mhm. It used to leave me flushed, very red in
33:24
the face. Yeah. little feverish, but we’d go over there at 7:00. They had paper tablecloths
33:31
and we started talking about how we could get all of these the synthesizer
33:36
to be more playable as a real time instrument. And I slowly with my earnings and stuff started buying more
33:44
components and stuff and we would draw our concept of how to control create a
33:50
central brain. Malcolm sort of came up with a concept of how to um how to deal
33:56
with control voltages and busing. And we came up with a design to be able
34:02
to control a multitude of synthesizers. Of course, now by this time the
34:07
synthesizer was uh uh on several tables. Mhm. All wheeling around, all wires all over
34:14
the place, everything. It was like 12 ft long. And uh I was using it during the
34:20
day. I’d used just a little piece of it because it was it be was becoming more and more complicated.
34:25
But nonetheless, it was it was working and we started uh writing uh Zero Time,
34:32
our first album. Mhm. And uh that led to a lot of
34:37
collaboration, a lot of work at night when the studios were empty.
34:42
And uh one night we were working on it and uh who walked in the back door of
34:48
Studio A but Herby Man. M and uh Herby says to Malcolm, “Malcolm,
34:54
what are you doing here? The last time I saw you, you were at Ronnie Scots.” He says, “Well, I’m chief engineer here
35:00
now.” And uh he and Herby says, “What are you doing?” And Malcolm pointed to
35:07
the synthesizer. I’m doing this. He says, “You doing something like that?” and he said, “Yeah.” Then he left and he
35:14
went downstairs to Studio B to work with one of his fans and he told us that he had a a uh
35:23
a vanity label called Emryo. Ah, right. Oh, he was playing on Nights Off
35:29
Nights with Jim Hall. Okay. Star player. Name Escapes Me at 85. I’m allowed to
35:35
have some escapes. Oh, absolutely. So, uh,
35:40
he said, uh, Kirby pointed to it and he said, “What’s
35:46
that?” And Mam says, “Well, don’t knock it until you hear it.” And then Herby
35:51
went down to work with his band. He had a embassy. He had a uh a uh vanity label
35:58
on Atlantic called Embryo Records. Uhhuh. So, in the meantime, I pulled the
36:04
synthesizer out of the ISO booth and put it in the studio with the lights on it.
36:09
Although I wasn’t playing it particularly because we were playing recordings. Mhm. But it was there and it looked like, you
36:17
know, we’re at it a little bit and we played a roar for him and he flipped out
36:24
and uh that’s how you got the record deal. Yeah. It sounded like the end of the universe. Uhhuh.
36:29
There was no bars. There’s no returning. There’s no ABC bridge. It was just a huge soundsscape.
36:37
Mhm. And uh it ended up as the first piece on
36:43
our album, which was uh uh Zero Tanto’s expanding headband,
36:48
right? Malcolm and I started using it and uh uh and then uh we uh ended up
36:56
with an album. But in the process of doing that, I had come up with a name when I was using I think uh I was on a
37:03
peyote trip in my friend friend’s uh apartment when I was couch surfing and I
37:09
was standing there in a rather chilly morning in my baggy underwear
37:16
uh at like 6:00 in the morning and no one was around. I was eating cold asparagus from a can.
37:23
one spar guy at a time and I said to myself, you know, I think
37:30
we need a name for my for the band. And I said, huh, I got it. Tanto’s expanding
37:35
headband. We ended up with an album called Zero Time, which uh uh by that
37:42
time we had come up we Tanto was going to be the name for the instrument.
37:47
Uhhuh. Then Malcolm came up with the idea of uh using that name Tanto to uh
37:54
create an acronym from it which we really had a reach for which became the original neotimbral orchestra.
38:01
I love that. That came out of the psychedelic my psychedelic brain when I was uh coming
38:07
down from uh a peyote trip. I think it was the night before. Like I say, I was
38:13
standing there in my underwear in the chair eating asparagus and I came up with the name. Brilliant.
38:18
Why? I have no idea. Okay. It worked. Yeah, it worked. And uh so we had it and
38:25
uh when Herby came on the scene, we were already calling it Tanto. Uhhuh.
38:31
And uh of course Stevie Wonder uh heard the album. It made some real interesting
38:36
noises all over the place. And uh uh there was already switched on Bach and a
38:43
whole bunch of other uh uh synthesizer things starting to happen around town
38:48
and people were curious. Steve heard our album and got curious and on Memorial Day weekend 1971,
38:58
he uh showed up at our front door with a friend of Malcolm’s, Ronnie Blanco, our
39:04
fellow bass player. And uh basically we went in and uh he uh tried it a couple
39:11
of times. He said there’s something broken. He tried playing chords on it and Malcolm said, “No, Steve, that’s not
39:19
the way you have to think of the synthesizer more like a horn or a
39:24
saxophone uh where uh it plays one note or one event.” That’s the reason I have four
39:30
keyboards because I can play four notes simultaneously. I love it.
39:36
And that’s why we started collecting synthesizers of all kinds because they were all monophonic.
39:41
They were all monophonic, but whether it was ARP or a Moog module or
39:47
uh uh Oberheim module or a surge module. Mhm.
39:53
And slowly we started pooling our money and stuff and we were started buying modules from Surge and Malcolm is
39:59
designing stuff. Malcolm designed the the first joystick for example. Uhhuh. because we wanted to play in the
40:06
cracks. The problem with playing R&B on a synthesizer is the intervals are
40:11
always right next to you couldn’t get those blue notes. Yeah. But in blues you could pull on the
40:17
guitar, right? Bridge to bend the notes. Even the clavinet pushed the tines got pushed by
40:24
uh uh the strings got pushed by the times on the end of the key. Mhm. Stoally clavinet also sort of bent
40:32
the you could do those blue notes. Yeah. Matter of fact, Steve had a clavinet with a bender bar on it.
40:38
Uhhuh. So, uh, that was the way to be able to play in the cracks. Mhm.
40:43
And what Malcolm did by inventing the joystick was to be able to bend the
40:48
notes, right? And that was the first joystick. Malcolm invented that. And Stevie used
40:54
it on Boogie on Reggae Woman. was the first use of the uh is it pitch bender?
41:01
It was um filtration and to the side it was pitch up and down and a whole bunch
41:06
of rubber bands in it. So when you let go of it the stick would come back. Yeah. Yeah.
41:12
But um we were making music with it and when Steve heard it uh he wanted to use
41:20
it. We started recording that weekend. I think we recorded maybe 15 or 16 songs,
41:25
maybe more. Now, this clip here is in fact um I
41:30
guess you guys moved into the record plant at some point. Look at these pictures. I’ve got them all over the place. I do
41:36
my research. This was basically from when you guys moved into the record plant.
41:41
Uh right. That was at the record plant. Once we started going with Steve, it
41:47
became uh we became uh fixated completely and really honestly we left
41:53
the planet. Uh you were really strapped to a rocket ship at that point. Yeah. Yeah. We there was nothing else in my
42:00
life that mattered. Mhm. There was uh it was the Ansonia walk
42:05
trudging back and forth at night 7:00 Steve would walk in. Malcolm would come
42:10
down from the shop. We’d uh just a little bit before that, we’d go across the street and uh have our um Chinese
42:19
Spanish dinner. Uhhuh. And uh then we’d come back and we’d start recording. And eventually moved
42:26
the uh synthesizer down to Studio B because that was easier for Steve to get around. And also the boys bought a 16
42:34
track AEX MM1000. Uhhuh. And the board was all adapted and
42:40
juryrigged to take 16 buses instead of 12 buses or eight buses.
42:45
And we were down there and set up every instrument Stevie could think of he wanted to use. Got them all hot. Got a
42:52
microphone that we could stay hot that we didn’t have to push a button to talk to him. So the window in the studios
42:59
kind of disappeared. And when we were monkeying around with stuff in the studio and fixing the drama sounds and
43:06
stuff, Steve would sit there playing the piano and writing songs and it became a
43:11
very interesting thing. The only time we ever stopped is when Steve went out on the road and then we found to pay
43:18
attention to other things like our album and working with other clients and stuff. I was working at that time with
43:24
Richie Havens a lot. Uhhuh. And uh he’s wonderful man. I miss him.
43:30
He also he was a huge talent. Yeah. I remember him opening Woodstock. He was
43:36
the first act. Amazing talent. And one of the few guys who could wrap his thumb around the uh
43:41
the neck of a guitar. Just amazing. Yeah. He was making when I first met
43:46
him, he was making this record with uh another producer, Mark Roth,
43:53
and uh they were recording an RKO on 35 mm mag.
43:59
Wow. film and they had like 15 or 20 dubbers all running in sync. Mono
44:04
dubbers. Wow. That’s that’s how it was started. And Richie was using that. I used to go
44:10
over after night at Centaur at my studio just to sit there and to watch this
44:15
happen. You guys were really pushing the edge technically, you know, and and that’s I
44:20
think another point that I really want to stress here is that the art and the technology really
44:28
influenced each other. hand in hand. The stuff that you were doing with Stevie really technically was stretching the
44:36
art and the art was stretching the technology. I say technology drives the art. Yeah. Yeah.
44:41
And the technology is driving the art today with AI. Absolutely. And uh as far as AI is concerned, I say
44:50
I embrace it with both arms. I I give it a bear hug. Uh I want to learn as much
44:56
as I can about it. I want to learn about the new paintbrush. It’s another tool. Yeah, it’s another instrument. And I agree
45:03
with you. And and uh you know, I think for a lot of artists now, you know, a
45:08
lot of artists are afraid of it. But um I think what we are finding is that the people that are afraid of it actually
45:15
don’t understand what it is and what it’s not. Exactly. I think I think it’s another
45:22
instance of the computer becoming a musical instrument. Yes. Exactly. And uh I saw it when I
45:29
started playing tonto. Mhm. That’s what we were doing. Very nice.
45:35
I rather like this. These these were the three landmark albums that you guys worked on.
45:40
I took the picture with Stevie talking book. I took that cover. Did you really? Yeah. I love it. Those are those are really
45:46
wonderful photos as well. And I think that you know everything that you guys did with Stevie was really so cutting
45:53
edge. Why? Because we really care. Uh-huh. And to this day, I love Stevie. Uh,
45:59
we’re not talking really very much these days anymore. He’s in his 70s. I’m in my
46:04
80s. He, uh, has his other worlds to contend with.
46:09
Sure. With a multitude of children. I think he has a tribe. Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah.
46:15
Uh, but I love him and I care about him. And I think when I see things that are
46:21
not good for him, I still feel protective toward him. Uhhuh. Uh he’s a gentle soul.
46:30
He’s not perfect, but nobody in this world is perfect, but he uh has done a
46:36
lot for us. And I think also the big dove tail I have with them is also
46:42
revolves around civil rights and which is another thing that I wanted to get into the the stuff that you guys
46:48
have done. Little high school when I was a boy and I was a boy at one time although I look
46:53
in the mirror I can’t believe I was but I was. And uh I went to school flew the
46:59
United Nations flag under the American flag. Uhhuh. and all all all people are born
47:05
free and equal in dignity and rights was a time uh in the 50s when uh uh Lyndon
47:12
Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and little black girls were going to school
47:18
in the South being escorted by big white marshals with guns. Yeah. Right. And I learned all about that civil
47:25
rights move. So when Steve showed up, uh, suddenly I realized that that the
47:30
two of us were walking the same path because he was writing songs like Living for the City, which was about that kind
47:37
of thing. Mr. Knowit All, which is about uh Nixon. Well, and and Stevie was responsible for
47:43
Martin Luther King Day. Yes, he was. For him making his birthday a national holiday. Yes. Happy birthday song for Martin Luther
47:49
King. And you guys really did so much to drive that movement. Uh
47:54
yeah, I realized also I came from a a group of sort of I’m living on the outside being
48:00
a gay man. I don’t hide it. I don’t care, you know. But uh I realized too that I
48:06
was living in a minority group that you know it was un it was unpecially in those days and all
48:12
that stuff. Yeah. And uh but I realized that Steve and I although we were 10 years apart were
48:18
really walking the same path. Oh absolutely. Yeah. and and you did so much to to bring that to
48:25
Yeah. Steve’s one of Steve’s greatest gifts was ability his ability to write
48:32
about civil rights. Mhm. And to stand up for it and uh that made
48:37
me even more committed to him. Uhhuh. In a lot of ways because I I felt it.
48:43
And Electric Lady of course was in the heart of the East Village in the heart of the West Village. Exactly. in the middle of the gay
48:50
community and Stonewall was around the corner from rec from uh from Electric Lady.
48:55
Yeah. And it was an electric lady that we met really formerly John Stok who be got on
49:01
our trip and was the person who was responsible for actually building Tanto.
49:07
Well, you know, and and John actually said something to me once that I thought was really precient also. He said, ‘You
49:14
know, a lot of it really was the times because there was so much optimism at
49:20
that point in time that we could change the world. Yeah. We felt very powerful about it.
49:25
Yeah. Yeah. And I was living and that’s the revolution. And Steve really was a major mover in
49:34
that. And uh uh I have I have to continually do my hat to him for
49:40
achieving that. Yes. And uh to be able to live his life
49:46
with him in his world for space of three or three or four years, you know, it uh
49:53
really uh it really changed my point of view a lot too, but also reinforced my
50:00
firm belief in civil rights, you know, being as woke as possible. Yeah. And and you know one of the things
50:06
that I noticed and this happened a lot back in the 60s and 70s was that three
50:12
years was really so much was crammed into three years. The same way that you know if we look at the time span of the
50:18
Beatles evolution so much evolved in less than 10 years you know and looking
50:24
at what you guys accomplished in three years musically technologically it it
50:30
seems like a lot. I mean it’s such a compressed schedule. Yeah. Did you sleep?
50:35
Also during part of that, we’re also working with the Eicley brothers. Uhhuh. Yeah.
50:40
And Billy Preston. Yeah. Oh, I have a clip here. Write and Minnie Riverton and uh we were
50:46
doing tons of stuff. Yeah. Oh, I love this. This this this is another great shot right here.
50:52
Yeah. I have that’s in the book. Uhhuh. That’s uh me and Malcolm at uh at in
50:57
Studio B. That is Studio B. Yeah. Talking about immersive. That was the immersive studio. Uhhuh. Yeah. Yeah,
51:03
there was a time when uh when we went we went through we moved out from New York.
51:08
Steve wanted to be signed with Mottown although he had many protestations that
51:13
he didn’t want to do it and right stuff and he’s egging berry on but Steve and Mottown they were born
51:20
together and this is when Mottown had moved out to LA. Yeah. Mottown moved out here.
51:25
Mhm. And 6464 Sunset right and uh right up the street from where we are
51:31
now. Strangely enough, DVO’s rehearsal studio is next door. I love it. Yeah. Um,
51:36
see, do I have But uh Oh, here we go. This I love this shot right here. This is This is the the two
51:42
of them in a tuxedo. Yeah. The one and only time. I should have gotten some little light bulbs
51:47
for it and stuffing my my little boot in the air with the flower.
51:52
I think it’s lovely water. I’d be perfect. But but the both of you kind of look like, “What the hell are we doing here?
51:58
Oh my god.” You know, we were really studio rats. Yeah. Yeah. I have a great clip here
52:04
somewhere. I want to see if I can find it. Here we go. Now, this this is classic right here. I want to play a
52:10
little clip of this picture. Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to some very talented
52:15
people that have come into my life and sort of given me a whole new scope of music. And their names are Bob and
52:22
Malcolm, the Tanto Monsters. Give them a big round of applause.
52:33
Yeah. And what you see behind us, what you see behind us, this is Tanto. And
52:38
this is a machine that they’ve been working on for about 5 years. And um it’s it’s a keyboard instrument. It’s
52:45
synthesizer and all kind of gadgets. And they can explain it better to you. And we’re going to play some music that’ll
52:52
just create itself. Okay. So Bob, you want to explain some things
52:57
about it? I think we should just sort of get started. It’ll fall into place. Well, see, first we have to push the button, right?
53:02
Okay. Push the button. All right. You ready for this?
53:29
Heat. Heat.
53:50
Heat. Heat.
54:12
Let’s speed it up a little bit. See, we can speed it up without changing the key. Check it out. Right there.
54:38
Heat. Heat.
54:49
Heat.
55:02
Heat.
55:10
Smile.
55:35
Heat.
55:41
Heat.
56:07
I guess with this. So what you got to do is
56:27
I want to understand the evolution now of how of what happened with Stevie and how you guys then sort of went your
56:33
separate ways, but you’ve always stayed you’ve always stayed in touch obviously, but I know that that really for you this
56:40
was this was career shaping in a lot of ways, wasn’t it? Yeah, it made me happy. It gave me a a
56:47
leg up. But uh you know, life went on after Steve. Uh-huh. You know, of course.
56:52
But uh in fact, you did some really amazing stuff after Steve. Yeah. The important thing is always to
56:58
stay current. Mhm. And uh not dwell in the past and oh wo
57:04
is me and Oh, no, no, no. In fact, if anything, I don’t buy that at all. I I I’m
57:09
starting to fool around now a lot with AI. Uhhuh. And uh I uh I think I think
57:16
there’s a way that this will also save the music business, but it’s going to
57:21
definitely evolve into another format. We’re in a major period of transition.
57:27
Spotify and Title and all these other file sharing uh programs, they’re going
57:33
to have to sooner or later admit to the reality having to pay the artists and
57:38
not just the top draw 5%. Mhm. that uh the majors can exploit because
57:44
of a live performance, you know. And uh I think with AI on
57:50
board now, we’re going to even see more live performance, more uh more arena
57:57
shows, more live performances where there are not AI predictive musical
58:05
patterns that repeat and never change. uh that is going to stop because what we
58:12
bring as human beings is uh I call it robboto basically speeding up and
58:19
slowing down in music and I mean you can my mind’s eye is uh I remember seeing a
58:25
film of Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philarmonic with his face
58:31
yes making just moments with his face and the orchestra responding to it
58:37
which is kind of really an interesting uh thing. But what what does the conductor do? The
58:43
conductor if he’s doing uh a ramano of piano
58:48
concerto for example and he’s conducting the orchestra, he’s telling the orchestra to go faster or slower. He’s
58:56
holding the orchestra back. He’s giving him motions that emulate his feelings
59:02
and the orchestra becomes one under his baton and it speeds up and it slows down
59:08
and it brings a kind of unpredictable humanity to the orchestra
59:15
and the problem with AI is there is no point of view and there is no humanity.
59:22
So the thing is that AI has to have a soul and the soul is the human player.
59:30
Well, let’s talk about what AI really is, which is machine learning, right? And the point here is that
59:36
look backwards. Exactly. But, you know, if you think about it, as with anything else, if you
59:42
put a piece of technology in front of a truly creative person, the first thing
59:47
they’re going to do is look at it and say, “How can I make this do something it wasn’t intended for?” That is what
59:54
every artist does with a really interesting piece of technology. You know, you think about when the
1:00:00
harmonizer came out, you know, what did we do with it? The first people who used it, they they said, “How can I [ __ ] with
1:00:07
this?” you know, and make it do something different. [ __ ] with it. It came in a Hallebertton suitcase. It was about this big.
1:00:13
Yep. Yep. And and this happens with so many I think pieces of technology and and you know, your your work with the
1:00:20
synthesizer was a perfect example of that. And I think if we look at AI, I mean, first of all, it’s not going to go
1:00:27
away. You’re not going to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It’s it’s it’s it’s here. And the people who are,
1:00:33
you know, there are always going to be hacks who are going to use it to, let’s say, you know, create some prefab
1:00:40
something or other that’s just a regurgitation of other work. But there’s also going to be people who use it in a
1:00:46
creative way. I’ll tell you what I see happening on both fronts. Uhhuh. On the regurgitation front. Okay. Mhm.
1:00:53
I see people processing a piece of music and then taking the piece of music that
1:00:59
they’ve processed and processing that again. Yes. Yes. Exactly. And again and again and again until the
1:01:06
music becomes totally homogeneous and uh and totally predictable
1:01:12
and soulless. Yes. Yeah. What makes the music have soul is robot
1:01:17
is the ability plus loud and soft based on a feelings of the moment. The
1:01:23
livveness, emotion. Yeah. Emotion. Human emotion. Uh and the ability to uh change the
1:01:31
performance and just to see somebody hunch over a keyboard or do something that is not predictive and not
1:01:38
repeatable is what separates the men from the boys. Mhm. Mhm. We want to have uh as I call it embodied
1:01:46
music. Music played directly by people. Absolutely. Which you know now now I
1:01:51
want to bring this back around to something because I think this is an interesting point. You have found
1:01:57
artists to work with and you and even in your own work that have taken this and
1:02:02
completely flipped it on its ear. Like for example, let’s talk about your work with D.VO. You know, now D.VO
1:02:09
essentially took a quote unquote robotic type of music and they completely
1:02:15
humanized it and made it into something completely different. Well, changed the sound of the
1:02:20
instrument. Exactly. But, uh, DVO, uh, I’ll tell you, strangely enough, it kind of related
1:02:26
also to Steve. DVO was formed, uh, at Ohio State.
1:02:32
Uhhuh. Okay. And it was formed because at Ohio State is where the National Guard killed
1:02:38
a whole bunch of students. Yes. Right. Kent State. Yeah. At what was Kent State. Kent State. Right.
1:02:44
And uh uh Jerry and Mark were in the canteen when that happened.
1:02:51
Mhm. At Kent. They were art students. They were art students and and art students make the greatest musicians.
1:02:57
You know, look at talking heads. Look I mean so many. And look at Mark Mother’s graphic artist. Yeah.
1:03:03
And I’ll tell you, I had the best time of my life working with those guys because I really had uh you see this
1:03:11
room has speakers here. Mhm. Studio B had another set of speakers like this over there.
1:03:17
Uh-huh. Right. It was wired in quad, wasn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. We had quad. It was called quadrophonic.
1:03:23
Yes. And quad was uh when we first moved to the record plant, they’d say, “We’ll build a studio any way you want it.” So
1:03:30
I said uh me said we want a quad studio because they’re making quad records uh
1:03:36
quadrofenia. Yes. The English were really behind it and Deca.
1:03:41
There was a studio here uh that had been built for Herby. Uh the old Kendon studio which was also wired in quad. I
1:03:48
worked in there for a while. It’s now Encore. It was a uh I worked in that studio. We did Eley Brothers in that
1:03:54
studio. I did Billy Preston in that studio. Uh that’s right. You did a quad record with Billy, didn’t you? You did a quad record
1:04:01
with with Billy, didn’t you? No, I never did a quad. But what we used the quad for was for recording,
1:04:07
for monitoring. Okay. because I could bring Steve or uh Jerry and the band into the control room
1:04:14
and put the monitors on in quad and we had a quad monitor section
1:04:20
and I would put the uh the background vocals over there and one guitar over
1:04:26
here and a synthesizer over there. I love it. Lead vocal over here and stuff. And we were able to be
1:04:33
immersed in the music and we recorded that way. ret track that way. But when
1:04:38
it came time to mixing, we tried mixing. I tried mixing superstition at that time in the quadrophonic and it was a
1:04:45
miserable failure really. And the other problem with the quadonic was everyone had to buy a special
1:04:51
cartridge for their uh Sure. turntable and they had to double their speakers and amplifiers.
1:04:56
Yep. So it never really flew full force and basically trying to put quad and vinyl.
1:05:02
They had a system was called Sansui QS. I remember that. Yeah, it was a miserable failure.
1:05:08
We tried to fool around with it. But the great gift of it was to be able to use it as a tool in recording, as a creative
1:05:15
tool to put the musician in the same space as the music, not as a
1:05:20
perspective, right? But surrounded by it arch, but the music here, right? But to have the music occupy the same
1:05:27
space as the performer. And that really is one of the reasons that we did a bit
1:05:33
of that with a good bit of that with Steve. Mhm. But with DVO, I it was full full on. And
1:05:40
uh that’s one of the reasons the records my ally records sound so dry because reverb kind of takes it space distance.
1:05:47
Uhhuh. I want things confrontational. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to mention that to you
1:05:53
that there’s there’s a a certain presence to a lot of your recordings that are very in your face in that
1:06:01
sense. That’s very on purpose. Uhhuh. And uh part of it was I was able to
1:06:06
really reach into the band and uh get them to perform and maintain the elements and stop trying to overdub
1:06:14
decorate the music too much but to keep it simple and uh direct. You did that with Oingo Boingo too. Yes.
1:06:21
that and and that was even more so because that was a much larger band and
1:06:26
a lot lot of going on at the same time. Uh uh uh
1:06:32
uho Bingo was a very sort of specialized very ethereal band. I don’t think it
1:06:38
made as much contact outside the west coast as uh as DVO which was much more
1:06:46
visually oriented. Boingo. Boingo had one sticktick and that was it.
1:06:51
Yes. Yes. Put on your raincoats, go into the first 10 rows. They squirt water and stuff into the
1:06:58
audience. Although they were a great launching pad for Danny Elfman very definitely. You know, he was an interesting guy. I uh
1:07:06
I sort of lost touch with him. I don’t really relate with him. Uhhuh. We did one album together. It was the
1:07:11
last album on&m and&M didn’t really see any point in promoting it. was uh Dead Man’s Party or
1:07:19
Yeah. What was it called? Something like that. Um something like that. I don’t remember. But it had some really interesting music
1:07:25
on it. Uhhuh. But I went on to doing some other dance which had some really exciting music
1:07:32
like uh um uh u Shadowfax.
1:07:37
Oh gosh. Yeah. I forgot about them. Uhhuh. Yeah. But I did that with the first spatializing tools called the bass
1:07:44
processor. the Bedini audio spatial environment. Oh yeah. Yeah.
1:07:49
That record is recorded with a lot of that technology where I was really again
1:07:55
really striving to get the music to float in space and to really occur in
1:08:00
your head. You know, now everything is on headphones, delivered on headphones.
1:08:06
We lack this physical content concept which we get in live performance now.
1:08:11
Yes. I think that’s part of the reason that people go to concerts. Mhm. is to have that experience.
1:08:17
But the recording experience has become a little bit more uh cerebral I guess
1:08:22
you might call it. Uh and it is not the primary medium for performance really
1:08:28
except when we move into the world of electronica which we are now rapidly
1:08:34
moving. I guess the first thing we learn as children when we speak is by imitating other people. And I think
1:08:41
we’re using AI and sort of the same way in its infancy in music by trying to
1:08:47
imitate the past. Yeah. Oh, this is a violin section. This is a horn section. Blah blah blah.
1:08:53
I did that very well on Tall Ships, the music I did for Tall Ship, the film I
1:08:58
made and produced. Uh well, Danny was involved with that,
1:09:03
too. And uh but that music we made for
1:09:09
that was all electronic and done in my studio. All right. But it sounds totally like a live
1:09:16
orchestra. Uhhuh. But it was this is 10 12 years ago now. Right. And it was totally imitative of a
1:09:23
live orchestra and it was terrific. But uh that’s looking backwards again, you
1:09:30
know. And I I think I think I want to look forwards. I want to be the conductor of my orchestra. I want to be
1:09:37
the guy who decides uh the robboto. I want to when I hold the stick up, I want
1:09:44
them to be able to play louder and softer and slow down a little bit. We’re coming to the bridge. We’re going to
1:09:50
slow this thing down a little bit. And it has movement that will never re be
1:09:56
repeated in another performance which is exactly you know I mean if you
1:10:01
think about part of it yes and if you to dovetail that with its
1:10:06
ability to remember patterns and things but it’s not
1:10:12
we’re capable of using it in an imitative way. Here’s a London Symphony Orchestra on one level, but there’s
1:10:19
another level where we’re floating in space in a spaceship and we’re we’re
1:10:25
thamin land and instruments that aren’t instruments until the sounds fall out of
1:10:30
a loudspeaker. Well, you know what? But but you mentioned something now that I think is really really interesting because if you
1:10:37
think back to the era before recorded music, the only way to experience music was to
1:10:46
be there, right? I mean, you know, we could we had sheet music and everything, but every performance was unique. And
1:10:52
absolutely. And now you’re talking about essentially using AI to do exactly that
1:10:58
to make every performance unique so that if you weren’t there, you know, you could hear a recording of
1:11:04
it, but it’s not the same because every single time has to be conducted.
1:11:10
Yes. It needs to be conducted connected to the tip of a conductor’s baton.
1:11:16
Uhhuh. It needs to be able to flow and to be able to be regulated in a uh in a
1:11:23
positive Yeah. in a positive way. Yeah. I think that they’re they’re going to
1:11:28
move together and we’re going to have new music and it’s going to be very different and stuff that I don’t expect
1:11:35
I don’t expect to hear people listening to Tommy Dorsy right now or Glenn Miller. Right. It was another time.
1:11:43
Yeah, sure. Music when we were recording Glenn Miller in those big bands, we used two or three mics for the whole band
1:11:49
if you were lucky. Yeah. And the the highest it got was like about 60 65 dibel.
1:11:56
Yeah. We moved to the record plan. We were running at about 115 dibels
1:12:01
pain threshold. Yeah. Three four times as loud as it was before. And we had to build these funny
1:12:07
shaped rooms like we have here to be able to deal with highle audio with
1:12:12
speakers you know that you could live in the cabinet is so big. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
1:12:17
This is another this is room is designed for highlevel audio.
1:12:22
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because that’s what we did. And now the highle audio is moved outside onto the
1:12:29
stage to the coliseum and the recorded music is moving into
1:12:34
our ears on headphones basically. Yes. Or in the car where you’re sitting
1:12:41
immersive music they say immersive because it’s nondirectional right because you’re sitting on the left side
1:12:47
of the car anyway you’re not really listening in the sweet spot. I mean it sounds very nice and everything but it’s
1:12:55
another animal and I think that Dolby Atmos not so much. I don’t I I think now
1:13:03
Apple has already come up with their own new uh spatial audio processor which is
1:13:10
uh so are several other companies of Atmos. Yeah. So are several other is going to go the way of uh of uh quad.
1:13:18
Well, it’s interesting, you know. I mean, we can we can speculate that about that all we want. Of course, you know, now there are so many companies that are
1:13:26
creating mixes for Atmos, you know, but I do think that the object there are a lot of companies that were
1:13:32
creating mixes for uh for Quad. Absolutely. And and you know, again, it
1:13:37
it comes down to marketing battles, you know, beta versus VHS. Who’s going to win that battle? We don’t know that yet.
1:13:43
But I will say that there’s a lot of different technologies here. But I love
1:13:48
the idea of the object-based mixing because I think that’s in many ways
1:13:54
object based mixing is really the DNA for object- based mixing really is
1:14:00
motion pictures. Yes. Where you want that plane fly over your head or you want to hear the guys
1:14:06
playing pingpong over there and the the sound helps you point your eyes to where
1:14:11
the it places you in the middle. Yeah. It places you in the middle. Audio directs the eyes. Yes. Mhm. with it. But I think in my
1:14:20
experience now, I’ve mixed an Atmos. In fact, I did mix uh Whip It in Atmos.
1:14:25
Uhhuh. Uh recently. Uh Oh, I want to hear that. It Yeah. But the thing is that people
1:14:32
are using it like a gimmick in music like uh you know listening to ping pong balls when stereo first came out or the
1:14:39
trains train records and ping pong games. Yeah, of course. And people are going to do that.
1:14:44
Stereo. M I think that there’s a certain wanking level to uh to all of that stuff
1:14:49
because music is not sort of based on motion. I mean we have motion in the
1:14:55
orchestra. We have violins over here classically. Yeah. We have cellos over here. Why? Because they sit in those
1:15:02
position the app holes and the instruments face the audience. Yes. Yes. So we have a certain uh uh
1:15:12
orientation for that kind of music. It’s played as a piano lid opens a certain way. It opens into the audience. The
1:15:19
pianist always on the on the left side on stage. There’s a format for it.
1:15:26
Yes. Mhm. But uh I think uh that even
1:15:31
electronic music too much motion in the music is not organic. It’s not it has to
1:15:39
be for a reason. You just can’t do it for a gimmick. Oh no. I’m not talking about using it as a gimmick. But what I like about it is
1:15:45
the idea that it does place the listener in the center of the action. That can be done and it’s been done very
1:15:51
very successfully with channelbased audio 12.1.4.
1:15:56
four and in that format there had been several companies out one primarily
1:16:03
called here 360 which I have been involved with for many years
1:16:08
that it the channelbased system and the beauty of it is it does not need to be
1:16:13
decoded where Dolby Atmos where they’re making the money is selling the decoder
1:16:18
licensing for the decoders right so that they can untwist it when you listen to
1:16:24
it based on the number of speakers and a whole bunch of things. It’s very complicated. It’s complicated to mix and
1:16:32
it’s complicated to understand. People are not writing saying I’m going to write for Dolby Atmos.
1:16:38
No, of course. Okay. But how does the how does that translate to a different room? Let’s say I don’t
1:16:44
have 12 speakers because that’s the one thing I do like about Atmos. Depends on the kind of music electronic
1:16:51
music. It’s not a reporter reality. If it’s the Beethoven string quartet with a
1:16:56
live quartet in the studio or an orchestra inside a Venia March at Carnegie Hall, it represents a picture
1:17:04
of reality with reverb in the back and you try to create the objective kind of
1:17:10
music. But when you free yourself of that with AI and electronica,
1:17:17
the music becomes subject subjective where it occurs in the same space as the listener. Sure. And it’s not an
1:17:23
instrument till it tumbles out of the loudspeaker. It is not a report of reality,
1:17:28
of course. And that’s what we brought with brought with Stevie. We made instruments that
1:17:33
never existed in real time in space. They were created for the moment and then they were gone.
1:17:40
Here today, gone tomorrow. And again, it comes down to being there for that performance, doesn’t it?
1:17:46
Yeah. Yeah. It comes out it but it’s prefer it. It’s recorded that per preserved that one performance.
1:17:52
Uhhuh. But how many times do you listen to I mean it gets it’s like news. You listen
1:17:58
to news with old news. It’s repeated over and over the same yet you can listen to great performances and there’s
1:18:04
some thrilling uh videos of some of the great Russian concert young concert pianists these days. Malv and a whole
1:18:12
bunch of other these young Russians are doing incredible concertizing playing live
1:18:17
but people go to see it because it’s fascinating and they could fail in it. Second they’re on the they are on the
1:18:24
edge. Yes. Yes. Okay. And you go to see that and go it’s
1:18:29
sort of like watching somebody on a trapeze. You might fall off. Yeah. Yeah. But somehow they do it and
1:18:35
they bring the emotion of the moment if they’re feeling really up to it or if they have a cold and maybe not going to
1:18:42
play the same emotional level. But we’re looking for that immediacy,
1:18:47
you know. We’re looking for for change. We’re prey animals. I always used to say
1:18:53
I was parked in a parking lot behind I think one of these studios here in town. It was the middle of summer. The door
1:18:59
was locked. I was waiting for somebody to come to open the studio. I was looking at just a wall of hedges and
1:19:04
trees and everything was just sta stable and I was sitting in the car. The air conditioning was on and I was just
1:19:11
staring out the window at this wall of green and I never realized I didn’t wasn’t really seeing it after a while.
1:19:16
How did I know that? Because the minute I saw a bird fly from one side of this
1:19:22
big parking lot to the other and fly across the wall of green, my eyes went
1:19:28
to the bird. Uhhuh. Okay. Yeah. You got to be the bird. The change that comes is what we notice. We notice
1:19:36
the change, not the sameness. And the sameness is AI.
1:19:42
Interesting. Uhhuh. Yeah. The bird is the performer. When we see
1:19:47
the performer move, we don’t know whether the bird’s going to go there, down here, over here, over there, over
1:19:53
here. Our eyeballs, the prey animals.
1:19:59
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that’s what’s missing in AI, right? Is
1:20:04
the ability to have that embodied performance.
1:20:09
And uh yes, we’ve used the synthesizer in an imitative way to jump into the
1:20:16
space of the past. Yeah, we want we need a bass sound because the song form is eight bars of this, eight bars of that,
1:20:23
right? And we repeat the next eight bars. It has it has to be in four. God forbid it should be in 68 or 129 or some
1:20:31
weird thing, right? And it has to have uh three of these and
1:20:37
two of these. It’s a song form like a sonata or a symphony. Mhm. Right. But it’s a very limited primal
1:20:43
song form. And uh we’re constantly trying to fit electronica inside that
1:20:49
old song form. That’s what we did with Tanto was we left the song form behind.
1:20:54
Right. Okay. Right. But with Stevie, we inhabited the song form of R&B.
1:21:00
Okay. But it was still eight bars of Stevie. Eight bars of Boogie on Reggae Woman.
1:21:06
There was a chorus, a verse, a bridge, a harp solo. Yeah. And so forth. And you get a sample of each and somehow
1:21:13
the lyrics tie these uh rhythmic patterns together. So, uh, yeah, that Tanto in some ways
1:21:21
lived for that pastor oriented jazz place where we thought we could get
1:21:27
Tanto to perform as a real time instrument. A good example is the Billy Preston stuff on the Midnight Special,
1:21:34
right? Which at that after that show is when I decided that I did not want to become a
1:21:39
live performer. I didn’t have the chops for it. I was more interested in being the man behind the curtain. And tanto
1:21:45
was too in unpredictable for life. Tanto was built as a studio really really had its life as a studio
1:21:53
instrument. We played it multitude of things happening at the same time. Uh what’s her name? Lucian. What’s her
1:22:00
name? Luciani. Um who plays the synthesizer in real
1:22:06
time abstractly. Uh I’ll think of her name in a second, but uh my age is
1:22:13
kicking in. Suzanne Shiani. Yeah. Suzanne Shiani is one who plays uh freestyle inside
1:22:22
electronica. Yes. And I think that that with nontraditional controllers in fact. Yeah. And that really is where Tanto’s roots
1:22:29
are. Yeah. And she is uh she is the mistress of that and absolutely way. Absolutely.
1:22:35
I have the deepest respect for her. No question. For what she’s doing and I think it’s the true destiny of
1:22:41
what we’re starting to see. Yeah. I wonder how she’s going to embrace AI. I’d be really interested in
1:22:46
that. I’m interested to find that out as well. Yeah, we were talking about u
1:22:53
how it how electronica is taking music to a new place and exposing musicians to new instruments
1:23:00
and we’re starting to learn how to play these new instruments and right now it’s kitty steps right now.
1:23:07
Oh, absolutely. I think we’re we’re seeing just the infancy of AI at this point. And I think I want to see it in 10 years. I don’t
1:23:13
think we’ll recognize music and I think it’ll probably be delivered directly with Neurolink or something like that.
1:23:19
That’s pretty scary into our brains. Yeah. I I’m not entirely sure, you know, where
1:23:25
we’re going, but uh we’re going there. And uh I think uh technology is
1:23:30
continuing to drive the art. We are moving inside. The technology is
1:23:36
becoming the new musical instrument in itself. It is evolving and turning itself into a musical instrument.
1:23:43
Yeah. And I think that that’s really beautiful. And I think it’s great that you are still to this day standing on the edge.
1:23:51
Yeah. I uh I just really feel we’re going some good places. I just want to live another 10 years. If I make it
1:23:58
another 10 years, I’ll be good. There’s not much left on my plate. But here I am, 85 years old, still doing it.
1:24:05
Still doing it. Yeah, that’s what matters. I turned into more of an author than a recording in the studios. I don’t see
1:24:12
much business happening in these big studios anymore. Well, unfortunately, I mean, this is a
1:24:18
this studio is a [ __ ] wet dream. There’s no two ways about it. This studio is a legend in so many ways.
1:24:24
Yeah. You know, beautiful. Yeah. But you know, I think for you to
1:24:30
be an author at this point is brilliant because you get to not only um talk
1:24:36
about the past, but you also get to Yeah. I want to look I want to look ahead. Yeah. I want to embrace AI.
1:24:43
The book is coming out when? The book is coming out. The name is
1:24:48
And the name is Shaping Sounds. The name of my new book is Shaping Sounds. I’ve been working on it for
1:24:54
nearly three years. It’s my adventures in audio and my life in general and uh I
1:25:03
hope you pick it up and read it. I think you’ll enjoy it. It’s quite a journey.
1:25:08
And Robert Margolof, thank you so much for being my guest. Says, “Thank you very much to you, too.
1:25:13
You’re a persistent and well educated man.” Well, thank you. I’ll tell you, you do your homework. I
1:25:20
like that. Thank you.
1:25:25
Hey, I’m Daniel Keller. Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and join us each week for Insights and Sound.