Zvonar the bell ringer

[Chris Muir <cbm@well.com>]

My relationship with Richard started strangely. It was 1976 or 1977, 
and we were both taking a class in electronic music, taught by Bob 
Beede, at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz. We each thought we were the 
smartest person in the room. I think that we viewed each other with a 
little suspicion.

This changed when I asked Bob Beede to open for my band at the time's 
first, and as it turns out, only, gig. My band was more or less 
called "Your Name Here", although we had just run a series of "Name 
This Band" classified ads in the local free paper, the Good Times. 
The gig was in Kresge hall, at UC Santa Cruz. Bob asked Richard to 
join him for some serious noisemaking.

Bob & Richard played with unique, aggressive timbres, but little in 
the way of structure. Your Name Here was playing complicated, mostly 
composed music, with way too many parts, time signatures, and key 
changes.  The contrast between the approaches was really interesting. 
Richard and I came away from this with respect for each other. We've 
been friends ever since.

Richard was really good at networking and keeping in touch. If he was 
in town, we would usually get together, often with someone Richard 
thought that I should know.

Whe he first got esophageal cancer, he did his usual thorough job of 
research on the disease, and his prognosis. He knew that the survival 
rate was not that high for this type of cancer, but he put up the 
good fight. Around this time we were both alpha and beta testing the 
Eventide Orville. I submitted a patch that I made, called BellRinger, 
which I thought Richard would like for two reasons. The first is that 
it's a cool patch with reverse tapped delays that build to a peak, 
which is ring modulated, then the ring mod signal hits a normal delay 
and fades out. The second reason is that Zvonar translates into "bell 
ringer".

I'll miss him.

-C

-- 
Chris Muir           | "There are many futures and only one status quo.
cbm@well.com         |  This is why conservatives mostly agree,
http://www.xfade.com |  and radicals always argue." - Brian Eno