Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
Date Index
Thread Index
Author Index
Looper's Delight Home
Mailing List Info

[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index][Thread Index][Author Index]

a Parenthetical Story about the HR-16 was More flexible electronic music setup



On 5/25/12 10:18 AM, todd reynolds wrote:

Listen, I have an HR-16 sitting around here that I NEVER use. Do you need a backup? is there a more general market for these old beauties?
What I loved about the HR-16 was that it had real time tuning onboard with a slider that allowed you to do very cool things. It's successor the SR-16 (at the time) had much better midi implementation
and better sounds but wasn't nearly as fun as a real time instrument.

I remember doing a recording session with Grammy Award winning producer, Malcom Cecil (for the first four solo Stevie Wonder records) where we tracked for two days with a 'state of the art' $5,000, 12-bit D-Drum sampled electronic drum set and tossed all the tracks out and started over because this
inexpensive 16-bit had just arrived at the studio.

There was considerable latency in the video and I was using real cymbals so we had a computer operator who sat by me and hand corrected the latency so that the tracks sounded good.

It was a bizarre situation because I was playing the cymbals in real time, but attempting to play the kicks, snares and toms pretty far ahead of the beat to compensate for the latency.

I thought "I'm in a new world" at that session.

We tracked in Malcom's domed studio that housed his famous 'TONTO' modular synthesizer (which took up half
the wall space in the studio).

Malcom was a real gem to work with......a really nice and extremely knowldegeable man.

Sadly, Stevie Wonder has tried to erase all mention of him from his recordings.

Malcolm produced those records (I've seen the gold records on his wall with production credit) and was the person who turned Stevie onto the synthesizers.

Stevie now makes it sound like he was the innovator there and the last time I checked I could find no mention of Malcolm's name on those first four brilliant albums.