Drum Machines
Keith LeBlanc was one of the first drummers who used his funk music background to create beats that helped popularize hip-hop music. Keith was there in the beginning and while working for Sugar Hill Records worked with many of the pioneers of hip-hop including The Sugar Hill Gang, Grandmaster Flash...
James Sajeva is the Senior Brand Manager for KORG USA, a firm he has worked for since 1996. His passion and love of music began at a young age and throughout his youth KORG instruments were a part of his musical development. While working for a Sam Ash store, James was approached by a KORG rep...
Billy Amendola is the Editor At Large for Modern Drummer magazine whose background as a musician makes him perfect for the job! His passion for music began at an early age and by the time he began working for the magazine in 1997, Billy was already a seasoned studio musician and founding member of...
Jun-Ichi Miki joined the Roland Corporation in 1977 right after graduating from university. After working in research of sound synthesis and analysis for electronic musical instruments, in 1994 he joined the Board of Directors. In 2013, Jun-ichi was named Roland’s new CEO and his background in...
Anthony Resta is a gold and multi-platinum awarded producer-composer/multi-instrumentalist. His past clients include Duran Duran, Elton John, Collective Soul, Perry Ferrell, Guster, Needtobreathe, Shawn Mullins, and many others. Anthony has always had an eye for art and a love of music. From age ...
Larry Dalton started playing drums at a young age after seeing The Beatles on TV. His love for music stayed with him, and he began playing in multiple bands and went on many tours in Europe, Canada, and the United States. Larry then went on to get heavily involved with drum machines, programming...
Denis Labrecque formed DeLab Consulting in 2015 after a series of positions in the synthesizer, computer music and digital signal processing fields. It all began with learning analog modular synthesis at Electronic Music Laboratories (EML), then working with the team from there that became Star...
Marco Alpert has had a fascinating career in the music industry and lucky for the NAMM Oral History collection he shared many of his stories with us. Marco was an electronic music composer in Los Angeles when he happened to meet the two founders of E-mu. Marco was hired to promote the innovative...
Avery Burdette, the product manager for Yamaha Corporation of America, began his long love of music pushing down the pedals of his mother's organ as a small child while his mother played. Avery played trombone in school bands before forming a Southern-Rock style group in high school. He also worked...
Scott Wedge and Dave Rossum attended college together and soon developed a few clever ways of combining their engineering training with their passion for music. They began creating sound controllers for the boom of synthesizers hitting the market in the 1970s. While supplying a growing number of...