Keyboards
Michael Heuser recounted his early meetings with Mr. Ikutaro Kakehashi, the founder of Roland Corporation during his NAMM interview. The two men worked on product ideas as well as the goal of creating a branch of Roland in Switzerland. Michael headed the efforts as president of Roland Switzerland...
Rod Argent had an idea for a new sound, a new band in a new era of music. After creating a group and writing songs to perform and record, Rod’s dream of a new style of rock was born (with the help of his fellow countrymen, the Beatles). His group, the Zombies, helped change the face of music and...
Christoph Kemper blended his love of music with his love of computer programming as early as 1986 when he put his Commodore 64 to use coding for musical sounds. Kemper formed Access Music Electronics in the late 1990s just after rolling out its first product, the Access Virus series A. The Virus...
Don Buchla grew up with a passion for music and a passion for engineering. When he combined the two loves, he created electronic musical instruments the world had never dreamed of before. His early synthesizer work parallels the similar work Robert Moog was doing on the East Coast while Don was...
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...
John Booth has played an enormous role in the development and growth of Roland within the United Kingdom. As President of Roland UK, he has witnessed the expansion of the market in England and assisted in creating the infrastructure to accommodate the growth within the company. As an industry...
Stefan Stenzel has been a passionate music maker since he was a child. When he had the chance to combine his love of music with his technical skills, to begin working for Waldorf Electronics, he was thrilled. The first project Stefan worked on was the now famous Wave synthesizer, which was...
Beverly Grigsby was enrolled in medical school in Los Angeles when on the way home from class one day she stopped into a small music studio. There she met electronic composer Ernst Krenek who would later become her mentor after she decided to drop out of medical school and focus on becoming an...
Bernie Krause teamed with Paul Beaver to form the popular and innovative team of Beaver & Krause and recorded a number of early electronic albums in the 1960s and 70s. They also worked on hundreds of movies using synthesizers such as the APR 2600 and the Module Moog, for which they were the...
Barb Fairhurst was hired by Dave Smith to manage the business elements of his newly-formed company he called Sequential Circuits, back in 1977. The following year, the company released its first product, the Prophet-5 synthesizer, which helped revolutionize the electronic keyboard and synthesizer...