It Seems that the Virtual Instruments Magazine is back to life. They have a new issue with nice content, including a great interview with Eric Persing, sound designer, composer and founder of Spectrasonics, one of the best companies in the would of virtual instruments. Check:
What led you to sound design?
I never really pursued being a sound designer, because at the time there wasn’t such a thing-you were a synthesizer player. Growing up, I always thought there were two aspects to it. One was that you play, the other was that you create your own sounds. I pursued both and loved both aspects of it.
It wasn’t until 1980 or so when I came to Los Angeles and started meeting a lot of my heroes, when I was really surprised that there were very few people who actually knew how to create sounds-how to use the gear. So I found myself with a unique skill that I didn’t realize I had.
And then I ended up working for Roland and going to the NAMM show in Chicago in 1984 just a little after MIDI was introduced in 1983. It was a big show-the SBX-80, the introduction of Octopads, the whole idea of MIDI modules, controllers-a lot pretty big things. That was how I got my gig with Roland, kind of introducing MIDI to everyone.
A lot of the Japanese engineers were creating the sounds, and they weren’t even really musicians or sound designers. Most of what they’d put in would be sounds that made them laugh! There would be cow sounds and cats, that kind of stuff. They had no idea what people in the United States were interested in. The American synthesizers were doing much better because they had presets that were designed more seriously.
I had created my own sounds for the JX-3P and some of the early MIDI synthesizers…
vía @aandersen