Interview met Bob Williams (van AS) door mansher en apollo

apollo

I love syntesaizer
Lid sinds
22 april 2003
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Gent
Een tijdje geleden was er een workshop over de analogue systems modular in Midician (Gent) die gegeven werd door Bob Williams, de man achter AS. Mansher en ik waren aanwezig en mansher heeft de kans gegrepen om een interview te versieren met het brein achter analogue systems.

De dag na de workshop was het zover. Mansher stelde keurig de vragen terwijl ik het gesprek registreerde. Achteraf werden nog wat foto's gemaakt.Voor de synthliefhebber is dit interview heel interessant denk ik. Veel geleuter over synths en muziek. Bob gaf ons ook nog wat primeurs verderop in het interview. De toekomst is mooi ...

Excuus voor de vele typfouten, maar de inhoud is belangrijker dan de vorm!

bobwilliams.jpg
 
FIRST PART

1. Where does your passion for modular synthesizers come from? Where did it all start?

0.42

I first heared of the synthesizer probably back in 1971, with Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. They had a track on the national radio called mr. President. In the middle section of the song a really strange sound came in, which really attracted me. On the end of the song the D.J. said it was featuring the new “moon” synthesizer. Obviously he got it wrong, he meant moog synthesizer. So I was at that point aware there was a new instrument being developed in America. The next time I heared one again that had my passion was brian eno playing with roxy music and the song was “virginia playing”. This was 1972. I then saw them play live in coventry (which is my hometown, in the midlands in the UK). They were playing a VCS3 and I just had to have one. So it started of litterarly from struggling the first 12 months with the VCS3. It was the first one in the area for 50 miles. There was no support. At that time very important phone calls to londen, to ems, asking them very foolish questions. “Could it create an orchestra?”. Because I’d listen to the first roxy music album, I didn’t realize they were using, let’s say a mellotron, I was hearing polyphony, thinking the VCS-3 could do it. I didn’t really know much.

I had the choice to either go for the minimoog, arp odyssey, arp 2600 or VCS-3. And it was just the look of the VCS-3 and because I liked it in the particular song.

Then I had a long time away from modular synthesizers. While I explored the roland SH-5 and the first of the polyphonics. And it wasn’t until probably 1988, when I bought my moog 3C, I brought that back to the mainland and had it restored. They were not worth really much in those days. It was originally advertised for 1000 pounds and it included a roland MPU 101, which was probably worth 400 pound in those days. So the whole 3C was just 600 pounds. I swaped that for an SH-5, Prophet T8, Oberheim OB-8, some classics. He was pleased with his trade. I was pleased with mine.

Then I went through all of them really. The aries, the polyfusion, a serge. I didn’t try buchla, the one thing I was a bit affraid of, it looked a bit intimidating to me at the time. Then I had the PPG modular. I had the roland 100, the complete system. A huge roland 100M. I had at one point 54 racks. It was an extremely large system. I had to be kniling on the floor to get to the bottom, the first pair of oscillators. The more I started to have arp 2600, synti AKS, VCS-3. Suddenly the fun had gone out because I spend most of my time patching. There was no musical experience at all. Around 1991-1992 sold everything to the museum studio that was build just outside of londen. When I thinned all my stock out, the final amount of 100M went to Hans Zimmer.

7.42

At that point I started seeing the local tech who was servicing some of my moogs and ARPs asking him if he had any design that could be put in production. Basicly he showed me a filterbank with a matrix on it with switches like on the EMS polysynthi. It was a multi mode filter. Much like now, our RS360 vocal phase filtre, at least the concept of it. He productionised it for a 19” rack. We called it the FB3, filtre bank 3. And we took it too the frankfurk show in 1994. The japanese buyer (mr. Kaja Suzuki) there at the time just liked the producted. We producted and exported them to Japan. Not just Japan, but they were our main buy-offs. We were starting to build up a reputation with this filtrebank and were having feedback from certain users and did e a MKII, that was even more successfull. And then I went back to the designer Steve Gay, who had worked for EMS. His first synthesizer was a synthi A in 1974, I had my first VCS-3 in 1971. So with steve’s collaboration and his ideas of EMS and the quirkiness, we had a common interest together. I asked “what else do you have in mind for production?” and he had an idea for a sequencer, which became PH 48, which was a 19” rackmount 2 U high, 16 steps, 3 rows, with the ARP 1613 analoge sequencer quantisers on it. But we commissioned in america the pots and knobs of the arp 2500 so we had those really special knobs. It had an ARP flavour and look to it. It became a classic on it release, very good reviews and know I think they sell for much, much more then there original sign and no one seems to want to part with them, which is always a good sign.

Then as the last of my modulars where dissapearing it was then a vaccuum in my live. It’s a shame all these moogs, etc. are so expensive. At that time in the UK a 3C and a 55 would be 10.000 pound in those days what only producers could afford. And it was in our mind it would be nice to have an affordable modular synthesizers. But we did not know at the time that dieter doepfer was thinking ahead of us and designing his and getting them ready for production. We spend 2 years working on a project, called “the legacy”. It was an expander to any monosynth that had lot’s of gate, triggers, ins/outs. In particular the SH-5, it has a lot of sockets for interfacing with other synthesizers. Also the ARP odessey. It would have made a pro-one almost modular.

Just about 3 months away from production we realized the doepfer A-100 was out. My designer looked at that and said that was the future, that’s a nice seize. My designer never liked the big format of moog or the roland 700. He liked the ARP2500 because of the nice little knobs and they seemed to fit a lot of power in the module space. He was surprised the japanese would make such a large 700. So he liked the doepfer idea of putting a lot of power into a small space. We wanted to make them slightly bigger then doepfer just in case there was a problem when there were a lot of patchcords in a central posistion, so you couldn’t get your fingers in, so it’s slightly widther there. But the concept was still the time. Our designer was already going to use the +12/-12 V format and that was perfect because Dieter did the same. So we got to the bit where we realised we had to scrap the “legacy” idea and admit Dieter had got it right. So we first had to get a product out that was modularised. So we looked at our FB-3 and thought we have to have a multimode filter, so that was done, which is our RS 110. There was 3 of those to a rack there was an LFO, the RS-80, a multiple RS-170, and a mixer at the time, the RS-160. So that was our first product, a modular FB-3. We then had to quickly get oscillators, envelopes. Just to get a basic voice. Because we didn’t want to be just catching up with Dieter, for the sack of it. We needed to identify ourselfs with a voice. Once we had done that, we could start slew/limiters, gate delays. We looked at everything which seemed from the past synthesizers that I had owned, trying to avoided to get to close to Dieter’s designs. And we started to break away then. And I guess the finding points for us was when we did “the french connection”. We got a request from Johnny Greenwood of radiohead to copy the control mechanisme of his ?autonome. So we cloned it exactly like he wanted it to look. So that obviously got us a lot of attention. Then we did the bode frequency shifer, people thought that was challenging that, because no one wanted to do the bode design, but there own design. Then we had the EMS licensing. That was really good, because a lot of modular users from all the different manufacturers wanted that EMS sound, so it was a smart move to be linked with that. The last 3 years we build up a good client base and hopefully a good reputation with the more affordable side of modular synthesis. We have been very pleased with the type of bands now that are using them.

18.42

This year we were that busy that even our designer was flat out from soldern iron duty assembling. The first time he had no time to design, he was just litteraly everyones help out. That is good in one way, of course I am happy to see the way the sales are going, but when I go to NAMM, there’s not going to be anything new to show. Although this year the review of the polyphonic oscillator came out, so that’s going to keep us busy on the phones explaining it on the phones, it’s such an indept model.

...

26.52

Then another thing we did 2 years ago, was to crack the problems with CV to midi.

29.12

Open architecture really is what we want to do. As many ins and outs. A lot of the modern day analog designers are still using all the concept from the past. There is really nothing new to explore.It’s just a way of implementing those designs with a quircky sort of design feature in there. It’s just like on our sequencer. There is a little socket called “skip in”. Most people probably won’t even use it, yet it will open up new avenues what a sequencer will do, that other sequencers can’t. Because we are still a very young compagny, we are pretty wacky with our ideas, so it’s all about demonstrations and shows, etc. were suddenly a wider audience will be see it and some will go “hum”.

2. What’s your favourite synthesizer or module?

32.45

My favourite all time synthesizer, not a modular, is the memorymoog. When they come with factory presets, apart from 3 sounds in there, they are very dissapointing. Moog did a second set of factory sounds, which open up a lot better of what it can do. If you spend years with them (as long as your technicians keep them running), there is extraordinary power in them. To me, they looked great, they sounded great and half the time you only need to use the one oscillator, you don’t even need to use two. With the third one makes an almost unbearable in a mix, but the power is there.

33.51

Now my favourite modular synth. There are so many good once. It will probably surprise you that it’s not one of the larger ones I had. But probably the ARP 2500. It’s easy for me to say the VCS3, because it was my first one and my heart is there, but there’s a lot of frustration with it. But the ARP2500 just seems to be the perfect package, that was a portable studio with most things on it to keep you happy for years and years. And most studios are going to, perhaps only the pro’s, there is always an ARP 2500. There will always be a minimoog of course, but if they are going to be modular, I have seem more of them (ARP 2500) than most.

34.59

And for an individual module, I would probably say, not because we have one, but I really feel like comb filters, because you can drag it past it’s limits and you start to get lofi effects from it then, that can be very interesting. I have heared quiet superbe saxophone emulations where two comb filters are used to create the metalic body of it.

...

3. What’s the connection with AS and radiohead?

36. 46

They have always been asking for modules to design. Obviously they had one of our 8000. Johnny (Greenwood) had an 8000 and the RS200 sequencer in a metal cabinet. Johnny just has an extraordinary talent for learing. Just 3 or 4 emails and phone calls and he was just off on his own. Colin, his brother, started off with a small system and then more and more. It’s quiet a large one now, a polyphonic system. There was a lot more time spend with Colin, not because he didn’t learn as quickly as Johnny, but he just wanted to know a lot more and in more dept. And now he makes extraordinary sounds, very strong on his programming. Non of them now need to come to us now for information. Yes, of course if they would request a specific a module we would consider doing it. We would have never thought doing anything like the french connection as it wasn’t for their idea on it.

4. What’s the connection with EMS?

39.27

The connection is, some of my very first synthesizers when I wanted them serviced I took them down to Robin and he passed them on to Steve, which is our designer now. So I guess that was the first connection, because he was working with Robin as well (and still does now and then). Because of the locallity and Steve is perhaps the link of the triangle.




SECOND PART

5. What kind of modules can we expect in the future?

0.56

The next two modules in the range are really quiet basic. But hopefully with a bit of a quirck to them. There will be a distortion probably based on the marshall fuzz face. We will go back to the best ones that were made. We hope to add a bit of spice to a distortion unit in ways that hasn’t been done before.

And the other one is a basic valve overdrive module.

More complex ones we have got in mind would probably take to long to descripe. A very interesting one that will come out is not digital, but pure analog and could be descriped in termes of a clocking device, a short midi sequencing clocking device.

6. How do you see your compagny evolving?

5.03

I really have got this thing about controllers. No doubt we will do a polyphonic synthesizer on the lines of memorymoog, some of the things that are more advanced.

We will do two monophonic synthesizers. One of them will be, the codename will be, it will probably be called “Caligula”, based on that mad empereur. This could be a killer synth. That one will be SH-5 look a like. Not in colours, but in the way it goes from left to right, the signal flow and the switches on the top.

The other one will be a suitcase synth like the AKS. Which will be a geniune recall of patchingpins. It will be called “ramecies”. We have spend a lot of time with compagnies getting the right matrix boards.

I think people know about ramecies. The polyphonic synth is more my dream rather than the designer, so it might have to take a backstage. But there’s got to be at least something like a voyager, with memory, etc.

7. Do you have plans to make your modules bigger?

8.14

No, we believe the eurorack is going to be the big one, and it will be. Recently Tonny Allgood sold the rights of Oakley Systems to an american compagny called EAR, electro acoustic research. They are going to convert those into the doepfer format, too expand the range even more. So will we have modules from analogue solutions, ourselfs, doepfer and now EAR. It will be two camps, but not like betamax and VHS.

The minimoog wrapped in his walnut, I thought this is how a synthesizer should be. I truely believe, although we do a rack format, I personally don’t like looking into a rack format. But I do understand it (smaller modules) if space is the premium, particullary in Japan, where spaces are smaller. When doepfer came out they absolutly adored it. Soon they could have a larger system with the power of a large system in a small space. It would have been foolish if we would have started bringing out the walnut cabinets. We really needed to do a rackversion. It’s going to be very difficult for us to think of interesting modules over the next few years, because there are very exotic ones Dieter has done and we don’t thread on there tou. It’s of no interest for us to have two similar type modules. There is no annimosity or we are “best new” between any of the manufacturers. Maybe it was in the past, where it was important in the early 70s to have large sales.
 
Laatst gewijzigd:
Mooi toch Bob met zijn spulletjes?

Alléén jammer dat het hier verscholen zit in het riet :stupid
 
top !
Complimenten voor deze actie :okdan:
 
Origineel geplaatst door mansher
Mooi toch Bob met zijn spulletjes?

Dat dacht ik ook ja.

Niemand die enthousiast is over het feit dat Bob een nieuwe analoge synth met patchmatrix op de markt gaat brengen? Ik anders wel ...
 
Ja, ongelofelijk enthousiast!
Maar wel 3.5 jaar geleden inmiddels... weet er eigenlijk iemand van de huidige plannen rondom a.sys?
Het lijkt erg stil geworden met nieuwe ontwikkelingen, hoewel Bob W. nog springlevend is - gisteren een mail gestuurd, vanmorgen al uitgebreid en hulpvaardig antwoord. Erg prettig, en dat geeft hoop voor de toekomst (en zin om de A.Sys configuratie wat uit te bouwen...)

Zijn er eigenlijk nog serieuze A.Sys adepten op het forum?
 
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