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

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

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.