Richard Buskin talks to Hydra Tech Musical Technologies MD Tim Myer about MIDI system designs for the mega-famous, changes in the technology, and musos who can't resist tampering with the settings!

"All of us have better ears these days," says Tim Myer. "When people go to concerts, especially those by the bigger bands, they expect to hear on stage what they bought on CD. At the same time, the musicians know that they can achieve that, especially as a lot of these guys use the same rigs in the studio as they take on the road."

MIDI keyboard system design and building, studio system design and building, custom gadget design and building, synthesizer and sequencer programming, sound design — all of these areas of expertise are the domain of Music Media Technologies, a high-level creative and support group which specializes in tour pre-production, on the road technical support, and studio production.

Based in Venice, California, MMT is run by Tim Myer together with his fellow techs, Irvin Kramer and John Bunker, while their counterparts in the UK are Laurence Adams and Tom Pearce. In addition to all of the aforementioned services, the company is also constantly developing its own library of samples and patches, provides hard disk recording systems, takes care of song and film score production, and acts as a consultant to artists and manufacturers. Not for nothing are Myer and his colleagues experts in reproducing on stage the sounds that were recorded in the studio.

IN THE BEGINNING

"Having been a musician for many years — bass player, guitarist, saxophonist, rock'n'roll singer — I also tended to be the guy in the band who knew how to solder and fix the bits during the breaks," he recalls when explaining how he made his way into this side of the business. "After some time, I therefore discovered how to make a steady paycheck... as a technician."

Eventually, in the early 1980s, Myer moved into a full-time job running the synthesizer repair department for JL Cooper Electronics in Los Angeles. The company specialized in MIDI gadgets, while the owner, Jim Cooper, was well known around town, not least for his design of synths such as the Oberheim OBX and OBXA. Soon, under Tim Myer's guidance, the repair shop work progressed to modifications and customizing.

"I had some really good techs," recalls Myer. "We rapidly turned into virtually a separate entity from the JL Cooper repair shop, and as MIDI became more sophisticated — moving away from just stacks and stacks of keyboards to proper racks — we began designing and putting full systems together.

"When I worked with Tony Kaye on the first Yes reunion tour, they didn't have rack-mounted synthesizers. There were just these stacks of keyboards, which you never touched, because you could play it all off one of them. So, we started doing more and more modifications, and I then began getting calls to put some systems together. Of course, once a system had been built, no-one using it would have a clue as to how it actually worked, and so the musicians would then ask me to go on the road with them."

THE GOOD TOUR

During the mid '80s, Tim Myer worked with artists such as Chick Corea and The Commodores, but the assignment which he describes as "the really big one which launched things in a different direction" was Michael Jackson's Bad Tour of 1987-89. "It actually turned out to be the good tour for us," Myer now says.

"The setup that I designed and built for that was, at that time, the biggest touring keyboard system ever. There were five five-foot racks crammed from top to bottom with synthesizers to re-create the exact sounds of the album, and that took a lot of work. There were a couple of months of pre-production, building the systems and programming them, and that pretty much set the tone for the way that things were going to be done in the future."

At the same time, a fair amount of consideration had to be given to the fact that there were often sound tricks created in the studio that were not really possible to reproduce on stage. "Nothing was done with a mind to actually reproducing everything exactly as it sounded on record," confirms Myer. "After all, synthesizers were just coming into their own and working reliably at that point.

"On the Bad Tour, we would revamp the system practically every week. Michael has perfect ears, he hears everything, and so sometimes he would mention something that needed changing. More often, however, it would be the music directors or the keyboard players who would do this. Of course, we had the recordings of the various songs that were in the set, and so we'd just listen to the sounds and try to follow up on them.

"You have to remember that an album project in the studio tends to be strung out over a much, much longer period of time. They're often recording around the clock. A number of different players will bring things in and just try stuff, and a lot of times things just happen accidentally. This happens with many artists. You know, that sound just defines the emotional content or texture, but you're not sure how you got there! So, then trying to re-create that can become a problem, because nobody remembers what was used to achieve it.

"There again, sampling was more or less in its infancy then, and things still weren't properly set up for this kind of work. It would be very difficult to get the master tapes, go into the studio, isolate parts, sample them, and make them work for a live performance. Often, a sound that is perfect for the record and for that kind of listening environment just doesn't work when a band is playing live. You therefore have to keep the flavour of it while changing things so that it will work in an arena or a stadium."

"On the Bad Tour, we would revamp the system practically every week."

After the Michael Jackson tour, Myer and two of his 'on the road' colleagues launched a company called Hydra Tech, specializing in the design, construction, and programming of keyboard systems, both on the stage and in the studio. The idea here was to create setups that, once used for recording, were then much easier to take out on the road.

"We'd know how to get certain sounds and we'd take copious production notes in order to remember all of the details," Myer explains. "The tours tend to happen pretty quickly. There will be all of the discussions and political side of things, and then the next thing you know it'll be: 'Well, we need such and such to happen in two weeks, and by the way, the stuff ships to London and has to clear Customs in six days.' So, at that point you start to drink coffee and leave the sleeping until later!"

MAIN GIG

Greg Phillinganes had interrupted his live schedule with Eric Clapton in order to serve as the Musical Director on the Michael Jackson tour. Thereafter, when he returned to the road with the legendary rock blues guitarist, he brought Tim Myer with him. "The Clapton tour has basically been my main gig for the past seven years," says Myer.

Connected to the work with Eric Clapton was a tour of Japan in late 1991 in which Clapton and his band backed George Harrison, as well as a one-off performance without Clapton at London's Royal Albert Hall in April of the following year. "What a great experience that was," exclaims Myer. "Re-creating all of those Beatles sounds, it was just fantastic. It's stuff that we've lived with for so long, and those sounds are just so familiar and comfortable for those of us with grey hair. And we knew that we would have to come up with the same kind of thing.

"Initially, George was adamant about using real pianos, and Rhodes pianos, rather than a Rhodes sound created on a synthesizer. He didn't want a lot of synthetic sounds, and so we had to prove to him that it would come out with an organic feel, so to speak. We worked really hard and we showed him that we had good Wurlitzer sounds and stuff that sounded like the Beatles records. As for the Hammond organ, Chuck Leavell was on the gig, and he has probably the best B3 in the world, so that just worked a treat.

"At the same time, there was some equipment which The Beatles had used back in the '60s, which was hard to replicate. Some of the modern synthesizers had clearly moved on from the earlier synth sounds — in some ways they had greatly improved — and so we had to kind of backtrack on occasions in order to get some of the grit and the feel. It was kind of like a personal challenge, and in such cases, we would just work all night until we'd get it right, trying different stuff out and also using some of the earlier synthesizers. Many times what saved us was the fact that we were working with huge computer-based libraries — Opcode Galaxy is what I've been using for years — and we had on-screen editing, so we could go in there, see the waveforms, and change stuff until it felt just right.

"... sampling was more or less in its infancy then, and things still weren't properly set up for this kind of work. It would be very difficult to get the master tapes, go into the studio, isolate parts, sample them, and make them work for a live performance."

"Typically, therefore, we'd rehearse all day, and then the techs would come back at night and program until we couldn't see straight. We'd have to have things ready for the next day to see if the feel was right and if it would fit in with the sounds of the band. George was very together and we had tapes of the songs, and so we'd compare these to what we'd come up with until we'd got it the same — or got it close — and everyone seemed happy."

WHO'S WHO

Since the late '80s, Myer and his colleagues have worked on many, many tours, building systems, programming them, sampling, modifying, and 'teching'. Apart from all of the film and television projects, the studio setups, the recording sessions, and other special events, the list of assignments just limited to the road reads like a who's who of popular music. Indeed, just picturing three guys undertaking all of this work is exhausting in itself!

Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Whitney Houston, Tom Petty, Tina Turner, Janet Jackson, and Elton John give some idea of the calibre of clients that we are dealing with here. So do Dire Straits, Ozzie Osbourne, Don Henley, Pete Townshend, Paula Abdul, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Hornsby, Stevie Nicks, ZZTop, and, most recently, The Moody Blues. Sound like enough? Well, let's still not forget Amy Grant, Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow, Michael Bolton, Lionel Ritchie, and the now-infamous Milli Vanilli...

Remember Milli Vanilli? The hunky hit duo whose sky-rocketing career was left in tatters when it came to light that — horror of horrors — the boys did not perform on their own records? "We had all of the voices sampled for the tour," Tim Myer says. "We even set them up for that fateful Grammy Awards show. We would just ask ourselves, 'How long is this going to last?', but they didn't seem at all scared. Their own arrogance brought them down."

Were they ever brave enough to actually try to sing their own vocal parts themselves?

"Yes, but they just weren't singers," comes the reply. "They had been picked out to be frontmen and that was what they were, so they sang along to the songs, but the mics were never fed into the house!"

HIDEOUS RACKS

During the past few years spent out on the road, Myer has also had to run a company, which, through the latter half of 1994, was streamlined in terms of both its personnel and its modus operandi and renamed Music Media Technologies. Fortunately, however, while he is away his colleagues are around to help take care of matters closer to home, including the 24-track studio located in the San Fernando Valley just north of Los Angeles (see box 'Arsenal Racks').

Back to more menial devices such as the racks themselves, Myer asserts that the ones he used to have to work with in days gone by were "just hideous". Thus he took it upon himself to do something about this sorry situation.

"They were like rats' nests of spaghetti," he recalls, "and many of the items were just not roadworthy. There would be a lot of problems in transit, and a lot of things would cut out in mid-tune during the gig, and so we realised that this could be done a lot better. Subsequently, we developed a technique that wasn't quite as tight and specific as studio wiring, and therefore while everything was in there and roadworthy, it could also be taken out and switched in a hurry if necessary. It didn't take long to perfect that — about half a tour — and we just followed that formula from there on."

"What a great experience that was... Re-creating all of those Beatles sounds, it was just fantastic."

STAGING SCENARIOS

As for tours, matters can be just as unsettling, especially when it comes to the procedure which MMT has to involve itself in prior to the show actually hitting the road. For this there are two likely scenarios.

The Ideal Scenario

The album has been recorded and is selling/is likely to sell well. The tour has been planned well in advance, and the size of venues has been established, although this is liable to change right up until the very last minute. There is an agreed song list, which should not undergo too many alterations, and you can therefore start to work on the tunes, isolating the sounds, and, courtesy of the producer and engineer who worked on the album, ascertaining what synthesizers were used. In this way, working through each tune, you build up the sounds, aware of what comprises the verses and the lead lines, whether or not the sounds change before the bridge, and so on. Often, major sounds will be reproduced in order to provide the basic feel, and then during early rehearsals the fine tuning will take place, establishing the touch and duration of these sounds. This will usually not take place on the spot, but rather, after copious notes have been taken during a rehearsal session, in the evening when you are not under the watchful gaze of the lead singer.

The Nightmare Scenario

Nothing is properly established, things keep changing, and you don't really have time to build the system properly. You keep pulling out units and replacing them with other ones, rewiring almost constantly. Having had your wiring harness lined up for a stereo left and right, you discover that the new synthesizer which is taking its place has no less than eight outputs, and so you just have to bite your tongue and start from scratch.

"I will typically sub-mix keyboards," says Tim. "Let's say, for instance, that I'm dealing with a smaller system where there are eight keyboards feeding into a small mixer on the side of the stage. That's mixed per tune and then a stereo pair is sent out to the monitors at front of house. You know, usually the house mixer has plenty to keep track of, without trying to mix a dozen synthesizers and make them sound right. He's trying to keep the lead guitar out there and the lead vocal out-front.

"Presently, the trend really seems to have gone from keyboard players carrying their own amplifiers and speakers to using the on-stage monitor wedges. Again, it will either be sub-mixed per keyboard setup or the monitor mixer or the front-of-house does the keyboard mix. It's just put back through the wedges, and it's easier and less expensive. Also now there is more and more of a leaning towards in-ear monitors, and so you don't even have the boxes on stage."

MUSICAL BUTTON PUSHING

When it comes to faithfully reproducing the sound of the record in a live situation, some artists, such as Michael Jackson, want everything to be spot-on. In the case of someone such as Eric Clapton, on the other hand, some tunes need to be right on the mark, while others allow for a great deal of leeway and improvisation. In these cases, it is just a case of attaining the right feel.

"Eric plays very much from the heart," says Myer, "and so if it fits into that, then he's fine with it. He leaves a lot of the decisions to his musicians, although if he hears something that just doesn't work, he'll say something — that happens very rarely; equally if he hears something that he thinks is very nice, then he'll comment on that as well.

"Some guys understand the technology and want to deal with it. For instance, when we did the George Harrison tour, Greg [Phillinganes] did a lot of his own button-pushing, although he's Mr. Chops on the keyboards. He'd do certain things and then other stuff would be on my list, which was a lot longer!

"Some guys, on the other hand, just don't have the head for it. They're players — 'I know what sound I want. You can push the buttons, stare at the screens, and get it for me'. Sometimes the demands of the music itself can be so overwhelming that they don't want to deal with this whole other technical world that is just as complicated. The technical can definitely get in the way of the music, and I know what that's like as a musician: you got to the studio at 8pm and now it's four in the morning, and you've just got this one sound up because you've been futzing with all of these synthesizers, EQ settings, and effects all night long! Now that great sound idea which you had at eight o'clock has gone! So, a lot of guys just say, 'You come in and deal with this, and I'll play the music'.

"Part of the keyboard tech's gig is to insulate and stimulate the keyboard player. You have to protect him as well as keeping everybody involved in everything."

"Part of the keyboard tech's gig is to insulate and stimulate the keyboard player. You have to protect him as well as keeping everybody involved in everything. There are certain things that you want them to be involved with, because that way you can get to the feel of something a lot quicker. There again, a lot of times you don't want to go into the complexities of something or the restrictions or open-endedness of a certain synthesizer with a musician. So, there's a lot of trust involved in a good relationship when you're doing a keyboard thing."

RETURN TO THE PAST

Were recording methods still what they were in the early 1960s, there would be no need for Tim Myer to be doing what he's doing. Hallelujah for technology! Nevertheless, there are still times on the road, when, although grateful for the steady flow of work, he wishes that things could perhaps have been kept just a little bit simpler back in the studio.

"These days music is so all over the place that it can go from ultra hi-tech to real, real basic," he says. "Right now there's a resurgence in the use of the old synthesizers, at least in the studio. Don't take them on the road, though! I don't want to go back to fixing things two minutes before the show!

"Some of the stuff is very simple, however, and Clapton is a case in point. His shows range from a basic, traditional English guitar band to some keyboard-based stuff that's really lush with lots of textures."

And so what have been some of the biggest problems?

"Unforeseen circumstances... Weather is always unpredictable. It can start raining buckets in the middle of a show, and I've stood out there loads of times holding plastic tarps over the keyboard player while he's doing his show!

"Then there was the MIDI lock-up at the Royal Albert Hall during an Eric Clapton concert. A note stuck and I was sitting above the stage where the choir normally is, by the [organ] pipework. So, during the middle of a tune, because it would not shut off, I had to do all of the usual things — you know, all notes off and on — and then I had to clamber down the steps and hit that key again to get it to quit! So, that worked, but there have also been instances where I've had to switch gear off and leave it off until the next tune.

"I can now approach these situations in a more general fashion, because MIDI, and the way that it's implemented in synthesizers, has become more sophisticated. Still, these days people are used to seeing roadies or techs on stage dressed in black. It's just like in the theatre — if you're dressed in black, you're invisible! So you can scuttle around and do whatever you want. That's especially good at the Royal Albert Hall, because there's no place to hide."

PHANTOM BUTTON PUSHERS

Much the same can be said sometimes for those phantom tamperers: the musicians who, once everything has been set up and is ready to go, just cannot resist tweaking things a little. At this point, Tim Myer has to assert his own authority.

"I've had to tape over knobs and sliders and say, 'We're in show mode. This gear is now mine until the end of the tour!' Before the tour it's their equipment, but once I'm on, it's my equipment because I'm ultimately responsible for it. I mean, if it's bad then it's my job to take the blame. Fortunately, the same also goes if it's good.

"The one that we always laugh about is: 'Oh, I forgot to tell you. I changed the Wurlitzer sound on such and such. Oh, and that string patch? I changed that to...'

"'Oh, thanks! I'm glad you told me! I thought it was a mistake. I kept changing it over in the middle of the song.'

"That's the sort of thing that will happen. A certain section will go into a soft string sound and I will be thinking, 'that's not it!' So I'll wait until we're in between verses to tap in the other program and then it'll go back to that really strident sound. We have fun with that kind of stuff!"

Hydra Tech Musical Technologies Limited, (Contact Details).