Rich Formidoni cut his teeth in the industry as a salesman in the keyboard division of Sam Ash Music in Queens, New York. That experience led to his move to Korg in 2005 as a product spec...
Joseph Fox knew his great grandmother, Sarah, who along with her husband Otto, formed Fox Music House in South Carolina back in 1928. She was a great inspiration to Joseph who grew up kno...
Dave Froker began playing guitar as a teenager and after working in another industry saw an ad in Guitar Player Magazine for a job opening at DigiDesign. He enjoyed his work with that com...
Ralph Goldheim worked in music retail before jumping the counter and exploring a career in manufacturing. He worked with George Luther for several years before joining Oberheim Electronic...
Robert Hartford was originally hired by ARP in 1977 as the company’s janitor, but soon was promoted as a clever facilities manager who was the guy who “knew how to get things done.” His p...
Daniel Haver was heavily influenced by the music he heard at home as a kid and wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an entrepreneur. He combined his love of music with hi...
Karl Hirano was an electronic engineer for Yamaha in Japan during the great MIDI boom of the early 1980s. In fact, Karl was a member of the team that gathered at the 1983 NAMM Show to dis...
John Hopkins became best friends with Chuck Surack, the founder of Sweetwater Sound, thanks to one phone call. Running his own heating and air condition company by day and helping his cla...
Jack Hotop was among the innovative engineers at KORG during the early synthesizer craze, creating the first MIDI workstation, the KORG M1. During his long career at KORG, Jack has teamed...
Jeff Jacobs grew up in Chicago and remembers going to Gand Music to buy his first very own instrument, although his parents had an upright piano in their home. Jeff’s purchase was the eve...
Marvin Jones is the founding editor of Polyphony, an early and important magazine covering the growth and development of the synthesizer industry and its many innovators and leaders. Marv...
Gez Kahan, on a whim, offered to be the musical director for his college’s production of Tommy. The experience lit a fire under him and soon he was exploring all of the latest gear, espec...
Ikutaro Kakehashi, the founder of Roland Corporation, created more than a successful business with a host of important innovations in electronic musical instruments; he has also paid trib...
Hirokazu Kato took part in the innovative engineering team at Yamaha in Japan who utilized FM Synthesis to create an electronic musical instrument, first the TRX prototype and then the re...
Tsutomu Katoh had many ideas for using electronics to improve the way people make music in their homes. As the founder of KORG, he was able to see his ideas turn into successful musical p...
Jerry Kovarsky was the product/brand manager at KORG for over 15 years. Working with Jack Hotop they were part of the team that created a long line of innovative synthesizer products for ...
Roger Kraft was a pioneer in the retailing of electronic musical instruments such as keyboards and synthesizers in the 1980s. Many may recall the days of keyboard stores throughout the U...
John Kuzmich, Jr. is a pioneering figure in the marching band movement and has left an indelible mark on both high school and college-level bands. A proud alumnus of Michigan State Univer...
Denis Labrecque formed DeLab Consulting in 2015 after a series of positions in the synthesizer, computer music and digital signal processing fields. It all began with learning analog modu...
Terry Lawless is an expert at all things MIDI. When the language first came out, it was hard for most people to learn and especially difficult to program. However, Terry, who had just com...
Philip Leader is a freelance content programmer for electronic musical instruments, with a background in piano, organ and keyboard sales, following in the footsteps of his dad Alec Leader...
Don Lewis was trained as an electronic engineer and, because of his love for music, he created one of the very early integrated-sound controllers, a precursor to MIDI. In the early 1970s ...
Roger Linn forever changed the way people dance! As the inventor of the electronic Linn drum machine, he ushered in the new wave of electronic dance music beginning in the 1980s. The Linn...
Jaee Logan was introduced to a number of innovative synthesizers in the early days of development. These include the Oberheim 2 Voice, the Arp 2600, and the Mini Moog. He beta tested sof...
Carlo Lucarelli graduated with an electronics engineering degree in 1963, marking the beginning of a distinguished career. After three years with GTE in Milano, he joined the music produc...
Chris Martirano started working for Kurzweil Music Systems in 1986. For the first few years he was on the sales side of the equation, originally the district sales manager for the northea...
Max Mathews was working as an engineer at the famed Bell Laboratory in 1954 when he was asked to determine if the computer Bell was designing could create music. The landmark Music 2 and ...
Greg Mathieson spoke passionately about his career in music during his NAMM Oral History interview. He brought up some very interesting points, such as his views on working on the road vs...
Chris Meyer is renowned for his groundbreaking work in designing electronic music devices, he has left an indelible mark on the industry. From his pioneering invention of Vector Synthesis...
Dominic Milano played an important role in the history of the music products industry as editor of Keyboard magazine beginning in the 1970s and into the 1980s. It was Dominic’s article of...
Dr. Robert Moog was the father of the synthesizer and perhaps the best-known promoter of the Theremin and electronic music. When he passed away in 2005 after a short illness, he was eulog...
Al Murrell recalls being hooked on the Pipe Organ when he was just three years old. That special sound, which could be loud and haunting, could also be soft and soothing. As a young boy, ...
