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MillimeterThe Sampler — September 28, 2005
Sep 28, 2005 12:12 PM
Spectrasonics: Cutting-Edge Virtual Instruments and Sample Libraries
You can listen to industry buzz to find out what's hot, but that will take you only so far. I became intrigued by Spectrasonics' product lines because in my capacity as a writer for Mix and Millimeter, I kept interviewing musicians who used Spectrosonics' "virtual instruments," such as Atmosphere and Trilogy, and media producers who liked its diverse sample libraries, which include such popular titles as Liquid Grooves, Vocal Planet, Bass Legends (which features Marcus Miller, Abraham Laboriel, and John Patitucci), Bizarre Guitars, Heart of Africa, and two volumes of Hans Zimmer Guitars.
For the past several years, the company has been less interested in creating new libraries than in giving musicians and producers greater control over existing ones, and in creating its own virtual instruments. Groove Control, which was developed along with Spectrasonics' U.S. distributor, Ilio Entertainment (see the September 14, 2005, Sampler) and debuted in 1999, gave users complete control over elements of tempo, pitch, pattern, and feel on certain Spectrasonics sample libraries. Then, three years ago, it introduced the first of its software-based virtual instruments. The aforementioned Atmosphere, for example, has a 3GB core library of more than 1,000 sound patches that can be mixed and matched into more than one million combinations. It's a native plug-in for Digidesign Pro Tools, Motu Digital Performer, Apple Logic, and Steinberg Cubase and Nuendo.
Spectrasonics is the brainchild of Los Angeles-based composer/producer Eric Persing, who first made a name for himself as the chief sound designer for Roland beginning in the mid-'80s. It was Persing who created the samples that went into the enormously popular and influential D-50. He broke off from Roland and started Spectrasonics in 1994, though he still consulted with Roland until very recently. We caught up with Persing by phone and peppered him with a few questions about the history and direction of Spectrasonics.
BJ:I'm interested in why and how you made the move from being a sound developer for Roland to starting your own company.
EP:The basic story is I was doing the sample libraries for their samplers. We would go all over the world and sample things and we had a good budget for that and we put a tremendous amount of time and energy into creating something that was really new and hadn't been done at that point. It was very exciting to be a part of that.
BJ:What was your recording rig back then?
EP:We used all sorts of things. We started with the F-1, and then graduated through other things, both analog and digital, through the years.
When we'd produce these [sound libraries] for the Roland products—and some of them took years to make—it seemed like they didn't really put anything into the vibe of the product. It had a simple white cover and they would put it in the same section [of the catalog] with the T-shirts, belt buckles. Yet here we were spending a lot of time and resources on it, and that stuff really powered Roland—even today they're still using all [those sounds] in their instruments. They looked at it more as a useful resource for them, but not as a separate product.
I had created a few different series for Roland—the Composer's Series, the Project Series, and the Archive Series—and I wanted to do this Legends Series, because I had this idea for Bass Legends. I thought that would be a cool product because there was nothing like it on the market; there wasn't that much great bass stuff out there—certainly nothing with "name" players on it.
So I was lamenting to my wife that I didn't really want to bring this idea to Roland, because I was afraid it would just end up with the shoelaces in the back of the catalog [laughs], and I didn't want to involve my friends—the artists—in something where they weren't being showcased properly. So my wife said, "Why don't we just do it ourselves?"
And I was like, "Really? That's a weird idea."
"No, really, we can sell a few hundred CDs and make enough to buy a new Honda, and we'll be done." [Laughs]
So we started Spectrasonics because I wanted to do that particular project. Then, as we got into researching it, we found, "Wow, the advertising rates in these magazines are really high! I guess you have to make a profit on these projects just to pay for the advertising."
Then, right around the same time, a fellow named Bob Daspit, who was a guy I was training at Roland, was starting to do a lot of work for [noted film composer] Hans Zimmer. He was putting together a guitar library for Hans, and he was interested in doing his own library but was having trouble with distribution and some other things. So we said, "If we pool our resources, maybe we can buy some little ads and get that out on the market." Also right around that time, some guy from Singapore who'd been recording all these Chinese operas and gamelan orchestras and such was asking me about what he could do with [his material], and said he was interested in working with us. That became Heart of Asia. So we started with three excellent products.
BJ:There is a thing that often happens in these smaller companies where the artist development guy—you—suddenly has to become a businessman by default. That's really unappealing to some people, so sometimes a guy like you will stay in product development and turn over the business to others. And sometimes they manage to juggle both roles.
EP:That's definitely true. That happened to me. Absolutely.
BJ:Are you still in the lab?
EP:Very much so. In the beginning, we were doing everything, including phone sales, and our phone was ringing off the hook all night long in our house. It was really insane. So, pretty quickly, it became clear we were not going to be able to do sales and development; there's no way. Having to deal with talking to Guitar Center and the dealers—that's not really my strong point. Working with the distributors was fine. That's why we started dealing with Ilio. They had started around the same time and we were very impressed with them—they had a real classy vibe about everything they did, and we seemed to share a lot of the same values. They only had one product, and they were a husband-and-wife team, too. It was a good fit. It's still a really good fit.
So we decided we would focus exclusively on developing products, though we still did our own manufacturing.
BJ:Can you talk about how your products have evolved through the years? Sampling really started with keyboards; that was the area where it exploded. And for a while I'm not sure people thought they would need guitar samples, let alone Chinese instruments or vocal samples.
EP:I think there are still people who feel that way. [Laughs]
It all starts with how professionals work. The people who are at the cutting edge of things in terms of creating music and using technology, set the tone for what everybody else considers to be something they might want to pursue. We started as a company that pretty much catered only to professionals—or very, very serious semi-pros. So that's the direction we were coming from—a pro-oriented sound company.
But we've had two major re-inventions of the company in recent years. The first one was when we decided to stop making [new] sample libraries and start making virtual instruments. That was in 2002. We didn't fully realize it at the time, but that was a huge change and it meant that we were actually getting into the software business. [Spectrasonics' virtual instruments were originally co-developed and licensed by the French company Ultimate Sound Bank, developers of the UVI engine.]
The second big change was last year, in 2004, when we bit the bullet and really became a software company with our own programmers and our own team, and that's been really excting. So Stylus RMX is our first instrument that's using our own technology and our own engine. It's always been my dream to produce my own instrument. It's been exciting for me to have an idea and to be able to see it come together. I feel so privileged to be able to be a creative person who's creating an instrument that is sold to inspire people to create. What a great thing to be able to do.
BJ:I'm curious: When you turn on the radio and hear some song from the mid- to late-'80s and you hear certain keyboard sound, do you think, "Hey, I made that sound!"? So many people these days, too, are using Atmosphere, for example. You must hear your work all the time.
EP:All the time. Every time I see a movie trailer, it seems like I'm hearing our stuff. It's fun. Particularly when someone does something really cool with it, or it's something particularly memorable, so you're proud your work is in there. It's bizarre though. I remember it was very strange when I heard this cut that Sting made a while ago where everything on it was from our stuff. There weren't even vocals on it. It sounded like one of our demo tracks! [Laughs] It had some Liquid Grooves, some Symphony of Voices, Distorted Reality. It was cool and they gave us a very nice credit.
But I'll pick up an album and bring it home and play it in my studio and I'll hear sounds that were created in that studio, so it's like they went all around the horn and then back again.
BJ:Is your studio at home or in your company offices?
EP:I have a studio at my house where I do most of my own sound design. It's evolving all the time. The most important component of it is the studio itself—we put a lot of time and energy into it. We had George Augspurger design the acoustics. I use a huge variety of tools. I've been a Logic guy for a long, long time, so I use that more than Pro Tools. But with what we produce, we try to make everything to be platform-agnostic as much as possible, so the focus is on what we do and not the platform. They're all good now; they've all evolved in the last few years.
BJ:You mentioned earlier about the price advertising for your products when you were starting out. Now, it seems, because so many people search for everything on the Internet, that has become the main tool to get a massage out there or publicize a company or product.
EP:That's true, up to a point. Certainly, we are getting a lot of business from the Internet. It's funny: My wife and I were talking about this recently. Back when we started the company in 1994, I said to her, "Hey, there's this thing out there called the Internet. I wonder if we should join it!" [Laughs]
"Nah, I don't think so!"
BJ:Some visionary!
EP:Right! [Laughs] It's so funny, because now, the guy who does our graphics for our user interfaces is in Turkey—in Istanbul. I work with him every day, and I've worked with him for over two years. I've never met him; I've never spoken to him. But creatively were completely on the same page. We do everything on forums and through emails. Yet I don't even know what his voice sounds like. So now I love the Internet! [Laughs]
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
