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Interview Future Music 03/02
Axel, we've been friends for a long time since, 1988/89? So I pretty much know your history but do you mind a little background for our audioMIDI.com customers?
Sure, it was actually 1989 when we did NAMM together with Waldorf; I am an industrial/graphic designer and musician. I had a love affair with synthesizers since I was 12 years old. It was always my dream to bring together my musical desires with my work as a designer. So my thesis at college was a computer music workstation that was actually picked up by German Keyboards magazine in 1990 and presented to their readers. I started in 1989 as in-house designer with Waldorf Electronics, where I first designed the Micro Wave and then all follow up products until now, like the Wave, the Q Series, the Attack plug In, etc. In '95 I founded, together with a friend of mine, our own design company, Design Box, from where I have been working for many companies from the MI industry, such as Steinberg, Alesis, Creamware, Korg, Antares, Line6, Prosoniq, Midiman, Novation and Access. At Design Box, we do product design, graphic design as well as Corporate Identity.
What was your involvement with the Alesis Andromeda?
I was responsible for the complete industrial design and user interface, all the ergonomics, cosmetics, how the buttons and knobs look and feel and where they are located. I also did the complete product graphics, for example the "galaxy like" layout of the instrument modules was my idea. The Alesis A6 team and I worked very closely together. It was a great experience.
What made you decide to do the Neuron synth?
After designing many synths for other companies I more and more wanted to design an instrument that incorporated my thoughts and desires exclusively. Being a player as well as a designer I had specific ideas I believe to be important and simply wanted to go for it without any constraints from my clients regarding budget, usability ergonomics etc Neuron is a no compromise machine with respect to its user interface, the overall look, and the quality of materials that we use. Neuron looks, feels and, obviously, sounds great. After finding Stephan Bernsee from Prosoniq Software in Karlsruhe / Germany as partner for the sound engine, I knew, that we had the chance to create a new kind of synthesizing musical instrument. My idea of the multi-layered user interface and the neural network architecture from Stephan really fit together like a hand into a glove. So at Musikmesse Frankfurt in 2000, we decided to simply make it happen!
Didn't you think it was a big risk to compete in the over crowded synth market?
Not really, with my experience designing for others I was confident we could pull it off (it actually proved to be a bit more difficult than anticipated). But in the beginning it is probably better if you don't know exactly what is waiting around the corner. I had that dream of a no compromise, new kind of synthesizer. Fortunately, we choose a quite uncommon way to develop Neuron. We've been using many 3rd party services to keep our own company cost as small as possible. And, I think, that finally worked out...
How did you finance the effort?
Mostly friends that have an active interest are in the Company.
Aside from the Press Release what can you tell us about the Neuron?
Since we didn't have a lot of time before NAMM to create many models for the Neuron, we just had a few basic sounds we could work with. It was very surprising to us, how flexible the sound engine really is. With a few moves of the stick controllers, we were able to create an enormous spectrum of different sounds out of one / two models. It seems, that Neuron is capable of handling both the needs of the score writer and the Hip Hop producer plus the complete palette in between these extremes.
What sets it apart from other synths?
Neuron is different; in that it's a new kind of instrument. The basic idea was to give the musician a synthesizer, where he starts with a great sound and makes it better, rather than putting something together, that in the end might sound great. Neuron is the first synthesizer, where parameters are created dynamically; depending on the sound you load into its resynators. From there you can then manipulate sonic material in ways, previously unknown. This is only possible with re-synthesized sound. Neuron is perhaps the first "re-synthesizer" that is really fun to work with and delivers the sonic results that musicians expect. Because we designed a totally new kind of interface, it may also be the inspiring tactile element people will identify with the Neuron. It is easy to handle, because it clearly tells the user what it does (e.g. through its 13 displays and the graphic supported wheel-controllers). So what's different from the Matrix 12, the Waldorf Wave, the Moog Modular System, and others? It is, perhaps, an instrument that creates really new ways of working with sound after years of sameness. And, as we experienced during it's first living hours at NAMM, the sound-engine together with the user interface really feels like a treasure trove of sound possibilities.
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