Larry Fast on everything about Larry Fast

In this exclusive interview, synthesizer pioneer Larry Fast talks about everything you'd want to know about him and his carreer, from hamburgers to Peter Gabriel and infrared hairing aid. This interview was made in 2005 but never published publicly until now.

Larry Fast is one of the original US electronic music pioneers. He is mostly famous for his Synergy series of albums, and for his contributions to legendary rock artists, such as Peter Gabriel.

Planet Origo: What are your musical influences?

Larry Fast: Obviously there is a strong classical influence, particularly the 19th and early 20th centuries. Call it Beethoven to Bartok if you like. But part of me has always been a pop song fan. I came of age in the era of Beatlemania in the mid 1960s and so the bands of that time, and their evolution in the later 1960s was a particular influence. The best of pop song craftsmen of the generation before, Gershwin, Rodgers and others also hold a lot of attraction for me. Gershwin in particular I see as a type of role model (except for his early death). He managed to create significant enduring concert pieces premiering at Carnegie Hall as well as chart topping pop and Broadway hits in his day, some of which are standards almost a century later. In my case, make the medium electronic and my vernacular the rock world of the last 40 years and it' s an influence to which I aspire.

Planet Origo: Do you have other influences than music in your music?

Larry Fast: The electronic medium of both the creation of sounds by electronic means, and the recording and manipulation of the same makes working with sound and music a little more malleable than writing and recording for conventional instruments. That in itself is an influence. I also draw parallels between other creative forms like photography and architecture, and electronic music composition and arranging. The amount of detailing, color or back and white, the materials, form and structure all speak to me in musical and visual terms.

Planet Origo: Do you have a specific composing technique?

Larry Fast: Not so much. I catalog specific melodic or sonic ideas as they come up; often through experimentation or by accident while chasing after something else. This collection of snippets plays in my brain and pieces either suggest that they should be joined together or an individual idea will spark off other new ones. Pieces grow organically and then I need to think as an arranger to structure the thing better and throw out the weaker bits, and as a producer to decide what the sonic soundfield and color palette will be. It's quite a juggling act which can be forced to move very quickly when there is a deadline for a film score or other commission, or can take literally years when it is a stand-alone piece.

The technical methods have evolved from open reel tape and analog recording multitrack using work tapes on cassette to MIDI and digital recording with iPod reference mixes. The same with the sound programming from patch cords to software synthesizers in a laptop. But the sonic goals that I envision haven't changed nearly as dramatically. Only the tools that I use to get to them have gotten more efficient and more finely tuned through the decades.

Planet Origo: Where did the name Synergy come from?

Larry Fast: I first encountered it about 1970 in R. Buckmister Fuller's Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth as a chapter title describing the principle of synergy: the sum is greater than the whole of it's parts, as in a metal alloy stronger than any of its components. For instance bronze is stronger than either the tin or copper that make up the alloy. I saw the application to music where unrelated small elements combine to make a sonic effect much larger than the components: synergy. Though Fuller never mentioned the arts at all, I used it a few years later to name my electronic music project. I thought I might hear from him either in praise or rage for using the word, but never did right up to his death. I trademarked the word for entertainment uses in the US in 1981. It was a very obscure term when I started using it, but has since become quite common, overused and in business terms ("corporate synergy") even has a somewhat bad spin to it now in some circles.

Planet Origo: What was the goal or purpose of your debut album, Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra?

Larry Fast: First off, the album was named by the record company. I can't take credit for that. But it does describe what I was trying to do, and have tried to do ever since. That is to take my background and motivation from the rock world and apply some of the finer musical values of orchestration and wide-screen soundscapes to create an electronic blend that has the strength and power of both worlds. Electronics is the best medium that I know of to pull this off.

Planet Origo: Between 1987 and 2002 there were no new albums coming out, why?

Larry Fast: Legal complications and growth in my career in other directions. Jem Records, the parent label of the Passport and Audion labels went into bankruptcy and was liquidated in 1988, shortly after Metropolitan Suite was released.

Though I had possession of all of the master tapes and artwork, there still were several years of court arguments following the dissolution of Jem which made releasing the albums elsewhere risky for attracting lawsuits until the five year bankruptcy claims period had expired. When that ended in 1993 - 1994, I started my own micro-label, Third Contact Media, and began reissuing digitally remastered versions of the Synergy albums. These were eventually picked up by PolyGram's Chronicles label, itself later absorbed through merger into the Universal Music Group. The Synergy albums are now distributed by the Voiceprint Group worldwide.

In the meantime, my work in film scoring, studio sessions, corporate commissions and so on kept me as busy as the Synergy recordings ever had. And then in 1999, the resurrection of the old Peter Gabriel backing band as the Tony Levin Band pulled me back into higher-profile performance. The live Synergy performance at the Alfa Centuri festival in 2002 along with the catalog reissue on Voiceprint led to the Reconstructed Artifacts CD. More ideas for specific Synergy projects are constantly percolating, but often get sidetracked into other commissioned ventures. For instance, the equivalent of several CDs of Synergy material was composed and recorded for the Disney company for use at one of their theme parks in Tokyo. From my perspective, I'd worked on several Synergy recordings in that time period in terms of the amount of creative composing and recordings made. But the end product ended up in a specific place, not released on a generally issued CD or two. (And as I understand, as of now there are no plans for Disney to do
that release to the general pubic either.)

As you can see, every day is filled with music and audio in some shape or form for me. It's only the specific "Synergy" titled projects that through the bad luck of others (like label bankruptcies and mergers) have led that specific project in my career out of the record buying public's view, while these other musical opportunities, many of them more stable than the record business, have expanded.

Planet Origo: Your debut concert as Synergy was in 2002, did you not have any ambitions before that to perform solo?

Larry Fast: Prior to about 2000, the logistics of putting anything together to perform as a solo weren't feasible. At great cost it might have been possible, but the economics didn't make sense for the concert promoters. The technology was advanced enough that I took a short solo Synergy spot within the Tony Levin Band tours starting in 2000 which led to the invitation to do an entire solo show in 2002.

Still, I am not driven as a featured stage performer. I see myself more as a composer or band member and I'm most at home in the studio although I have appeared on stage on tour hundreds of times over the years. Frankly, I don't think that a solo performance by me is all that compelling even though now it can be done.

Planet Origo: Of all the fine artists you have played with and collaborated with, which moments are you particularly fond of?

Larry Fast: Two that stand out are much of the work with Peter Gabriel, but in particular the studio work on his third solo album, and the premier stage appearance of Wendy Carlos' Switched on Bach live ensemble on Broadway in New York in 1997.

Planet Origo: What were your main responsibilities for these artists?

Larry Fast: With Wendy Carlos, I was one of an ensemble of eight, mostly classical musicians. I was one of the less-formally trained of this very august troupe of highly regarded concert performers. My contribution, was that I brought my years of rock touring and stage production experience to this essentially formal classical group and found a way to bridge the gap of eight synthesizer players on stage, with individual monitoring systems, rapid setup within a classical festival performance that didn't compromise the integrity of one of the best selling classical records of all time, and maybe brought just a little rock concert buzz to the proceedings.

With Peter Gabriel, I brought my experience with electronic sonics and production experience gained through my own all-electronic recordings to help Peter to explore some new vistas that his creative mind was able to imagine, but for which he didn't yet have the technical skills or more-easily programmed instruments to do on his own. Peter was unique among the artists that I have worked with in that he constantly challenged my own assumptions by seeing ("hearing") new ways to approach a sonic soundscape. With many other artists I was brought in to impart my wisdom and experience. With Peter I learned as much from his creative thinking as I brought to him.

Planet Origo: Apart from the obvious change in technology, how is it different to create / compose electronic music today compared to 30 years ago, in terms of the mindset that you dig into the material with?

Larry Fast: Not really. It's easier now, but I start with a sonic vision in my head and the instruments and computers are just the tools to express those ideas. I compare it to woodworking with hand tools versus with power tools. Craftsman in centuries past created great pieces of furniture with basic tools that have stood the test of time. You can do the same thing today much more quickly with power devices, but what makes the work great isn't the tools or techniques, it's a great design vision and a timeless end product. It's the same with electronic music. Things that took hundreds of hours to execute with analog synthesizers and 16 track tape can be done much more quickly with today's technology, but the ideas are still the composer's.

Planet Origo: Now that there are no technological limits in terms of recording tracks, computer memory, access to sounds etc, do you find that it has become easier to create great music, or just easier to create dull music?

Larry Fast: In fact, if there's a problem with "easy" technology it's that because it is so effortless a lot of really bad, boring or otherwise thoughtless music that sounds the same can get produced. In the "old" days, everything took so much effort to do well that I found that I really needed to plan out what I was going to do. That enforced a thinking process that probably trained me in some good ways of thinking which even with the present day technologies have stayed with me. I'm not quite sure how the mindset of loop-based lego-constructed music made of canned snippets works. I won't condemn it, but it's quite removed from my work process.

Planet Origo: How is your studio set up today (2005)?

Larry Fast: Fairly simply. It's based around a Macintosh that's always being upgraded (new dual G5 due soon) with mostly fairly recent vintage instruments. The Kurzweil is at the heart of the system with modules from Emu, Korg, Roland and Yamaha. The old mixer is now used mostly as a monitoring system controller since I do all mixing and most sound processing in the Mac. I generally run Mark of the Unicorn's Digital Performer because it gives me a good blend of MIDI recording and arranging tools and fairly sophisticated digital audio recording including surround mixing. It locks well to digital video for scoring and other audio post production. I also use Bias Peak for editing and processing, and a ton of Waves plug-ins. I have a small Pro Tools setup, too, but it's mostly for dealing with outside projects.

Planet Origo: How is your relation to software synthesizers?

Larry Fast: I suppose I've been using software synthesizers since the 1970s. The projects that I was associated with at Bell Laboratories between 1976 and 1980 were all essentially software synths running on mainframes and minicomputers. Back then I never thought that I'd see soft synths running on laptops this soon.

I haven't done any major projects yet with commercial software synths entirely within the computer because it taxes my current system to an unacceptable level for my work flow. But that will change with my next generation of computer hardware. Still, almost all of the so-called hardware synthesizers that I use are really self-contained computers running dedicated synthesizer software inside the box. The hardware inside my Kurzweils is so similar to my older Macintoshes that I use the same peripherals on its SCSI bus, and recycle RAM out of the computers into the instrument.

Planet Origo: Tell us about your background in electronic hardware design.

Larry Fast: I'd been an electronic hobbyist since I was in grade school, building radios and audio devices and learning to design what I needed. I had mono, later stereo, hi-fi gear that I built or modified, and learned a lot of tape recorder skills, both recording and maintenance. At college, though I didn't major in engineering, I did manage to pick up enough electronic design skills as well as work with computers (this was before microcomputers were developed).

That was enough training to give me background in the emerging technologies that have happened in the last 30+ years. For instance when micro computers came out, I used what I knew of Fortran to figure out how write programs in the simple machine codes of the first 8 bit computers. From that and other designs I was able to design the hardware and write code for the computer based sequencers that I used on tour with Peter Gabriel in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

I've never really stopped and the self-education that I did in the field of optical audio transmission has earned me a couple of patents in the 1990s.

Planet Origo: You have a degree in history and are interested in architecture. How has this influenced your music?

Larry Fast: I have drawn the parallels between the fields in terms of structure, balance and detailing in architecture, and understanding context and flow that correlates to history. I think that these perspectives have found their way into the music. Metropolitan Suite is full of historical allusions to other eras and it was inspired by New York's architectural transformation of about 100 years ago. I'm sure that I'll continue to draw on those interests in the coming years.

Planet Origo: You are also a trained violonist, have you used the violin in your music?

Larry Fast: "Trained" is way overblown. Violin was my first instrument in grade school, but after several years I defected to piano and never went beyond the lowest levels of training. I can pick the instrument up today and not make horrible noises; that never leaves you. But I can't call myself a violinist either.

The sounds of the violin; the resonances against my chin and the tonality of the soundbox are deeply embedded. I'm sure that tweaking filter settings on both analog and digital synthesizer patches draw on that experience to tune the resonances that I need to hear when I'm designing patches.

Question from a fan: Why do you think teenagers like those old analog computer sounds but older folks want everything to sound like factory patches? (Most modern e-music doesn't feed my soul like those old analog compositions do.)

Larry Fast: I don't mean to be contrarian, but I've found love of analog sounds dominates in both generations. The older folks, like me, who came of age in the Switched On Bach era found these new sounds, previously unknown by the public at large, fresh and exciting. If you hadn't worked in a computer music facility or a university electronic music studio, you had probably never heard anything like it before the Moog era. Those sounds have become "audio comfort food"; sonic touchstones to our earlier years.

Younger listeners seem to have grown tired of the "thinner" and cleaner digital audio patches that the less-expensive mass produced synthesizers made endemic in the 1980s and 1990s. The much fatter sounds, easily extracted from vintage analog synthesizers, have become the basis for many contemporary styles from hip hop to every variety of electronic dance music. The proof of the transformation is that most current digital synthesizers, both stand-alone instruments and computer-based software, pride themselves on their "analog" richness.

I like well executed digital synthesizers. I have been using them for years. I prefer the finer degree of control and repeatability that digital has over the old analog beasts. But I too, like the analog sonic vocabulary and use it a lot in my digital patches.

Question from a fan: Having seen Larry a couple of times with Tony Levin in the last few years, I would like to ask what are the technical advancements that have ocurred in the last few years that have brought the Synergy sound to stage?

Larry Fast: Mostly the fact that the synthesizer instruments are really free-standing computers networked togther. I can now program them to auto-execute multiple parts as I'm playing other parts. This has been a slow evolution over a few decades, but for me the crossover point was around 1999 shortly before the Tony Levin Band started touring, though I had done some accompaniment for Annie Haslam in a simpler all-synthesizer form as early as 1992. I expect that I'll move all or most of these capabilities onto laptop
computers before too long.

Question from a fan: Do you possess any recordings of the experiments on the Hal Alles Digital Synthesiser at Bell Labs other than the material you used on Games?

Larry Fast: There are other unused versions of some of the tracks that appeared on the Games album, but they weren't as good as the ones that were used. They might be interesting from an historical perspective, but as a producer / composer that material is not as strong as what appeared on the completed album and so it was not used.

The most recent reissue of Games on Voiceprint has a bonus track which is the raw output of the Alles digital synthesizer without any of the later overdubs. It's the monophonic core track of the pieces that used this particular software synthesizer. The photos of the keyboard and sliders that look like a synthesizer are just a controller tied to a Digital Equipment mini computer which served as the human interface of the Alles machine.

There are some other Bell Labs sounds from a different project in Max Matthews department directed by Dr. Joe Olive which are heard on the Intergalactic Touring Band, a project on which I played, reissued on Voiceprint.

Question from a fan: I realise it's old hat now but, at the time, it was very exciting and groundbreaking / pioneering stuff and I've always enjoyed the vibe of Delta Four. I'd love to hear more of it?

Larry Fast: I've always like that track, too. It think that it's held up well. That one, of course, does feature the Bell Labs work and then in the second half some traditional tape loop technique. I was exposed to the two tape machine delay approach used in the European radio studios after WW2 as a musique concrete technique in a Twentieth Century Composition course in college. It is the same technique that Brian Eno and Robert Fripp later popularized for guitar and 2 Revox recorders. For Delta Four, I applied the the setup using two Studer A80 studio recorders with dbx noise reduction for processing synthesizer parts, some of them sequenced.

It would be good to try to recapture that spirit in a new composition some day. This is another example of a classic studio technique much more easily accomplished with computer-based audio.

Question from a fan: What album by your "peers" (that emerged in the 70s) would you have liked to have played on?

Larry Fast: Good question, but I've been lucky that I got to work with many of my peers during that era. The only ones to have striven for were projects by then ex-Beatles. I particularly would have liked to have had an opportunity to work with Paul McCartney. I have an enormous respect for his Beatles-era songwriting craftsmanship and I would have liked to learn from and contribute to that later in his career, especially some of his work in the 70s starting with his first solo album.

Planet Origo: What do you do when you are not playing or listening to music?

Larry Fast: Many different things. My electronic background in professional audio, the same electronic skills that enabled me to work with the hardware design of synthesizers earlier in my career is still going strong in patented designs that I have for infrared audio transmitters used by the hearing disabled. I own an interest in a company that manufactures these products and a spend a good bit of my non-music time as the director of engineering and seeing that the manufacturing runs smoothly.

I'm also involved in historic preservation and have been appointed to several government commissions and agencies guiding the legal aspects of historic planning as well as architectural grant funding.

I also have interests in architecture and design, photography (digital and chemical darkroom), and I do some woodworking and construction.

Planet Origo: What is your favourite food, and colour?

Larry Fast: Hamburgers and blue (but, not blue hamburgers).

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