Thursday, February 4, 2010

Synthesizers and the Defense Industry


Midway through this interview one of the guys from Fairlight mentions the Defense Industry trying to get the company to come over to the dark side.
This is unlike Jim Mothersbaugh of Devo who once worked for Roland and now is a U.S. Military contractor:

Jim Mothersbaugh (brother of Mark) built his own synthesized drums which he played in the first Secret Agent Man video and in 1979 he began working for the synthesizer company Roland. He says that he got to work on the development of MIDI, the system which allows diverse synthesizers to communicate with each other.
In the June 1984 issue of Keyboard Magazine is this question by Greg Armbruter to Jim:

"How do the technical needs of Devo affect the development of products at Roland?
A good example of that just happened. I told Devo that in a few months Roland was going to have a master mother keyboard, not the184 system, which would have a piano action and would control different synthesizers offstage. But Devo said 'We can't wait; we're ready for it now. We'll carry the expense.' So we developed it and built it just for Devo, and now we'll sell it (the MKB-1000 keyboard)."

Jim Mothersbaugh began working for a division of Roland called Roland D.G. (Digital Group) which contracts to the U.S. Military but now has his own company called Circle Prime Manufacturing in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. His company designs and tests electronic countermeasures for the military and is "the largest supplier of communications modules for pilots."