The John Bowen Chronicles

[John Bowen]

Starting later this month, the folks at Sonic Core will run "The John Bowen Chronicles" exclusively on their website, with new installments every few weeks, leading up to the release of the SOLARIS synthesizer. I hope you find it a fun and fascinating look into the synthesizer design process, and perhaps inspire some of you to take your own adventure exploring and creating with the SCOPE design software.

Here's a copy of the text I wrote for posting on their site:

"John Bowen was involved in the development of many legends in synthesizer history - the Prophet 5, the Prophet VS and the Prophet T-8 by Sequential Circuits, and the Korg Wavestation series and OASYS project.

"Ten years ago, he left the world of hardware synthesizers to embark on a new journey, custom designing software synthesizers for the SCOPE DSP system. The freedom and flexibility of this system allowed John to explore creating tools for sound design without the usual limits of large corporate thinking, and John's plug-in synths for the SCOPE platform quickly gained a reputation of sophistication and quality, attesting to his many years of sound experience and thoughtful User Interface design. After a long journey down this path, John returns to the world of hardware design with his first keyboard instrument, the Solaris. Working with SONIC CORE's expert craftsmen, John and the team hope to create a new legend that carries on that tradition of innovation and quality.

"John Bowen's story has been documented with a series published in German Keyboard magazine some years ago, but it left off at the end of his hardware years. We thought it would be interesting to pick up the story again, with John discussing his approach in developing some of his Zarg Music plug-ins over the years, and how that has led back to the forthcoming Solaris project."

Here's the link to their page:
http://www.sonic-core.net/en/home/previewjb.html

cheers,
john b.

[Fidgit]

yeah, cool! thanks, john.
looking forward to the next sequel of the novella!

[seamonkey]

John I look forward to reading the rest of the installments which chronicle your achievements during the software years to the present culminating with the release of hardware Solaris.

In my downtime while waiting for the Solaris to arrive I've been rotating in my one available keyboard slot my Triumvirate of premiere synths, the D50, VFX-SD and the Korg Wavestation. Lately I've spent a lot of time getting reaquainted with the Wavestation and I still feel this synth holds up well once one gets away from the stock recognizable sounds, especially the sequenced ones.
The brass, strings, bell-like(vs samples) and choir sounds are my favorites, of course with a bit of tweaking any one of these in combination can sound completely different. So this time waiting has allowed me to create some new patches.

I don't really know how much you were involved in it's development but just wanted to give you kudos for being part of that project.
It may be a bit off topic from your original post but it would be great to know more about your participation in the development of the Wavestation, perhaps you could share that with us in a separate thread.

[John Bowen]

Thanks for your post. I'd be happy to talk about the Wavestation, as it was a very intense time for me. The core group of Sequential folk that were hired by Yamaha, then traded to Korg a year later, had been given the task to develop a new synthesizer in 9 months (in time for January NAMM show, 1990)! I was placed in charge of the Wavestation development as Product Manager, so you could say I was deeply involved

Here's what I did on the Wavestation:

1) Create all the screen layouts, functional design, button labels and logic flow of the User Interface. The biggest problem for me was that we voted on this deep hierarchy of preset structure, and were limited by the card storage we had to use. I had to decide what the balance of Performances, Patches, and Wave Sequences there would be, as the card's memory only allowed so much total objects in the voice structure. How I wished we could have had a hard disk for storage - that would have simplified everything, and avoided a lot of messy and complicated preset management issues!

2) Coordinate the selection of the PCM sample files to be included (we had a group of about 7 of Korg's best voicing people spend several weeks in listening sessions every day, and we all voted on the selections). I was determined to make the Wavestation something different than an enhanced M1, and argued long and hard to not have piano and drums in there, as I was convinced it would be taken as just another workstation synth. Since Korg already had the most successful workstation on the market, I wanted to see something really unique come out from our group, one that had such a unique sound that when you heard it, you knew it could be only one product, and you would have to get that product to have that sound. To this end, I think we were successful, but it wasn't immediately obvious. After the keyboard had been out for about 6 months or so, the Korg salespeople complained loudly about the lack of piano and drums, so we had additional sessions later on to add them.

3) Once selected, I had to process each sample file - every sample in a multisample keygroup, filtering it so it would work with the PCM chip without aliasing (which usually meant slicing off all harmonic components above a certain frequency), and processing the looping of the samples. For this I used Sound Designer II. (One particular difficulty was that the PCM playback chip had a slight glitch - each sample file had to have 2 'empty' samples following the end of the loop point, so after trimming down each sample, I had to go in and paste 2 blank samples after the end of each file!) Later I also processed all the sample expansion cards, and had fun with one of them (I think a Percussion card), by including variations of the same sample material using different loop points - moving the points so close that you would have repeating events, or really tight loops giving tuned pitches derived from little pieces of the sample. (I've noted this effect has become popular in the last several years with guys such as BT and Squarepusher, among many others.) At the time, Sound Designer II could lock the loop length and slide it around, and I would search for interesting results by doing that, but adjusting the loop length was also very interesting, and I wished there was a way to have that happen in real time on the synth!

4) Once all the samples were in place, the voicing team went about the business of creating presets. This is one area that I actually didn't participate as much in creating the presets as overseeing the whole thing (I think I did about 10 presets or so!). The Korg team had a fantastic talented group of guys from all over the world, and they had been responsible for the M1 voicing, Korg's most successful keyboard - I was humbled to be around them! We had similar meetings for selecting the final presets, and this was actually more intensive than the PCM selection process, because it was so hard to 'vote down' so many great presets to select the best ones. Also, it is a very personal thing...often the preset designer would argue his case to keep the preset in, and we had a lot of respect for each other, so at times you had to bury the ego and just move the process along.

5) Once the presets were finalised, I had to group them in what Korg called 'vertical banking'. Their policy was to have groups of 10 sound categories represented repeatedly throughout the presets. This meant, for example, that in all numbers ending with zero, I would have to place a similar type of sound (in this case, I decided a Wave Sequence preset, since that was going to be the most identifiable sound in the product). So you would have wave sequence-based presets in locations 00, 10, 20 , 30 , 40, 50 , etc. Then let's say 'brass' in all 1's (01, 11, 21, 31, 41, 51, etc.) and so on. This became a huge chore when it came time to do that for the Wavestation SR (SR stood for Single Rack, since it was 1 rack unit in size) - I had this large chart on my wall listing about 900 presets that I had to choose from, narrowing it down to 11 banks of sounds and it took me about 3 months!

So, that's a somewhat brief overview of my Wavestation work. I'll think about posting more details in a 'story series' in the future - maybe it would be of interest, I don't know.

cheers,
john b.

[vince66]

Thanks for that John, I was a huge fan of the Wavestation, one of the synths I used to take out with my band in the early 90's and quite a definable part of the way we sounded. I used it as a master controller too and it was so useful to be able to hold down notes and change patches and keep the notes playing. Quite a big thing in those days. I now have the Wavestation VST on my Neko which I take out with my current band so all these years later it's still with me! A very underused and underrated synth in my opinion.
One of the reasons I knew the Solaris would be another icon in synthesiser history.

[seamonkey]

Here's what I did on the Wavestation:

1) Create all the screen layouts, functional design, button labels and logic flow of the User Interface.

This is interesting because this is one of the things I love about the Wavestation, everything is well laid out and the workflow is extremely easy. Saving and naming patches are a breeze to do which led me to wonder if saving and naming newly edited patches on the Solaris will be as user-friendly as on the Wavestation.
I have OS V2 on my Voyager and saving and naming patches is tedious as well as stressful since I'm always worried one wrong move can wipe out a new sound.

So, that's a somewhat brief overview of my Wavestation work. I'll think about posting more details in a 'story series' in the future - maybe it would be of interest, I don't know.
cheers,
john b.

Thanks for taking the time to share some of your time spent on the Wavestation John. I think a story series is a great idea, it's fascinating to get a behind the scenes view into the creation of some of our favorite synths.
I also think a story series would keep interest in the forum during the times when there is very little new info coming out about the Solaris.

[stardust]

I read the articles in the german magazine already. And now I am still looking orward to the compiles chronicles. thanks also for the wavestation story.

[francois]

...folk that were hired by Yamaha, then traded to Korg a year later

Blast, I'm still looking for that John Bowen trading card.

Thanks for the extra info. The Sonic Core website doesn't really show much right now.

Is there a link to the original article in German ?

[John Bowen]

The original series? It was a monthly column I wrote over a 2 year period (and of course was translated for me by Rheinhard Schmitz). As far as I know, it was never published on the Internet.
I have most of the original text in English, but unfortunately, not all of it, as I had a major hard disk crash which destroyed a number of the original files (Rheinhard told me he did not keep the original files as well).

-john b.

[Howard]

I'm also looking forward to those Chronicles, though I can't put my finger on why I find such stories so interesting. Reminds me of two books I very much enjoyed several years ago: A history of the microcomputer, and a Tesla biography (including Edison's invention of the electric chair!).