Julian Colbeck | |
---|---|
Born | 1952 (age 71–72) |
Genres | |
Occupations |
|
Instruments |
|
Years active | 1973–present |
Julian Colbeck (born 1952) is an English businessman, musician and journalist. He is CEO of the multi-media music company Keyfax NewMedia [1] and partner with Alan Parsons in "Alan Parsons' The Art & Science of Sound Recording". [2] Formerly a professional keyboard player for over 25 years, Colbeck is also the author of numerous music-related books, the creator of Twiddly.Bits MIDI loops, the concept designer for the PhatBoy MIDI controller, and producer of many music technology videos and websites.
As a keyboardist, Colbeck played with Greep, The New Seekers, Charlie, John Miles, Yes offshoot Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, and ex-Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett, amongst others. He also worked as a session player on numerous recordings, including with Charlie, Yes co-founder Jon Anderson, Steve Hackett, and Vitamin Z, whose debut album was produced by Alan Parsons.
Colbeck continues to work creatively as a studio session musician, songwriter, arranger and producer. He co-wrote "Give 'Em My Love", [3] a song included on Alan Parsons's studio release From the New World (2022). Colbeck was principal arranger, keyboardist and co-producer along with Armand Ruby on the pre-release soundtrack for "Equinox the Musical", [4] and served in similar roles for other releases from Karmic Neighborhood, including "I Don’t Want to Walk Away". [5]
Colbeck's work with Keyfax involves analysis of the music technology industry and MIDI recording, past, present, and future, while striving to champion musicians and musicality in the face of music tech. [6]
Born in 1952 in Aldershot in Hampshire, England, Colbeck began boarding school in Malvern, later attending Monkton Combe School in Bath, where he played in the band 'Springtime Child'. He began playing piano at age 8 when his parents purchased a 1910 Broadwood upright piano, on which he composed more or less everything he has ever written. He still owns it to this day. [7] Colbeck later attended Inchbald School of Design, 1970–1971.
In 1973 after a brief stint in college, and a spell in the left-wing rock choir Co-operation, Colbeck signed a record deal with Charisma Records with the band 'Greep'. After releasing a number of singles, the group disbanded and Colbeck found himself working in fringe theater, London's Albany Theatre, Deptford.
The New Seekers needed a keyboard player and Colbeck landed the gig, playing many live concerts and TV shows in UK and Europe, including the group's famed Drury Lane concert in 1974. During this time he met their lighting director, who coincidentally was also the manager for a band called Charlie. Hired initially as a session player for the recording of the group's No Second Chance album at Trident Studios, London, he was subsequently asked to join the band as a full-time member.
Colbeck was called upon to replace the Charlie keyboard player Martin Smith and began almost five years of constant touring and music making. He co-produced three Charlie albums: Lines, Fight Dirty, and Here Comes Trouble.
He left the band in 1980 amid turmoil. He wrote, "Finally, the touring band line-up of Terry Thomas, John Anderson, Eugene Organ, Steve Gadd, and myself ceased operations once Arista refused to release Here Comes Trouble, and our caring, sharing management company immediately cut off all our money in 1980. That's a whole other story but, for the record, our final gig was in 1979 at the Civic Center in Providence, RI on Monday 29 October, alongside Foreigner."[ citation needed ]
After Charlie, Colbeck moved to Los Angeles, worked a bit with Robby Krieger, almost broke into film music ("the industry was just not quite ready for synthesizers at the time"), and was the musical director for Captain Crash vs The Zzorg Women, Chapters 5 &6, written by Steve Hammond, Dave Pierce, and Rick Jones.[ citation needed ] Nearly starving, Colbeck was saved when he was picked up by a band named Tropical Madness. Moving back to UK in 1982, Colbeck undertook several tours of the UK and Europe with British pop star John Miles.[ citation needed ]
In 1989, Colbeck joined Yes alumni group Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe as second keyboard player and live musical director, and played every date during 1989-1990 tours. He also appeared on two albums, Symphonic Music of Yes and Live at Mountain View, the latter also released as the DVD An Evening of Yes Music Plus .
He also appeared on Watching the Flags, a Jon Anderson solo record on which he played and co-wrote extensively. He also recorded with Steve Howe and Bill Bruford on a number of solo projects.
Earlier in 1989, Colbeck began what would become a long-term association with Steve Hackett, appearing on a live-recorded TV show that would become the album and DVD Time Lapse. Over the next seven years he appeared on 10 or more Steve Hackett albums and countless North and South American tours.
In 1996, whilst on stage with Steve Hackett and Chester Thompson along with John Wetton and Ian McDonald, Colbeck had a cathartic moment. "I looked around stage and saw a bunch of old men, including (if not especially) me".[ citation needed ] He made a conscious decision and determined to "get the hell out" of performing onstage and has yet to return. He continues to hold a firm belief that live rock 'n' roll music is a young man's game.
In 1991, Colbeck released a solo album Back to Bach, [EG/Virgin] collaborating with concert pianist Jonathan Cohen, plus Steve Hackett, Milton McDonald, John Keeble, Mary Hopkin, and the Irish poet Brian Keenan.
In the late 1970s, Colbeck started writing for numerous English Language MI and Pro Audio magazines (as well as some French, German and Japanese) including: Sounds, Sound on Sound, Music Technology, Keyboard Player, Keyboard, Music Week, Making Music, Electronic Musician , and The Frankfurt Daily. He subsequently published several keyboard buyers guides, a Frank Zappa biography, music related and even assisted his then brother-in-law Raymond Blanc, with a cookbook.
Keyfax Software was founded in 1993, taking its name from Colbeck's keyboard and synthesizer guides. Initially created to market the original concept of ‘MIDI Samples' under the name Twiddly.Bits, the company developed into a multifaceted business offering music technology distribution and support (via DVDs/Websites), MIDI samples, and Steinberg music software, and became the exclusive distributor for the Yamaha Tenori-On. [8] [9] [10]
"My role as CEO is divided between providing our creative direction and ensuring that this direction is both invigorating for those who work here and economically sustainable for the company". "It beats rock 'n' roll only in that I get to spend way less time at Denny's". – Julian Colbeck[ citation needed ]
When Colbeck was asked to review some particularly dismal standard MIDI song files, he realized that there were no MIDI samples available on the market that actually sounded good. He then enlisted help from programmer Dave Spiers to create Twiddly.Bits MIDI samples in 1993. Today there are over 20 Twiddly.Bits MIDI sample libraries available, all generated by professional musicians playing MIDI instruments.
Yamaha approached Colbeck to create content library for the Yamaha RM1x. Its success led to preliminary work on the Yamaha Motif Keyboard (including content licensing). For the next several years (and counting) Yamaha would time and time again approach Colbeck and Keyfax to create content, instructional videos/DVDs and websites for their products.
Based on his longstanding relationship with fellow music technology geek Alan Parsons, Colbeck formed a partnership with Parsons to distill Parsons's knowledge of music recording and production, creating "Alan Parsons' Art and Science of Sound Recording". [11] The original ASSR course was released on DVD in 2010 to critical acclaim. [12] This was followed by "ASSR: the Book", first published in 2012, with an expanded, revised edition published in 2014. [13] There then followed an ongoing series of expanded offerings including on-line courses [14] and live training events and workshops. [15]
Abridged list of publications:
Often taking on dual roles of director and script writer, Colbeck has been the driving creative force behind numerous music-related DVDs and videos, including:
Colbeck has two children Abi, born 1988, and Cameron born 1992.
A music workstation is an electronic musical instrument providing the facilities of:
Anthony John Selvidge, known professionally as Tony Kaye, is an English keyboardist, best known as a founding member of the progressive rock band Yes. Born into a musical family, Kaye was classically trained and intended to become a concert pianist before he developed an interest in jazz and contemporary rock and pop music. He joined several groups through the 1960s, including the Federals, Johnny Taylor's Star Combo, Jimmy Winston & His Reflections, and Bittersweet.
The Yamaha CS-80 is an analog synthesizer introduced by Yamaha Corporation in 1977. It supports true 8-voice polyphony, with two independent synthesizer layers per voice each with its own set of front panel controls, in addition to a number of hardwired preset voice settings and four parameter settings stores based on banks of subminiature potentiometers.
Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe (ABWH) were an English progressive rock band active from 1988 to 1990 that comprised four past members of the English progressive rock band Yes. Singer Jon Anderson left Yes as he felt increasingly constrained by their commercial and pop-oriented direction in the 1980s. He began an album with other members from the band's 1970s era: guitarist Steve Howe, keyboardist Rick Wakeman, and drummer Bill Bruford, plus bassist Tony Levin.
Sequential is an American synthesizer company founded in 1974 as Sequential Circuits by Dave Smith. In 1978, Sequential released the Prophet-5, the first programmable polyphonic synthesizer, which was widely used in the music industry. In the 1980s, Sequential was important in the development of MIDI, a technical standard for synchronizing electronic instruments.
GTR were a British supergroup rock band founded in 1985 by former Yes and Asia guitarist Steve Howe and former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett. Though the band's leaders were known as progressive rock musicians, GTR appealed to AOR radio stations. The band lasted for two years and one album. Hackett subsequently criticized the project, though not necessarily the other musicians involved in it.
An Evening of Yes Music Plus is a double live album from the English progressive rock band Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, released in October 1993 on Fragile Records.
Magnification is the nineteenth studio album by the English progressive rock band Yes, released on 10 September 2001 by Eagle Records. It is their only album recorded as a four-piece band, and their final album to feature founding member Jon Anderson on vocals. At the departure of keyboardist Igor Khoroshev in 2000, the band agreed to record a new studio album with orchestral arrangements, something they had not done since their second album, Time and a Word in 1970. The album was recorded and mixed using Pro Tools with producer Tim Weidner and orchestral arrangements by Larry Groupé conducting the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. Drummer Alan White plays piano on some tracks.
The Yamaha Motif is a series of music workstation synthesizers, first released by Yamaha Corporation in August 2001. The Motif replaced the EX series in Yamaha's line-up and was also based on the early Yamaha S series. Other workstations in the same class are the Korg Kronos and the Roland Fantom G. The series' successor is Yamaha Montage, released in 2016, followed up by the Yamaha Montage M in 2023.
Charlie was a British rock band formed in 1971 by singer/songwriter Terry Thomas. The group was most active as a recording unit from the mid-1970s to 1986. Charlie never charted in the UK but had four minor hits in the US: "Turning To You" (1977) "She Loves to Be In Love" (1978), "Killer Cut" (1979) and "It's Inevitable" (1983).
The Tokyo Tapes is a live and studio album by English guitarist Steve Hackett, released in April 1998 by Camino Records. It documents two concerts performed by a supergroup line-up of Hackett, John Wetton, Chester Thompson, Ian McDonald and Julian Colbeck, in Tokyo, Japan in December 1996. The album includes two studio tracks recorded by Hackett. In 2001, a DVD of the concerts was released, with the same title.
Alan Parsons is an English audio engineer, songwriter, musician and record producer.
The Elka Synthex is a polyphonic analog synthesizer produced by Italian music instrument manufacturer Elka from 1981 to 1985.
Roland JX-8P is a 61-key, velocity- and aftertouch-sensitive, six-note polyphonic, almost entirely analog synthesizer released by Roland in 1985. In a time of rising popularity of digital frequency modulation synthesizers, such as Yamaha DX7, JX-8P was marketed as the best of both worlds: while it was possible to create classic analog synth sounds, several new modulation parameters and redesigned hardware enabled it to produce certain types of sounds associated with FM synthesis, such as metallic percussive sounds. Likewise, traditional hands-on controls were replaced with a Yamaha DX7-style interface with membrane buttons and one "edit" slider.
Live at Montreux 2003 is a 2007 live album and video from the English progressive rock band Yes. It is a live recording of the group's headlining concert at the Montreux Jazz Festival on 14 July 2003. The performance was filmed and is also available on DVD/Blu-ray.
Twiddly Bits is an English slang term. From the word twiddly ; curly or decorative, esp. in an unnecessary way and bit; a small piece or amount of something, a twiddly bit is anything that is relatively small and trifling or elaborately decorative.
Guitar Noir is the tenth album by Steve Hackett, released in 1993. On this record, he started turning to a much darker guitar sound, yet still retaining the fluidity he has become known for.
David Nathaniel Kerzner is an American musician, songwriter, producer, and sound designer as well as founder of the sound sampling development company Sonic Reality Inc. Along with Simon Collins, Kerzner is the co-founder of the band Sound of Contact. He is also the co-founder of the band Mantra Vega. His debut solo album, New World, was released in December 2014.
David Minasian is an American film producer, screenwriter, director, and a musician, singer and songwriter. Since the 1980s, he has worked for various motion picture production companies in the Los Angeles area as a freelance producer/director. In addition to his work on music videos and concert films for artists such as Three Dog Night, English progressive rock band Camel, Moody Blues frontman Justin Hayward and The Alan Parsons Project co-founder Alan Parsons, Minasian has produced and directed over 60 documentary films including The Passion Behind the Passion, a behind-the-scenes documentary filmed on location in Rome chronicling the making of Mel Gibson's controversial film The Passion of the Christ. Minasian is also a classically trained pianist. His symphonic rock album Random Acts of Beauty was released in 2010 to critical and public acclaim and features a rare guest appearance on the album's 12 minute opening track "Masquerade" by Camel guitarist Andrew Latimer.