Roger Powell | |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Roger Powell |
Born | 14 March 1949 |
Origin | Virginia, U.S. |
Genres | |
Occupation(s) | Musician, sound engineer, programmer |
Instrument(s) | Vocals, synthesizer, keyboards, trumpet, guitar |
Years active | 1973–present |
Labels | Atlantic Records Bearsville, Audion, Inner Knot, Unicorn Digital |
Website | Roger Powell official website |
Roger Powell [1] (born March 14, 1949) is an American musician, programmer, and magazine columnist best known for his membership with the rock band Utopia.
Powell's musical career started in the late 1960s, programming analog synthesizers for commercials. [2] Powell was the protégé of Robert Moog (who created the Moog synthesizer), as well as Moog's competitor ARP, contributing designs and demonstrating systems. [3]
Powell played keyboards and synthesizers with the rock band Utopia, led by Todd Rundgren and featuring players Kasim Sulton and Willie Wilcox, among others, from 1974 until its disbanding in 1985, playing, writing, and singing on ten of the band's eleven albums. For Utopia's live shows, Powell created the Powell Probe; the first remote, hand-held polyphonic synthesizer controller, which featured a custom-made shell used to access a complex stack of sequencers and other peripherals offstage, [4] a device also used in a modified form by Jan Hammer. [5]
His first solo album Cosmic Furnace was released in 1973. It was praised by Billboard magazine's reviewer as "...a fascinating, demanding LP that has all the hypnotic eeriness of the recent Miles Davis approach"; [6] Village Voice critic Robert Christgau called it "the best pop electronicism since Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air ." [7]
Powell produced several additional solo albums, and was a touring musician with David Bowie [8] and others.
In October 2006, after a long absence from music recording, he released Fossil Poets [9] with musicians Gary Tanin and Greg Koch. [10] The music is described as electronic / prog rock 'retro-futuristic'. [11]
In March 2009, he released Blue Note Ridge with producer Gary Tanin. The music is described as solo piano improvisations. [12] He occasionally performs with Bay Area folk musician and friend David Elias, plus other local, roots musicians. Informal live performances have been hosted and recorded at the San Gregorio General Store. [13]
On September 7, 2009, Powell once again shared the stage with Rundgren as part of a re-constituted Utopia, with Tubes drummer Prairie Prince replacing Willie Wilcox. The band played an opening set for an album-length concert of Rundgren's A Wizard/A True Star . Powell was able to participate in the short tour after leaving Apple Computer, where he worked as a programmer, and before starting work at Electronic Arts.
In 2011, Powell made brief appearances on an album by Nashville artist Joe 'Guido Welsh' entitled Nothing Left To Say. He played two signature Minimoog solos on the recording which also featured former Utopia members John Siegler and Kevin Ellman.
A talented computer programmer, Powell developed one of the first PC MIDI sequencers, Texture. Originally developed for the Apple II, Texture allowed the user to manipulate patterns of notes and store them on disk. Soon after the MIDI protocol was introduced, Texture was ported to the IBM PC and the Amiga [14] and utilized the Roland MPU-401 MIDI interface. Its celebrity users included Stevie Wonder and Bob James. Much of Powell's computer work pre-dated MIDI. He gave the first performance on an all digital synthesizer while working with Hal Alles, Douglas Bayer, and Gregory Sims at Bell Laboratories. Powell's talents led eventually to positions with WaveFrame (an "audio mainframe" synthesizer used by Peter Gabriel), Silicon Graphics and Alias/Wavefront. [15]
From 1997 to May 2009, he worked for Apple Computer as a senior programmer and technical lead for audio within Apple Professional Applications. He currently works at Electronic Arts as a Senior Producer on emerging music technologies.
Powell wrote a Keyboard magazine column on synthesizer technique for a number of years which were included in several books published by Hal Leonard - Synthesizer Basics, [16] Synthesizer Technique [17] and Synthesizers and Computers [18]
An electronic musical instrument or electrophone is a musical instrument that produces sound using electronic circuitry. Such an instrument sounds by outputting an electrical, electronic or digital audio signal that ultimately is plugged into a power amplifier which drives a loudspeaker, creating the sound heard by the performer and listener.
Todd Harry Rundgren is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band Utopia. He is known for his sophisticated and often unorthodox music, his occasionally lavish stage shows, and his later experiments with interactive art. He also produced music videos and was an early adopter and promoter of various computer technologies, such as using the Internet as a means of music distribution in the late 1990s.
The Fairlight CMI is a digital synthesizer, sampler, and digital audio workstation introduced in 1979 by Fairlight. It was based on a commercial licence of the Qasar M8 developed by Tony Furse of Creative Strategies in Sydney, Australia. It was one of the earliest music workstations with an embedded sampler and is credited for coining the term sampling in music. It rose to prominence in the early 1980s and competed with the Synclavier from New England Digital.
ARP Instruments, Inc. was a Lexington, Massachusetts manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, founded by Alan Robert Pearlman in 1969. It created a popular and commercially successful range of synthesizers throughout the 1970s before declaring bankruptcy in 1981. The company earned a reputation for producing excellent sounding, innovative instruments and was granted several patents for the technology it developed.
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.
Initiation is the sixth album by American musician Todd Rundgren, released May 23, 1975 on Bearsville Records. With this album, Rundgren fully embraced the synthesized prog sound he had begun exploring in more depth in his work with his band Utopia. However, unlike Utopia, in which Rundgren had limited himself to playing guitar, most of the synthesizers on Initiation were played and programmed by Rundgren himself.
Faithful is Todd Rundgren's seventh album, released in 1976.
Utopia was an American rock band formed in 1973 by Todd Rundgren. During its first three years, the group was a progressive rock band with a somewhat fluid membership known as Todd Rundgren's Utopia. Most of the members in this early incarnation also played on Rundgren's solo albums of the period up to 1975. By 1976, the group was known simply as Utopia and featured a stable quartet of Rundgren, Kasim Sulton, Roger Powell and John "Willie" Wilcox. This version of the group gradually abandoned progressive rock for more straightforward rock and pop.
Back to the Bars is a live album by rock musician Todd Rundgren, which was released as a double LP in 1978.
Another Live is a live album by the progressive rock band Utopia. It was recorded in August 1975 and released in 1975 on Bearsville.
Utopia is the second of two self-titled albums by the rock group Utopia. It was released in 1982. It was also their only album for Network Records.
A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI.
Ra is the second studio album and third release by Utopia on Bearsville Records, released in 1977. Band leader Todd Rundgren planned on releasing the LP in 1976 on his own label, Ethereal Records, as the new four-piece line up was not signed to Bearsville. Replete with an elaborate $250,000 stage show featuring a 22-foot-tall (6.7 m) pyramid and golden sphinx which took 18 months of prep, Ra was Rundgren's most ambitious live undertaking.
Adventures in Utopia is the fourth studio album by Utopia.
Gary Tanin is a veteran Milwaukee musician/producer/engineer with a career spanning decades and reflecting two central themes: music and technology.
Todd Rundgren's Utopia is the debut album by the American rock band Utopia, released in October 1974 on Bearsville Records. The band was formed in 1973 by musician, songwriter, and producer Todd Rundgren who decided to expand his musical style by moving from pop-oriented rock towards progressive rock. He assembled a six-piece group that featured three keyboardists and toured as a live act. Most of the album was recorded in the studio except "Utopia", the opening track, which was recorded live in concert in 1974.
L is the second studio album by British progressive rock musician Steve Hillage.
Mark "Moogy" Klingman was an American musician and songwriter. He was a founding member of Todd Rundgren's band, Todd Rundgren's Utopia, and later became a solo recording artist, bandleader and songwriter. He released two solo recordings, and his songs have been covered by artists as wide-ranging as Johnny Winter, Carly Simon, James Cotton, Thelma Houston, Eric Clapton, Barry Manilow and Guns N' Roses. He played on stage with Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Luther Vandross, Lou Reed, Jeff Beck and Allan Woody & Warren Haynes of the Allman Brothers and Gov't Mule. Other than Rundgren, his longest musical association may have been with Bette Midler, whom he served as band leader and who adopted for her signature song "(You Gotta Have) Friends", composed by Klingman and William "Buzzy" Linhart.
Patrick Gleeson is an American musician, synthesizer pioneer, composer, and producer.
Disco Jets is a tongue in cheek project organized and recorded by Todd Rundgren and Utopia shortly after recording Rundgren's Faithful LP and including most of the musicians from those sessions. It's an instrumental recording humorously parodying 1976's US Bicentennial celebrations, disco music, science fiction films and the CB radio fads. It was released in 2001, 25 years after its recording, as part of the Todd Archive Series Vol. 4 – "Todd Rundgren Demos and Lost Albums" 2-CD set on Rhino Entertainment/Crown Japan. It was reissued in 2012 as a standalone CD import on Esoteric Recordings and in 2015 on Cherry Red. It was also released as a limited edition vinyl that was manufactured exclusively by Cherry Red for Record Store Day, only appearing in record shops from Saturday 16 April.
Roger Powell.
I'm having an updated version of Roger Powell's Probe built for me