Interview - Darren Richards aka Daz
The english Interview section starts with Darren Richards, better known to the KORG User Community as “Daz”. Together with Sharp he owns http://www.korgforums.com/ and these two are providing a very helpful platform for any person who is interested in KORG equipment.
blogasys: Daz, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself?
Daz: I am 37 years old and I work as a software developer and technical guru for a company I founded with some other talented people 15 years ago. I am English but now live and work in the USA. I have been a total music junky since I was a teenager in the mid ’80s.
blogasys: What kind of music and which musicians influenced you the most?
Daz: I was really inspired by Joy Division, The Cure, Depeche Mode, The Jam, Teardrop Explodes, Cabaret Voltaire, Cocteau Twins, Bauhaus and so many other great bands from that period of time. On my 16th birthday I bought myself an electric guitar. I had no previous musical training, so a good friend and I learned by playing along with songs by The Cure and Joy Division. So Robert Smith of The Cure was really a major early influence for me. The bass playing of Simon Gallup of The Cure and Peter Hook of Joy Division/New Order inspired me to also take up the bass. I would say that the most significant long term musical influence for me has been Martin Gore of Depeche Mode.
blogasys: How did you start making music?
Daz: I played guitar and bass in various bands until I was in my late twenties. I also played keyboards rather badly in some of these bands but wasn’t really that interested in synthesizers. When I was at school some friends had Roland Junos and Jupiters, which I was fascinated by so I bought a Yamaha DX21. I didn’t know enough about synths at that time to understand that the DX21 was not at all like my friends Rolands and the experience of using that killed my interest in synthesizers for quite some time. I played, but didn’t really understand or explore, various keyboards during this time including a Moog Prodigy, a Roland Alpha Juno, a Casio CZ101 and later a Yamaha W7 workstation. I tinkered with Cubase when it was only a MIDI sequencer, but didn’t find this an attractive way of making music. To me music was about playing live and preferably playing an instrument that had strings and a wooden neck.
In the mid 90’s I was very involved with my career and stopped playing music for a few years. During that time I found myself becoming far less interested in listening to guitar based music and far more interested in electronic music. Listening to artists like Chicane, BT and Paul Van Dyk was a total breath of fresh air after years of listening to and playing indie guitar music.
These artists inspired me to return to music and I went out and bought a Korg Triton, a sound card and a copy of Cubase VST for my PC. I had very little idea what I was doing but I absolutely loved it. It was a real challenge to switch to working this way after being a live musician accustomed to jamming with other players. I had no experience of composing music on my own and my lack of musical training made using a sequencer very difficult. I also didn’t really understand synthesizers so struggled to get the sounds I wanted. Thankfully I later came across a Korg MS2000 in the store I bought my Triton and from this wonderfully simple and hands on synthesizer I learned in just a few weeks how synthesizers work and how to create the sounds I heard in my head. After getting the MS2000 I was totally obsessed with synths and making electronic music. From that point until now I have spent most of my spare time learning about music technology, composition and production. I have composed, recorded and produced my own songs, but they are still missing the polish and confidence of someone who has completely mastered all of these disciplines. However I feel confident that I am getting very close to achieving my dream of producing music that is in the same league as the work of the artists that inspire me.
In 2005 I added a guitar and a bass to my studio setup, and was very much surprised to find that I could still play them after such a long hiatus.
blogasys: What kind of music do you listen today and what do you like about it?
Daz: Right now I am listening to a lot of Drum’n'Bass artists like Klute and Pendulum, other electronic artists like Unkle, BT, and Hybrid, and of course Depeche Mode. All of these artists fulfill my need for edgy, melodic and intense music. They also inspire my music making. When I occasionally need to hear some guitar based music the last two Snow Patrol albums provide the perfect break from listening to electronic music. Coincidentally Snow Patrol replaced The Cure as the principle act on the Fiction record label.
blogasys: Are there any musical projects you are currently working on?
Daz: My primary focus is on perfecting the composition/production of my own pieces as an ongoing learning exercise. However I recently hooked up with a local singer/songwriter and we’re exploring the idea of collaborating. We’ve co-written a song which is very different from my usual work and it may be the beginning of a very interesting side project for me.
blogasys: What kind of equipment are you using and can you tell us, why you decided for that equipment?
Daz: I am using a PowerMac Dual G5 running Ableton Live, Apple Logic and Waves as my DAW. I moved from the PC to the Mac some time ago and have found Mac OS X a really great platform for music making. I use Ableton Live as a musical sketch pad and to capture my composition ideas. Then I export all the various MIDI and audio clips that I’ve created from Live and then import those into Logic where I do all my arrangement and mixing. I use a few software synths such as Absynth but most of my sound sources are hardware synths. I still think that hardware synths have the edge over a lot of the software synths in terms of quality and I also prefer to get hands on when creating sounds. I really enjoy creating sounds on the Access Virus or Korg Radias for example and then using all the Mac’s horsepower for sequencing and effects. I feel software effects are quite a way ahead of software instruments and the effect plug-ins in Logic and Waves provide everything I need in that department. I’ve never felt the need to buy any hardware effects. I’ve recently migrated from using my Triton, MS2000, Virus B etc. to using the Oasys, K2661, Virus TI and Radias. So I will soon be putting some of these older pieces on eBay or part exchanging them for new toys.
blogasys: What was the reason for you to purchase OASYS?
Daz: In the late 80’s I can remember going into a studio and hearing a Roland D-50 for the first time and being totally blown away. There was something about its sound that really appealed to me in a way that analog synths and FM synths of the time didn’t. I really loved that sound. At the time I did not understand enough about synths to be able to tell why the D-50 was so different from other synths I had used and why I liked it so much. Now I do understand. It was because my taste is for synths that have a balance of digital and analog characters. I don’t like synths to be too analog or too digital. I love that sweetspot between those two extremes where the D-50, the Waldorf Wave and the Access Virus all live.
Just after the Oasys was first announced I was fortunate to be living on the East Coast of the US and got an invite up to Korg USA to check out the new instrument. The experience of hearing the Oasys for the first time was like hearing that D-50 for the first time. It was very distinctly better than anything else I had heard and I loved it. The Oasys had the perfect blend of analog and digital characters to my ear. It had the tight low end, and full middle range associated with analog and the clear/airy high frequency characteristics of digital.
The HD-1 engine of the Oasys has some real nice filters and snappy envelopes like you’d find in a good VA. Combined with wave sequencing and high quality sample oscillators you have something much more sexy than your average sample playback instrument. HD-1 is very radically different to the HI engine of the Triton, which I found functional but never sexy. Sample based synthesis is commonly looked down on as a poor relation to “real” synthesis, but I think has the potential for some really interesting sound design potential if the engine is implemented well. The HD-1 and Kurzweil VAST are both examples of well implemented engines in my opinion. The HD-1 does everything you’d expect a good ROMpler to do and much more besides. I really encourage any owners to explore the synthesis capabilities of HD-1 and wave sequencing. So the HD-1 was a big part of my reason to buy the Oasys.
I also really liked the AL-1 EXi. The AL-1 has many of the desirable characteristics of analog synths with the clarity and airiness of a digital synth. I really like the flexibility of the engine and it’s ability to do things that are outside of just analog emulation. It’s really very different in character and function to the other Korg VA synth engines like those found in MOSS or MMT based products.
The implementation of the entire audio chain from the synth engines to the effects to the D/A converters and analog output stages is of very high quality. It really sounds like an 8000 dollar synth should sound.
During that visit to Korg I was also very impressed with how much easier it was to control KARMA 2.0. I really liked the idea of the first version of KARMA in the original workstation but I struggled to make the GE’s do what I wanted them to. I didn’t seem to be able to get the GE’s to evolve and adapt as much as I wanted them to as the piece I was working on progressed. KARMA 2.0 in the Oasys is a really significant improvement over KARMA 1.0 and I’ve found myself far more able to tame the GE’s and get them to follow the musical development of a piece. Stephen Kay, the Korg engineers and voicing team did a great job of making KARMA 2.0 far more accessible, dynamic and musical.
So in summary, the character and flexibility of the HD-1 and AL-1 engines, overall sound quality and KARMA 2.0 were my reasons for buying the Oasys. The promise of future updates and extensions were the icing on the cake.
blogasys: Are there any things you would like to see in OASYS in the near future?
Daz: I think anyone who knows me, knows exactly what I am about to say 
I primarily use the Oasys as a multi-timbral sound source in Combi mode. Whilst it is often convenient to just select an existing Program or GE that fits a particular need, I often find myself wanting to just create my own Program or GE, rather than hunting through a large list of items to find something that is close to what I want but needs to be tailored via Tone Adjust or the RTC/RTP parameters. I would really like the option to create my own Program for a timbre from scratch or to quickly build a GE from a musical phrase or drum loop that I have already created, or maybe by creating a GE using a simple editor.
I would also really like to see an EXi that combines the sample oscillators of the HD-1 engine with the filters and modulation arrangements of the AL-1 EXi. Ideally that would be delivered with an additional EXs.
If you had asked me this question a few months ago my answer would have been to make the Oasys more stable. Thankfully Korg really put a great deal of work into resolving the problems some users were experiencing. That was really important wish fulfilled for me.
blogasys: We did not speak about Sharp and your forum until now. What was the reason for you both to start with that forum? Are there any things that are exceeding your positive and negative expectations?
Daz: When I came back to music making after the break I spoke of earlier, I was a real music technology newbie so I was very happy to find all the communities and other support resources people had created on the Internet. I was particularly impressed with the people that had already mastered the technology and were spending a lot of time sharing their knowledge with other users. Sharp was one of those people, so when he asked for some assistance with a technical problem he was having with setting up a web site, I was keen to help him and make my own contribution to the community. Once we got chatting it was clear we thought along the same lines and it wasn’t long before we set up the first incarnation of the forum. That was a long time ago and I’m definitely not a music technology newbie anymore 
But I still remember what it was like to be a newbie and how important other peoples help was to my progress, so I do my best to share what I’ve learned with people and ensure that the forum is an attractive place for both experts and newbies to talk to each other.
What has exceeded my positive expectations is all the great people that have joined Sharp and I on the forum over the years making the place a fun and useful community. I am really thankful for all the people that join us and share their knowledge, opinions and love of music making. I am especially thankful to those people in the past that made a financial contribution. Thanks to those we don’t have any ugly advertisements on the forum and are able to provide a place for people to share their music via mp3 upload/download and a download section packed with useful resources.
We were very fortunate to have Jerry Kovarsky a product manager from Korg USA join us early on. He’s done a great job of being the link between the community and Korg. I think Jerry is viewed as a knowledgeable friend as well as an official company representative. Similarly in the Oasys area of the forum Dan Phillips from Korg R&D and Stephen Kay from Karma Lab have made a lot of effort to ensure we get the most out of our instruments.
The only negative aspect of running the forum is dealing with spammers and spambots. In the last year this has a been a big problem and has taken up a lot of my time. It’s a real shame, because the time I spend dealing with that is time I could be spending improving the forum and creating resources for our users. It’s very frustrating.
blogasys: Thank you very much, Daz !
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Here you can listen to some of Daz’ tracks
http://daz.korgforums.com/mp3/daz_feb06.mp3
http://daz.korgforums.com/mp3/one_and_only_jan2k6.mp3
http://daz.korgforums.com/mp3/Light_Bounce_Mar28_05.mp3
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Mozimoza says:
Dear Peter,
I wish all the best with your blogoasys…an excellent idea, to promote the Oasys, to listen to some beautifuls musiciens, the one able to compose, the one, able to almost master the BEAST, the one, like you, making others people on the World, appreciate a machine like the Oasys….
A special thanks for Stephen, the constructor of the Karma technology, and is wonderful gentle forum, for Daz and Sharp, for their korgforums, keep a lot of people knowing the synths, arrangers, and more more to deal with the others one, like me, the bunch able to buy, but, not very able to master new technology….I wonder, if for some, to (master) a partner, is, in deed easier ?
Now, I am wondering Peter, after all the interviews, and presumly more to come, your blog? would become like ? a new forum?
thanks for all
Februar 8th, 2007 at 14:18
blogasys says:
Dear Mozimoza,
thank you for your kind and motivating feedback!
Now I am glad that I found the switch again to accept comments :-).
This blog will for sure not become an english forum, as there are two excellent ones you already mentioned. A third one just would spread the discussions and informations.
But I am open for any idea or suggestion. If someone wants to write here - great, If one of you wants to post OASYS mp3 demo files - great. If you want to start another wishlist - great! … and so on.
If there is anything you dislike, just let me know. This place should provide different kind of informations about OASYS and its users.
peter
Februar 8th, 2007 at 14:52