Talk:Alesis

Untitled

If anyone has any information on various products please add it. It would help those looking through just at a glance.--86.43.203.24 (talk) 01:50, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

The product list is going to get extremely long. I'd like to suggest that it be edited to include the most notable product releases. Still missing some PA products, MasterLink (VERY important), HD24 (also important). Might want to later also add some reference to the affiliation with the ION brand. Synthfiend (talk) 02:29, 26 August 2010 (UTC)synthfiend

Details of interview with Keith Barr (Home & Studio Recording Magazine)

The Sept 1986 issue of the UK magazine Home & Studio Recording opens the interview with this statement:

"It had been a long wait, and it had very nearly ended in failure, but at last he agreed to come, and he was talking."

The interview was conducted by Paul White with Keith Barr who was 36 years old at the time. Alesis only had three items in production at the time of the interview:

White - "Alesis had made its reputation on very few products so far; there was the XT, the XTC and more recently the Midiverb"

Barr - "That's about it so far"

On Keith Barr's musical tastes:

White - "But what's your musical background? Presumably you must have some musical involvement to be able to judge the artistic merit of your product?

Barr - "Well, we all admire music. I'm 36 years old, so I grew up listening to the Beatles and playing guitar. I'm not a performing musician. I don't have that sort of courage. I drive the people at the plant crazy by playing the same records over and over again in the lab. I get locked onto one album and play it non-stop for weeks. They get sick of it, but I don't. I guess they think I'm a moron sometimes."

On Keith Barr's approach to modelling the Midiverb:

White - "Did you model the sound treatments on things you'd heard on record or did you just go ahead and produce something that you liked?

Barr - "I'm not a crazed 'Rock 'n' Roller'. In fact I'm quite conservative in many respects but I really got hooked by the sounds on Billy Idol albums. To my mind, it's wonderful music: beautifully produced and impeccably performed. As to the reverb sounds, I'm guessing that they used a Lexicon 224XL. I really enjoyed the sense of bass energy rumbling off into the distance and I built that into several of the algorithms. The gated sounds I modelled on Phil Collins. He's a master. I guess it's an AMS and that's been a very popular sound. I listened to a lot of his work before designing the sounds and I really appreciated the smoothness and the lack of ring.

"I developed the reverse algorithm myself and it looks as though I've taken a different direction to everyone else in that field."