Born in Alaska and raised in the Pacific Northwest – back when Bellevue was still a Boeing suburb and no one had ever heard of software – a young Randy Walters traveled east to Rhode Island in 1973, and arrived at Brown University dreaming of music.
He carried with him a bulky and temperamental monophonic synthesizer, the yet-to-be venerable voice of R2-D2 – an ARP 2600. It was the first acquisition in a never-ending series of pioneering instruments, which included the massive early polyphonic Oberheim Eight-Voice in 1977, the Apple II-based Alpha Syntauri in 1980, and a parade of ever more capable keyboards, samplers, romplers and other gizmos as synthesizers went mainstream in a major way.
Fast forward to today, when the 88-note Seaboard GRAND LFE (Limited First Edition) has arrived at last, and this blog has begun to document one individual’s experiences, experiments and creative work with a remarkable new tool.
Randy would like to assure potential readers that he will never again speak of himself in the third person, having observed that it did Bob Dole not one damn bit of good.
