Don Muro is the featured artist in this special issue of the TIMES newsletter. Don Muro has been working with music technology for the past 35 years. Although classically trained on violin, piano and organ, he has maintained an intense interest and enthusiasm for electronic music composition, performance, and teaching. His compositions have embraced many musical styles - sacred, classical, rock and fusion. He has been the recipient of several ASCAP composition awards, and his music has been performed in settings ranging from New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral (where he presented the cathedral's first synthesizer/multimedia concert) to Disneyland. His educational music is widely used throughout the United States as well as in Europe and in Japan.

As a performer, he is recognized as a master synthesist specializing in live performance techniques for electronic keyboards. He has presented electronic music concerts, lectures, and demonstrations throughout the United States and also in Europe and Asia.

As an educator, he has published a variety of materials including THE ART OF SEQUENCING book and video as well as the SEQUENCING BASICS book (Warner Bros). He has taught the basics of music technology and sequencing to over 4,000 music educators through the Don Muro Summer Workshops, which take place every summer at colleges and universities throughout the United States. He also served as the first Chairman of Electronic Music for the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) as well as the New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA).

Don Muro is also a major spokesman for the electronic medium. For several years his column on synthesizer performance techniques appeared in Keyboard Magazine. In addition, he has written over eighty articles about music and technology for publications such as International Musician, Keyboard, The Instrumentalist, and the Music Educators Journal. He is currently a member of the IAJE (International Association of Jazz Educators) Resource Team, the advisory board of TI:ME and the NYSSMA Technology Committee. Visit Don Muro's website at http://donmuro.com

 sl - What is your musical background?

dm - My father realized I had perfect pitch, so he arranged violin and piano lessons for me when I was 5. I studied both instruments through high school. In my early teens I started playing guitar in a rock band, and when I asked my father for a portable organ, he bought a Hammond organ with a 28 note pedal board. I became fascinated with the pedalboard and began studying classical organ.
At that time I also began experimenting with our Sony tape recorder, playing tapes backwards, at different speeds, creating loops, and using an overdub feature called "sound-on-sound". At 16 I was creating "one-man band" tapes by playing the guitar, keyboard, bass and drum parts myself. I became very interested in recording techniques and spent countless hours experimenting with my equipment and analyzing rock, jazz and classical recordings.

Throughout this period I was studying organ. My teacher was the organist and choirmaster at the Episcopal cathedral on Long Island, and I had the opportunity to direct the men and boys choir and to play services on a large four manual instrument. I also had an interest in composition. I composed a "Father's Day Sonata" when I was 11. I began formal studies at 16 and studied privately for several years.

I received my undergraduate degree in music education from Hofstra University. While I was Hofstra, I developed an interest in early music and played harpsichord in the collegium musicum. I also received a master's degree in composition from Queens College.

dm - There were four important influences on my development as a synthesist. As a teenager I was familiar with some of the Luening and Ussachevsky tape pieces, but the sound that totally captivated me was Wendy Carlos' "Switched-On-Bach". This was the first time I had heard tonal electronic music, and I was floored by the sound of the Moog synthesizer.

The second major influence on my synthesizer work was "Snowflakes Are Dancing", Isao Tomita's electronic realizations of Debussy's piano music. I heard the original quad masters at RCA and was deeply impressed with both the synthesizer textures and the ambient effects.

Another influence was the lead synthesizer work of Jan Hammer. Hammer was one of the first keyboardists to incorporate sophisticated pitch bending techniques into his synthesizer solos. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Hammer approached the synthesizer as a unique instrument and created an identifiable sound.

My fourth influence was not a synthesist. Virgil Fox was one of the greatest organists of the twentieth century, and I had the opportunity to study with him in master classes held over two summers. I was only 18, but I learned a great deal about keyboard expression and tonal coloration. There are many similarities between the pipe organ and the synthesizer, and my organ background has been the foundation of my approach to playing synthesizers.

sl - Describe your earliest electronic musical instruments and how you learned to use them.

dm - I learned the basics of synthesis on a modular Moog synthesizer. I had met Bob Moog in New York around 1970, and I was serious devotee. Moog Music loaned me a Mini-Moog synthesizer for the premier of a multi-media composition I wrote in 1972. The first synthesizer I owned was a "blue-meanie" ­ a prototype ARP 2600. In those days, most synthesizer owner manuals were glorified schematics, so I learned a great deal by trial and error. I also learned how to get around the instrument very quickly. This was important for playing live, especially in the days before programmable synthesizers. I used the 2600 on my first published piece for choir, organ, and tape. "O Be Joyful in the Lord' was published by H. W. Gray in 1973 and was premiered at the Riverside Church in Manhattan. I subsequently established an artist relationship with ARP and used an Odyssey synthesizer to create the tape parts for my first two published stage band pieces. These pieces were published in 1975 by Hal Leonard and were among the first commercial pieces to include notated synthesizer scores. I used ARP instruments on my first album, "It's Time", which I produced in 1977.

I should also mention that my first AGO synthesizer pedalboard was custom built by ARP in 1975. It was biphonic and used the controller module from the 2600 keyboard. The synthesizer pedal board opened up tremendous possibilities for me in realtime performance techniques.

My first programmable polyphonic synthesizer was an 8 voice Oberheim OB-X which was customized by Jim Cooper, Oberheim's chief engineer at the time. I had used the Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, but the knobs on the Prophet were absolute, making it difficult to edit or tweak sounds in live performance. The OB-X knobs were incremental, which made it much easier to edit sounds in real time. I used the OBX extensively on my second album in 1980.>

My studio grew with my instruments. I purchased all kinds of signal processors - noise gates, tape echo units (I owned three Roland Space Echos), distortion units, phase shifters, reverberation units, compressors, etc. My tape recorders went from stereo to 4 track, 8 track and then 16 track recording capabilities.

sl - How did you become interested in using computers for creating music?

dm - I was fortunate to study computer music with Hubert Howe, a pioneer in the field. Howe helped to establish computer music facilities at Princeton, and in 1966 wrote MUSIC4BF, a sound synthesis program for the IBM System/360 and Sigma-7 computers. Program input was created by typing data onto eighty-column punched cards. By today's standards it was unbelievably tedious, but in the early 1970s it was very exciting to learn about CPUs, sampling rates, quantizing, and A/D ­ D/A conversion, and to create music on the same computer that processed your grades

The first computer I owned was an Atari 800. I later used a Commodore 64, Apple II and IIe, and then an IBM computer with a "huge" 10 Meg drive.

sl - Describe a unique way you use computers for music.

dm - I'm afraid I don't have a unique way to use computers in music. I, as many other musicians, have made computers the basic tools for capturing and expressing my creativity. I am most impressed with the creative freedom of music recorded into computers. Almost any aspect of any acoustic or electronic sound can be edited. Today's students take this for granted, but I grew up in the multi-track analog tape recording environment when this type of sound control was impossible.

sl - How did you begin your teaching career?

dm - I presented my first teacher workshop in 1974. My first summer workshop was in 1975 at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. It was a three-day workshop with about 40 teachers, 1 ARP Odyssey synthesizer, and a room without air conditioning! Although I have been fortunate in traveling extensively over the years, I have also been on the faculties of Adelphi University, Molloy College, Teachers College of Columbia University, and currently, the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University.

sl - How has technology changed the face of music education?

dm - Technology has made the study of music more hands-on and active than ever before, especially for non-performing students at the middle school and high school levels. I think of music technology labs as biology labs. Instead of just passively listening to the teacher talk about music, students can now dissect music in a way that was never before possible. Students with no performance skills can learn a great deal about music composition and arranging through hands-on activities. To me, the synthesizer/computer combination is the most powerful classroom "instrument" that has ever been available for music education.

sl - In your opinion, what are the most important things today's music educators need to know about using music technology for themselves and with their students?

dm - I believe that music educators should concentrate on only one thing ­ music. One of the great dangers of music technology is the preoccupation with the technology instead of the music. Of course, there is a certain amount of technical information that must be learned, but the bottom line should be music. I can't tell you how many times I have heard teachers and students talk endlessly about the technology ­ computer specs, software used, instruments used, etc. ­ but when the music is finally heard, it's second rate. It's a big problem. Over the years, I have been constantly tempted by the alluring nature of new technology, but I have had to say that if it doesn't make me a better composer, performer, or listener, I'm not interested. When teaching, I've constantly had to remind myself that the technology is only the means to an end.

sl - If you could change one thing about the way technology is used for music what would it be?

dm - I would put more emphasis on musicianship. Electronic instruments are capable of producing beautiful musical sounds, but so few of these sounds are heard in the classroom. Too often I hear loop based "songs" with no change of key, tempo, or volume level. In much of the electronic music I hear, the two musical qualities usually missing are sensitivity and development.

sl - Do you think the Internet is a useful tool for music education?

dm - The Internet is a mixed blessing. It's a tremendous resource for communication, research, and technical information about product updates and compatibility issues. Distance learning is currently one of the hot topics, and many institutions, seeing the profitability of this application, are proclaiming it as the future of education. I am not yet convinced, however. The classroom environment, even in a music technology lab, is unique. Each group of students is different. Each class has a unique personality, and the questions and activities resulting from group discussion can be terrific. I don't yet see how a group of people, sitting alone in front of their computers at home, can generate a similar chemistry, even when full bandwidth video and multi-channel audio become the norm. It will be interesting to see the impact of this technology in the next ten years.

sl - What is the future for the music educator?

dm - Much has already been written and said about the future for the music educator. Undoubtedly, the tools of technology will become more powerful. Educators will need to learn several generations of new technology during their teaching careers. This is where TI:ME can provide a tremendous service. But the greatest challenge for all of us, however, will be to aim high and to keep the music in music technology.