The man behind the Roland MC8 Micro-Composer passed away Monday, May 20, the same day as Ray Manzarek, of The Doors. For synth heads out there, Ralph Dyck may have had more influence. Via the Roland MC-8 Micro-Composer Blog where you'll find more notes on his passing:
"Readers of this blog will, of course, be very familiar with Ralph as the 'godfather' of the Roland MC8 Micro-Composer, but to the most of the music world he remained an unsung hero. Ralph’s primary background was in jazz and commercial music, and I got the sense that he never quite understood the full extent of the influence of his innovations in the realm of electronic pop music production. Suffice it to say that the Roland MC8 provided the definitive blueprint for the way that we work with modern sequencers. Initially Ralph was a bit tentative about sharing too much with a complete stranger (albeit an enthusiastic one), but I think I won him over by laboriously keying-in a piece of his called “Odd Rhythms,” which appears as a demo sequence in the MC8 owner’s manual."
You'll find a number of posts featuring Ralph Dyck here on MATRIXSYNTH.
I met Ralph when I worked for Roland in the late '70s. He was a class act.
ReplyDeleteRIP, sir.