Miles with some of the equipment in his home studio — including, unsurprisingly, a large number of synths! Among the instruments in the racks behind him can be seen his Waldorf Pulse, Ensoniq ASR10, Korg TR‑Rack, Ensoniq MR‑Rack, and (centre) Waldorf Microwave, Kurzweil Orchestral Expander and Emu Vintage Keys.
This multi‑talented musician has top session and production credits, solo albums, award‑winning film music and acclaimed synth preset programming to his name — yet that name is still relatively unfamiliar. Paul Tingen does his bit to spread the word...
Jason Miles isn't exactly a household name — but he's worked with more than a few people who are. For an intense period which lasted from the mid '80s to the mid '90s he was the number one on‑call programmer and keyboard player for A‑list artists such as Whitney Houston, Chaka Khan, Diana Ross, Kiss, Aretha Franklin and Miles Davis. He created the vast majority of the synth sounds on Davis's classic Tutu (1986), a synth‑based '80s album that still sounds contemporary and stands as a testimony to Jason Miles' unusual gift for synth programming. Miles has even contributed to recordings by 'King of Pop' Michael Jackson, being responsible for the weird sequenced section in 'They Don't Really Care About Us' from the History album
News of Miles' talents has spread beyond the confines of top studios to a number of notable synth manufacturers. Someone had the bright idea of asking him to lend his programming magic to their instruments, and the result has been a string of commissions by big names in synthesis. He recently created a CD‑ROM for the Kurzweil K25000 (Synthscapes), and also programmed over 200 presets for Generalmusic's flagship Equinox synth (reviewed in SOS's May 1999 issue). While you're reading this feature he's likely to be working on some new sounds for Korg's Z1.
However exceptional his programming gifts, for Jason Miles they are only a sideline. His main focus over the last few years has been writing, arranging and producing, and in this field he's had remarkable success, starting in the early '90s with writing music for exercise videos by Claudia Schiffer and Jane Fonda. His music for The Snow Queen, a Russian‑American animated collaboration (narrated by Sigourney Weaver) went on to win a Cine Golden Eagle Award for best music in a non‑theatrical release movie. In 1995 he produced and co‑wrote People: A Musical Celebration of Diversity, which was released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. The album featured artists such as Vanessa Williams, Chaka Khan and Al Jarreau, received an Emmy Award nomination, and sparked two hit singles, including 'Children Of The World' by The Sound Of Blackness. In 1997 Miles and his wife Kathy Byalick released Visionary Path, a New Age CD with narration by Roberta Flack, Nona Hendryx and the actor F Murray Abraham. Miles also found time to release two solo albums during the '90s: World Tour (1994) and Mr X (1996). The latter was fronted by an all‑star line‑up including Michael Brecker, Herbie Mann, Marcus Miller, Steve Ferrone and Grover Washington.
Mr X
The title of Miles's last solo album is an ironic reference to his time as one of the many faceless behind‑the‑scenes people without whom many records would never see the light of day. Nevertheless, Miles is in such demand that he's becoming more of a well‑known name — readers of the US‑based Keyboard magazine have nominated him keyboard player of the year no fewer than five times. On the cover of his Mr X album the face of the 40‑something keyboard player peeps out from around a corner, still hiding behind a degree of anonymity, but in the flesh Jason Miles is outspoken and not afraid to be highly visible.
Miles lives with his wife in an elegant house in up‑state New York countryside. His studio, which he calls 'Hall of Fame', occupies a huge room on the ground floor. Perhaps 'Hall of Keyboards' would be a better name — there are keyboards and rackmounted sound sources everywhere. The aforementioned Equinox, Z1 and K2500 keep company with a Korg Wavestation and TR‑Rack, Roland JD8000, JD990 and MKS20, Emu Emulators and a Vintage Keys module, Ensoniq ASR10, TS10 and TS12, Waldorf Pulse and Microwave, Yamaha TX802, Kurzweil K2000, racked Minimoog, and many, many more. The desk is a Soundcraft 32:8, complemented by monitors from Event, 20‑bit Alesis ADAT digital recorders, and an Ensoniq PARIS computer recording system — plus an Akai MPC3000 workstation.
Seeds
Miles recounts how the first seeds for his impressive Hall of Keyboards were sown by none other than Bob Moog, when he came to visit Indiana State University in the early '70s, where the young Miles was studying English. The student was totally amazed by the sound of Moog's synthesizer, and dived headlong into the world of electronic music. Miles: "I decided to come back to New York and be a professional musician. But I quickly noticed that jazz was still mainly an acoustic discipline and in some ways that alienated me from people. At the time it was still very unusual for jazz musicians to be into electric keyboards, even though Joe Zawinul and Herbie Hancock were already playing them. But I wanted to play electric keyboards and be a synthesist, so I hung in there, and gradually people got hip to the fact that I made synthesizers sound really interesting and musical. People started to encourage me and hire me, I gradually did more and more sessions, played in different bands, and did my first record as a leader in 1979. It was called Cosmopolitan, and sadly was never released, even though I still think it's cutting edge. Marcus Miller and Michael Brecker played on it. I got myself a DX7, became very good at programming that, and in the early '80s I hooked up with Michael Brecker again. We started messing around with all sorts of different technology and he began recommending me to people. The next thing I know, I get a call from Marcus Miller to do a project with him. This was in 1984, and we worked together for 10 years. It was my big break — it elevated me into working with the A‑list of artists and producers."
I really believe in technology and the power of synthesis. But the fact that people don't take this so seriously any more is what's really screwing up the music scene.
And so the boy from Brooklyn, New York, who'd been fascinated by all sorts of different music, from Miles Davis to Jimi Hendrix, suddenly found himself working at he heart of the American music industry with the likes of Miller, Tommy LiPuma and Russ Titelman. Even though deep down he wanted to make his own records, he stuck with it for the ride. Working with his childhood idol Miles Davis obviously helped, and Miles eventually developed a close relationship with Davis. It was Jason's work on Tutu, bending a PPG Wave 2.3, Emulator 2, Oberheim Matrix 12, Yamaha TX rack, DX7, Prophet 5 and Linn 9000 drum machine to his own ends, that gave him a reputation as one of the best synth programmers around. The sounds on Tutu have often been described as 'organic', with a silken, breathy quality that's far removed from the glossy, plastic feel of many '80s records. Miles elaborates: "Organic means that something fits in the track in the right way. It does not necessarily mean a natural sound. Organic could mean a very electric or synthetic sound, but if it's right for the song and the arrangement, it will sound organic. What you call the breathiness has to do with the kind of synthesizers that were around at the time. It was a combination of them, my approach to programming and the many samples I was collecting. Creating depth is a matter of layering the right sounds together. But you have to know your synthesizers, and be willing to discover how they work. People often use expansion cards and presets and want instant gratification. But I work hard at my sounds and tailor them exactly for the song."
That last phrase reveals some of the professional pride Jason Miles takes in programming synth sounds. It may seem a rather specialist and obscure occupation, but Miles asserts that there's more depth, creativity and job satisfaction involved than many think: "Miles Davis always told me that creating your own sound is the most important thing in music. I believe that it's one of the reasons why he was so attracted to what I was doing, because my synth stuff sounded different to anybody else's. It has to do with your ability to go in and create soundscapes that are uniquely yours. I am always looking for people to work with on this angle, because I really believe in technology and the power of synthesis. But the fact that people don't take this so seriously any more is what's really screwing up the music scene. I did a lecture called 'Synthesizers In The Next Millennium' at Berkeley Music College last year, and it turned out that so few people actually program their synthesizers it's ridiculous. They prefer synths with presets, and everybody uses the same sounds on records, which is why many of them sound like shit. It's miserable. Of course, there was a time when synth manufacturers started taking buttons off their machines, and it became much more complex to program a synth. To program an FM synth you almost needed a degree in mathematics. And who wants mathematics in music? But today that excuse has become bullshit, because more and more synths have lots of knobs on them. So it is very possible to find sounds that will give your music character, and that's what people should be doing."
Fantasy Sounds
This tirade against presets and peoples' unwillingness to program their synths might make you wonder why Jason Miles is prepared to provide more of those dreaded presets for synth buyers, and thus more excuses not to get creative. His response is that he wants to give people better presets which they can use as a starting point for creating their own sounds, although he also asserts that "really what they should be doing is listening to my presets, hearing what can be done with their synthesizer, and then creating their own sounds."
When reviewer Paul Nagle reviewed the Equinox in the May issue of SOS, he mentioned one of Miles's sounds, 'JMExcelent', as a favourite. Jason Miles provides a look under the Equinox bonnet: "I think the Equinox is a fantastic machine. Generalmusic make some great stuff, like the Pro Piano 2, which is very cool, and which I use a lot. It has a great Rhodes — that sounds even better with the phaser on it — and it also has excellent organ and piano sounds. The Equinox works around sample‑based ROM, with a very high‑definition effects processor. What's cool is that you can press a drawbar and turn the instrument into an organ. It has a beat box too. I programmed a couple of hundred sounds for the machine, half of which I tagged with my initials. The first set of sounds I did was based on waveforms that were already in there, and I didn't feel the stuff was that great. Sometimes you really need the basic waveforms to have weight and balls. If they don't have that, you're not going to get the bottom end, and you're not going to be able to tweak the filters in the right way. I really like to work hard on my bass sounds. So I sampled a number of sounds from my Prophet 5 and my Minimoog, converted those into waveforms in the Equinox and then sent them back on floppy disks. The second batch of sounds I programmed were based on these raw waveforms, and they're the ones I marked with my initials.
"Generalmusic gave me a free hand. I told them that, rather than asking me to create certain types of sounds, like brass or pad sounds, the way to get the best out of me is to let me do the creative stuff. So I basically made fantasy sounds. I still find that synth sounds are much better when they don't try to emulate real instruments. I haven't heard any synth pianos that I like, apart from the one in the Pro 2. It's better to go for a fantasy. I found raw waveforms that I liked and started combining them, hearing sounds in my head. Then I worked on the waveforms themselves, changing the envelopes and using different filters.
"The Equinox sounds are very different to the Korg Z1 sounds. They don't emulate real‑life sounds as much. I'm doing 64 sounds for the Z1, adding different waveform templates together, tweaking the sub‑bass and using different modulation routes, relating the sounds to velocity, and so on. It's a very interesting instrument, and you can do some wonderful things with the arpeggiator."
World Class
One reason why Miles has become more involved in synth programming during the last few years is that he has ceased to enjoy session work, daunted by the time commitment it requires (programming for an album can take three months) and the necessity to compromise his own creative ideas in favour of the big picture. Since the mid '90s he's gradually been scaling down this side of his career, instead focusing more on production and his own music (including the aforementioned solo albums), and taking on some occasional synth programming. The last couple of years it's been a bit quieter around Jason Miles — because, he says, "I hit some bumps in the road", including the death of a close creative partner and dealings with a record company that led nowhere.
Miles needed time to put his creative life back in order, but during the last six months he's been firmly back in the saddle — undertaking synth programming and working on his next solo album, Celebrating The Music Of Weather Report, which is due out early next year on Telarc. Miles has re‑arranged about a dozen Weather Report classics for the album, which showcases his own synth and rhythm programming work, as well as his keyboard playing, and features an all‑star cast including Steve Gadd, David Sanborn, Omar Hakim, Michael and Randy Brecker, Vinnie Colaiuta and Marcus Miller. The CD was recorded during the first half of this year, and it put Miles's studio, as well as his new PARIS hard disk recording system, through their paces. He explains some of the ins and outs:
"The first thing I did was write the arrangements at home, using my trusted Akai MPC3000 as my sequencer. I'm able to work very quickly on the MPC3000. I have [Mark Of The Unicorn's] Performer and I know the [Opcode] Vision software is really nice, but I still prefer the MPC3000. It doesn't load my synth sounds for me, but that's no big deal! Things like that are bells and whistles that make life easier, but the bottom line is: how does it feel? I will sacrifice all the bells and whistles if a sequencer feels great, and the MPC3000 still feels the best. The timing and the quantisation are great. It's not going through a little cable into a box to a MIDI interface and then back into the computer. When I see MIDI cables coming out of the MPC3000 it looks so direct it must affect the timing. Moreover, I don't believe in systems that depend on traditional computer power. I believe in systems like PARIS, or Pro Tools, or the MPC3000, that all have their own hardware boxes. Systems that use standard computers are too unstable and they crash all the time. And how many people do you know who dedicate their computer just to their music? If they do they're light‑years ahead of the game. I don't think it's a good idea to be doing music on a computer that has an Internet connection, bank books and a word processor.
Miles Davis always told me that creating your own sound is the most important thing in music.
"After I'd worked out the arrangements in the MPC3000, I loaded everything into PARIS. All synchronisation was done with a [MOTU] MIDI TimePiece. I'm actually waiting for the SMPTE card to be released for the PARIS, because that will make it easier to line up the MPC3000 with the PARIS. It will also make the PARIS much more legitimate for people in film and post‑production.
"I then set out to replace certain parts with live musicians, and made submixes to 20‑bit ADAT for this purpose, because when I recorded material at other studios for the album I'd put things on the ADAT and load that back into PARIS when I came home. When people came to record at my studio I'd record either to ADAT or directly into PARIS. I like to record straight into PARIS, but if I was recording a live player I preferred to have it safely on the ADAT, and then transfer that to PARIS. I don't care what hard disk system I have, however much I trust it, or however many backups I have, at the end of the day I want to see things on a piece of tape. So I back up all my PARIS stuff to ADAT. Some people are concerned about going from PARIS's 24‑bit to ADAT's 20‑bit, but if Armageddon happens I'll still have all my music. It won't be stuck in cyberspace somewhere. Of course, analogue is still the most reliable form of recording, and it has a big, thick sound, whereas digital sounds thin and has drop‑outs. But in the end it's about the driver, not about the gear. PARIS is extremely stable, and is one of the best sounding hard‑disk systems on the market at the moment. It has great A‑D and D‑A converters and there's an analogue warmth to the sound. I mixed the Weather Report album straight from PARIS to DAT, and the mastering guy was blown away. It sounds world‑class.
"I have a 32‑channel PARIS system with two 9Gb Cheetah drives, a SCSI accelerator card, and two Control 16 interfaces. The system is excellent, and it has great DSP built in. To me, Pro Tools doesn't sound as good as PARIS, but it has a more advanced operating system. If Ensoniq get their shit together and deliver the things they say they're going to deliver, like AES‑EBU and SMPTE facilities, the PARIS system will be amazing. Working with it on the Weather Report album was really great. It helped me take the Weather Report album to another level. It's very contemporary and my best work yet."
With a bit of luck the album will also take Jason Miles to another level: from Mr X to Mr Miles.
Creating For Kurzweil
For the new Kurzweil Synthscapes K2500 CD‑ROM, Miles explains that he layered all his favourite synths: "It's based on layered samples of my synth sounds, on which Kurzweil would then do VAST [Variable Architecture Synthesis Technology] programming. The project was a collaboration between me and Kurzweil. I created the sounds in my synths, and the layers would sometimes consist of just one sound, sometimes as many as six or seven. I may find a sound that I like but I want a little bit more attack on it, so I'll try another synth that gives me a really hard, metallic sound. Then I may want some more sustain and warmth after the attack, and I'll find another synth that gives me that. Then I may want a little swirl or sound movement to happen in the middle, and that may be given by yet another synth.
"Some of the sound sources I used were the Emu Vintage Keys, the Korg Wavestation, and the Roland JD990. I also used the Roland JP8000, which I like a lot for analogue modelling. Apart from the Minimoog and — once in a blue moon — the Prophet 5, I don't go back a lot to old analogue synths these days. Of course, I've witnessed the history of synthesizers since the early '70s at close quarters, but I don't go backwards, I go forwards. I like to have velocity sensitivity, so that you can create filter velocity, and you can't do that with the old stuff. You only get one sound, and that's it.
"I like the Waldorf stuff a lot; it has really cool sounds. I also use a lot of Ensoniq, such as the ASR10 samplers, the TS12 and the TS10. Their MR rack is really fabulous. Roland's JP stuff is great, but their JV1080 is a generic synth for the masses. The Emulator IV and IIIXS are both very important to me. I use them for loops, especially percussion loops. I think sample CDs can be great for that, because they can spur you on to new creative ideas. But I always look for interesting, high‑quality sample CDs, not your run‑of‑the‑mill crap. I like the Rafael Padilla Percussion Slam, Liquid Grooves, Latin Groove Factory and Rhythm Of Life. I actually have two sample CDs out myself: Psychic Horns, and a drum library I did with Steve Gadd, Steve Gadd Drum Scores."