Mike Smith, the jazz saxophonist who toured with Maynard Ferguson, Buddy Rich, and Frank Sinatra, is also closely associated with the music products industry. Mike plays an important role...
Roger Robindore found himself overdubbing at an early age. While he was born in Pennsylvania, Roger became a recording engineer in Paris for several years in the 1990s. He had some wonder...
Lucas Van Der Mee, Principal Design Engineer for Apogee Electronics, has a fascinating background in Live Sound and studio engineering. He spent ten years on the road as an audio engineer...
Greg Laney started working at Westlake Studios in 1982, right in the middle of the Michael Jackson Thriller session. It was an exciting time and Greg witnessed firsthand the producing tal...
Chris Schyvinck is the President and CEO of Shure Incorporated, the pro audio manufacturer known around the world for its innovative products including the Unidyne microphone. Chris playe...
Ray Gerlich is the long-serving production engineer at Hammond Suzuki, and began playing the organ when he was ten years old. While in high school he was given the opportunity to apprenti...
Travis Wammack is a recording artist, studio musician, and songwriter who worked closely with Rick Hall, the founder of FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Travis charted his first hi...
Don Mannino has always loved fixing things, his first job as a teenager was as a bicycle mechanic. After studying at San Diego State University as a piano performance major he became an a...
Carl Lieberman has a fascinating career as a piano technician. Not only does Carl tune and maintain the pianos for recording studios in Southern California, for over 50 years he has provi...
Delwin Fandrich, as a teenager, often spent time with his older brother Darrell, who was a piano technician. Delwin slowly developed his own skills with the trade and focused on learning ...
Christy Coobatis is a college music professor whose amazing musical journey includes playing professionally before he was a teenager, beta testing guitars for Leo Fender, and helping to c...
Chris Martirano started working for Kurzweil Music Systems in 1986. For the first few years he was on the sales side of the equation, originally the district sales manager for the northea...
Dave Amels is a huge fan of the Hammond B-3 organ, which he’s played on records and with garage rock bands including Husky Team and The Reigning Sound. In the late ’80s he co-founded Voce...
Phil Burk has had a passion for electronics since he was a kid growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He built radio circuits before he was a teen and combined that interest with his l...
Phil Rovner was having some trouble with his intonation as a saxophone player, and decided to design a new approach to attaching the reed to his mouthpiece. As an engineer, he had the kno...
George Reeder and his wife, Lynn, are the owners of Rovner Products, which produces ligatures, mouthpieces and other accessories for musical instruments. The company was established in th...
Joel Silverman, the sales and marketing guy behind several innovative pro audio products and the founder of Silverfish Audio, has had quite a musical journey! As a kid he played clarinet,...
Fumio Mieda was hired by the founder of KORG, Tsutomu Katoh, back in 1967. Mieda-san began working on a number of innovations as he hoped to improve the function of electronic organs. The...
Jason Lollar loves playing the guitar and even at an early age he had an eye for creating his own sounds. As he developed his skills and gigged with his friends, he realized some of the c...
Roger Hart has developed many friends throughout his career in the music products industry. Those friends will likely tell you the two things Roger enjoys talking about the most are music...
Toni Fishman has always been fascinated with innovative microphones. Once he began collecting and researching microphones, he discovered some very unique characteristics of the ones he li...
Josh Berger has found it very rewarding creating new products with his teammates at The Music People. As Director of Product Development and Marketing, Josh leads the efforts to identify ...
Jeremy Hill earned his electrical engineering degree and initially worked on missile guidance and radar tracking systems for the government. With a background and passion for recording eq...
Alan Vater’s grandfather, Jack, established a music store in New England and found a need to produce his own brand of drumsticks. Young Alan recalls watching his grandfather hand dip his ...
Mark Ethier is one of the founders of the innovative pro-audio company, iZotope. In fact, as of the recording of his NAMM Oral History interview in 2021, Mark was the only founding member...
Terry Hanley formed his own company, Terry Hanley Audio Systems, following the formation of Hanley Sound with his brother Bill. Terry has a keen understanding of the ever-changing technol...
Will Eggleston was always interested in how the music he heard on the radio as a kid was recorded. He was fascinated by the process and was determined to learn all he could. When he worke...
Glen Kersten and his wife were just married when they rented a small house that turned out to be owned by Frank Lohnes. Mr. Lohnes also owned a music store called Dearborn Piano & Org...
Mike Soldano says he was late to game, picking up the guitar when he was 20, but soon made up for lost time by jumping in with both feet! He studied the instrument and listened to live an...
Kieran Downes played piano as a child, but switched to bass in high school to play in a friend's band, and later discover his true musical passion when he picked up his brother’s guitar. ...
Randy Blevins studied engineering in college and soon after landed a three-year position at Audio Consulting Inc, which was an MCI dealer. Randy began installing the MCI consoles includin...
Bill Koepnick is the co-founder of Advantage Audio in Burbank, CA where he specializes in creating and recording sound effects for movies and television. Bill got interested in music at a...
