Cosmo Watts is a multi-talented musician and songwriter who played an important role in the music products industry as a sound designer, synthesizer programmer and music teacher. Growing ...

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...

James Brady was front and center during the MIDI boom, working within the keyboard department at Rushworth’s Music House in Liverpool. The year was 1986 and the synthesizer was at its pea...

Greg Mathieson spoke passionately about his career in music during his NAMM Oral History interview. He brought up some very interesting points, such as his views on working on the road vs...

Peter Schwartz is a pianist, composer, and synthesist who has worked for KORG on such projects as the M1, Wavestation, Prophecy and OASYS. After a wonderful experience with his classical ...

John Maier had parents that were both singers and would often hang out at the theater where his parents would perform. He used to get in trouble for tapping his pencil during tests and wo...

David Sancious always had records playing in his home growing up and his dad would take him to jazz clubs when he was just a child to sit by the stage so he could see the piano player. As...

Titus Tost studied computer programming in the mid-1980s in East Germany. He enrolled in a newly established study program called the Studio for Electronic Sound Generation (SEKD) in Dres...

Gary Leunberger opened a music store in San Francisco during the 1980s that soon specialized in electronic keyboards and synthesizers. Being a top seller of Yamaha instruments led the com...

Akio Hiyoshi was on the engineering team at Yamaha in 1959 that designed the Electone Organ, which brought the small piano manufacturer into the electronic musical instrument market, wher...

Ken Oda was hired by Yamaha in 1967 to run their retail store in San Francisco, California.  He continued to work for the company until his retirement at which point he joined Fender Musi...

Hirokazu Kato took part in the innovative engineering team at Yamaha in Japan who utilized FM Synthesis to create an electronic musical instrument, first the TRX prototype and then the re...

Yoshi Kobayashi began working for Yamaha Corporation of America in 1958.  In the early days of his career he was tasked with supervising the import and export of the motorcycle division. ...

Tony Yarbrough’s love of music led to buying a music store in Memphis that was closing and renaming it Yarbrough Music, which soon became a hub for musicians in and around town.  He took ...

Craig Yarbrough worked alongside his brother Tony and sister Phyllis (his younger sister joined them later) in running the music store they established in Memphis to serve the working mus...

AR Rahman can be thought of as the Quincy Jones of Indian Music!  His love and passion for music began when he was exposed to electronic keyboards thanks to his father.  He was proud to b...

Ed Cornett was hired by Yamaha to head the team in charge of creating the DX7.  His story of the long hours, creative and innovative team members and the support of the company uncover th...

Mike Lang is the well-respected keyboardist who can be heard on over 2,000 movie scores and countless studio recordings over his long and successful career.  He has worked with composers ...

Mike Lang was a well-respected keyboardist who can be heard on over 2,000 movie scores and countless studio recordings over his long and successful career.  He worked with composers such ...

Avery Burdette, the product manager for Yamaha Corporation of America, began his long love of music pushing down the pedals of his mother's organ as a small child while his mother played....

Richard O’Donnell was vice president of Yamaha Corporation of America at a very historic time in the company’s growth and development, the 1970s. Richard worked on several projects includ...

Takuya Nakata is the Director and Executive Officer for Yamaha in Japan. During his NAMM Oral History interview he provided details about the development of Yamaha’s electronic musical pr...

Max Mathews was working as an engineer at the famed Bell Laboratory in 1954 when he was asked to determine if the computer Bell was designing could create music. The landmark Music 2 and ...

Karl Hirano was an electronic engineer for Yamaha in Japan during the great MIDI boom of the early 1980s. In fact, Karl was a member of the team that gathered at the 1983 NAMM Show to dis...

Dr. John Chowning is known throughout the world for his discovery of FM sound synthesis, which, when used in the context of electronic musical instruments, provided an alternative to the ...