Larry Fast's Synergy Studio

New Jersey - 1978

Larry's home studio setup in his basement around 1978 while working on (or shortly after) the Games album.

I spent a week with him after the AES NY show, and we ripped into that new Prophet of his, and added 5 CV and gate input jacks on the rear so he could feed each voice with individual sequencer inputs. Mmmm ... Fun! The work I did with him then, plus my ongoing help with his mailing list support, is what earned me my album credit on his Games album!

During this trip, he also took me over to Bell Labs, where he had been working on the Hal Alles digital synthesizer, creating the "modeled" violin voices he used on the Games album. While at Bell Labs, I got to meet Max Mathews and Don Slepian. Don has remained a friend to this day, and was going to be one of the first artists on Polyphony Records in 1980, which never quite got off the ground. Fortunately, Larry picked him up for his Audion label a few years later.

A simple but powerful array of gear - Moog 15, 360 Systems Frequency Shifter, 2 Oberheim Mini-Sequencers and SEM, Mini-Moog, not sure about the 2 white boxes or switch matrix to the right (might be DIY stuff), Oberheim Digital Sequencer (with LED "2" showing), Paia Phlanger and Stringz n Thingz, and original Rev 1 Prophet 5. (I think. Going from faded memory here. ;-) )

At the other end of the room he had electronics workbenches set up, and frequently had projects and experiments running there.