“No one wanted to hire me as their protegé, but people did call me to get more drum samples. Instead of just saying, ‘Hey, hire me,’ it’s, ‘I’m giving you something to show my value’… and the plan backfired. I would sneak into these music industry parties, and I would hand out this drum sample CD to a bunch of famous producers and mixers in the hopes that they would hire me as their protegé - that they would see this as a motivated and hardworking thing for someone to do. “So anyway, I had this drum sample CD and I used it as a business card. When I was producing a song, I would just replace all the drums with Nevermind-style sampled drums, which would drive people nuts - I thought I was doing them a favour, but I really wasn’t. When I was producing a song, I would just replace all the drums with Nevermind-style sampled drums, which would drive people nuts - I thought I was doing them a favour, but I really wasn’t. It was out of necessity… and also because I wanted a drum sound like Nirvana’s Nevermind. “At the time, I had a really crappy drum recording room in Boston in this warehouse, so I started making drum samples in an attempt to try to improve the sound of my drums. And so my plan was to go to Los Angeles and become a protegé to a famous producer or mixer.
Performing wasn’t as much of a passion as being behind the scenes. “When I started my own little studio back in Boston, I realised this was my path. But beyond that, in Boston in the late ‘90s, early ‘00s, I started making records recording, interning in studios, assisting in studios. “If you want to go way back, I started playing guitar because I thought it would help me get chicks. Was that your first involvement in the MI industry? You might be into touch displays and plugin emulations right now, but you started in a completely different space with Steven Slate Drums. It’s 43 inches, and it costs $3,000.” The Slate story It was a very expensive device, but here were are now, seven years later, and now it’s a 1.5-inch thin projective capacitive touchscreen panel. “So when we first came out with the Raven in 2012 it was a $16,500 device, a 46-inch infrared screen, and a commercial display. How has the Raven line changed over the years? In 2019, touchscreens are a completely accepted way to get things done.
So we’re the only thing standing between the MTZ and the world right now… “We have a big release today actually, we’re releasing the MTZ, the newest large-format Raven console, right after I’m done talking to you.”