Many reasons to sing Boston's praises
`And most of all, I'd like to thank all of the software developers who helped me win this Grammy Award."
That's not a phrase you're likely to hear this Sunday at the 46th annual Grammy Awards ceremony, when the music industry honors the best recordings of the past year.
It's too bad. If OutKast, Eminem, and Avril Lavigne gave a shout-out to the programmers who made their music possible, they'd likely be thanking Boston-area technology companies that supply many of the production and editing tools the music biz relies on.
Boston may not be an industry hot spot like Los Angeles, Nashville, or New York, but companies here have been key players in helping record companies transition from old-school analog technology to today's world of purely digital production.
And since the beginning of the PC era, Boston companies have enabled garage bands and aspiring musicians to use inexpensive computers to churn out tracks that sound every bit as good as the pros.
Part of the reason Boston is so hospitable to music tech companies is MIT's long legacy of acoustics research. But the presence of the Berklee College of Music is also important, given that school's focus on teaching students about the latest technology being deployed in recording studios. Almost all of the music tech companies around Boston have links to one or both of those institu-
tions.Still, not many people know that much of the music industry's hit-making hardware and software originates in Boston. Here are a few of the companies who deserve a shout-out at the Grammys this Sunday.
Cakewalk, founded in 1987, makes the most widely used Windows software for amateur musicians and aspiring bands, a product called Home Studio.
"We've probably got the highest concentration of Berklee graduates working under one roof," says Steve Thomas, the director of public relations at Cakewalk. Thomas is a composer and jazz guitarist whose most recent album, The Jaz-Mobi Project, was on the short list for a Grammy this year -- but didn't snag a nomination.
"Our software packages range from $39 to $700," Thomas says. "People who use our software might be the guy who walks into Guitar Center and wants to make a demo for his band, or Terry Howard, who's the producer for Ray Charles."
Howard uses Sonar, the company's high-end music production software; rap group Public Enemy is using Sonar for their next album, too.
It's not unheard of for late-afternoon jam sessions to break out at Cakewalk's Boston headquarters, where employees are encouraged to bring their instruments to work.
"Yeah, we have company jam sessions every month or two," says Greg Hendershott, Cakewalk's founder and a keyboard player. "But maybe at a company that makes accounting software, at the end of the day they hang out and do some double-entry bookkeeping together."
Natick-based iZotope is a five-person spinoff from Cakewalk founded by two MIT alums, Mark Ethier and Jeremy Todd. Both are trained in classical piano.
But the software they sell isn't used by the likes of Emmanuel Ax. It's designed to make sterile digital music sound grungy and authentic -- more like analog music. The company's first product, released in 2001, was called Vinyl.
"You apply it to music and it makes it sound like a record," Ethier explains. Among the variables the user can control: how worn out the record is, the amount of dust on the record, the number of scratches, and even the year the record player was made.
Another iZotope plug-in, called Trash, can simulate the sound of vintage, vacuum-tube based guitar amplifiers. (Sometimes, the company buys old amps on eBay for R&D purposes, to get the sound exactly right.) Douglas Spotted Eagle, a Native American musician who won a Grammy in 2001, relies on iZotope's plug-ins for certain projects.
Frank Basile, the founder of SmartLoops in Waltham, is another ex-Cakewalk employee. Basile is a Berklee-trained drummer who sells digitally-recorded drum loops -- percussion patterns that other musicians can easily insert into their compositions. (The original name of the company was more descriptive: Drag & Drop Drummer.)
Late last year, Basile launched LiveStudioDrums.com, a site that allows visitors to request custom-recorded drum tracks for $69. Users send Basile an MP3 of their composition, and he records the drum part at his studio.
"I've done close to 100 projects," Basile says. "A lot of them have been for customers from Australia, in these remote areas. I guess it's hard for them to find a drummer or get to a recording studio."
Basile's customers fill out an online form, which specifies things like tempo, time signature, and even what kind of snare drum they'd like him to use.
Digidesign isn't actually headquartered here, but it's owned by Avid Technology, the publicly traded Tewksbury company. Digidesign makes a system called the Pro Tools Digital Audio Workstation that's considered the gold standard in music production. Avid acquired California-based Digidesign in 1995, and now Avid itself is run by several executives -- including the chief executive and chief technology officer -- who originally came from Digidesign.
Digi, as the company is known in the industry, won a technical Grammy in 2001, and later this month will receive an Oscar for scientific and technical achievement. (The Pro Tools system is often used for movie soundtracks.)
Among this year's Grammy nominees who rely on Pro Tools are Beyonce, Missy Elliott, Justin Timberlake, and Evanescence. Producer Tony Maserati, who was involved with three of this year's Grammy nominees, is not only a Pro Tools user -- but he's also a Berklee alum. Randy Newman, who's nominated in the category of Best Pop Instrumental Performance for the soundtrack to the movie "Seabiscuit," relied on Pro Tools, too.
Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny is recording a new album using the Digital Performer platform from Cambridge-based MOTU. MOTU occupies the middle ground, price-wise, between Cakewalk and Digidesign; a full digital recording and editing system from MOTU costs $5,000 to $10,000.
The soundtracks for "The Matrix" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogies were composed using Digital Performer, and musicians like Jimmy Buffet, Aerosmith, and Sarah McLachlan, a 2004 Grammy nominee, use MOTU gear for composing and performing.
Chris Cox, a producer of Cher's Grammy-nominated single "Love One Another," also relies on a MOTU system. Founded in 1980 by a group of MIT alums, MOTU produced some of the first music software for the Macintosh.
Cambridge-based Harmonix, a spinoff from the MIT Media Lab, makes music-based video games. Time Magazine named Karaoke Revolution, a game for the PlayStation2 system, as its favorite videogame of 2003. Karaoke Revolution rates your singing performance on 34 different pop songs, in the privacy of your own home. (A large bottle of sake is recommended for players, but not included.)
The company is working on two sequels for Karaoke Revolution, which will be out later this year. Greg LoPiccolo, the vice president of product development at Harmonix, was formerly the bassist for the Boston alt-rock band Tribe, which broke up in 1994 after recording two albums for Warner Bros.
Another Media Lab spinoff, Arlington-based Wave Arts, makes digital delay and reverb plug-ins for music production software that runs on the Mac and PC platforms. Wave Arts founder Bill Gardner previously worked at Kurzweil Music Systems on the Kurzweil K250 synthesizer, the first synthesizer capable of replicating the sound of orchestral instruments.
DMOD, a Burlington start-up backed by Greylock, Intel, and Pilot House Ventures, has spent much of the last year restructuring and cutting back to just 10 employees. Founder Ty Rauber is out, and former Avid executive Mark Overington is now chief executive.
The company says that all five major record labels are now using DMOD's Workspace software to securely send digital music files from the recording studio to the mixing facility to the CD manufacturing plant. (Labels typically ship unfinished albums around on CDs, which can sometimes fall into the wrong hands and be posted on the Internet before the official release date.)
Chief operating officer Jeff Macklin says that of this year's Grammy nominees, "more than one" relied on DMOD during production and manufacturing. His record label customers won't allow him to be more specifc.
Which probably means they won't be mentioning DMOD at Sunday's Grammy ceremony.
Scott Kirsner is a contributing editor at Fast Company. He can be reached at skirsner@verizon.net.
