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An Interview With Thomas Dolby Robertson
At the recent Interactive Music Xpo in New York, I caught up with pop musician and Chief Beatnik Thomas Dolby Robertson. Having come of age as a musician listening to Robertson’s seminal recordings such as The Golden Age of Wireless and The Flat Earth, I have long admired both his compositional skills and incredible control of synthesis technology. I first met him in the early 1990s while he was introducing the in-house sound department at Sega of America to his new interactive music technology, called Avery. Rather than showing us a complete API, what we saw was a Macintosh, some QuickTime movies, a Max patch, and a SampleCell card creating soundscapes from mouse clicks and mouse movements. At the time, we thought this was an interesting but inauspicious start. Today, through persistence, evangelism, timely focus on the Internet, a merger with the Igor Labs (venerable sound wizards for Macintosh gaming), and some very shrewd licensing deals, Robertson’s product, the Beatnik Audio Engine, has found a home on more than 15 million Macs and PCs. It is also used as the main audio engine for Sun’s Java and Microsoft’s WebTV. Sites such as DavidBowie.com, Sony TV, Altoids, 7UP, and Ericsson feature interactive audio content specially created for Beatnik. I had a chance to ask Robertson about interactive music on the web.
MM: What is your official title? TDR: Chief Beatnik. Chief Beatnik…What exactly
does I steer the creative aspects of what we do at Beatnik. The Creative Production Department reports to me and they basically do content. They generate music libraries and work with third-party developers and publishers who use our technology. ___________________________________________________ |
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Features
Introduction
