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The digital delights of Winter
Inside an unassuming building the private sector. Music had always interested
in west Winter Park, Joseph Rivers prepares to him, so he took jobs as a DJ at clubs and private
demonstrate the frequency response charac- parties. This interest eventually became a full-
teristics of his main mixing room. In this special- time job as he accepted a DJ position at a
ly configured chamber there are bass “cannons” Dallas radio station. But radio was not where
built into the walls, and finely attenuated moni- his passion lay, so Rivers decided to pursue an
tors power up silently, waiting patiently for the education in recording at Orlando’s Full Sail
signal which they must faithfully reproduce. Real World Education in 1990. By 1991, he had
Rivers looks over with a grin, and asks, “You like graduated, and began building his studio in
electronic music, right?” Winter Park. Along the way, he decided to
With that, the first ringing notes of Prodigy’s devote some of the space to displaying his vin-
“Smack My Bitch Up” sneak out of the tweeters. tage synthesizer gear.
As the round, clean bass line kicks in, it’s clear Starting with his small personal collection, he
that the engineering that has gone into building added piece after piece, to the tune of almost a
this room has paid off. The air vibrates with the hundred every year. Scouring garage sales,
low frequencies (as do any loose articles of basements, attics and, more recently, eBay for
clothing) but no audible distortion is present, the remains of early synthesizers, controllers
even at the extreme volume. and drum machines, he carted away these
Rivers has used this room since 1992 to obsolete treasures for repair and preservation.
record and mix albums for many artists, from “I started doing it because of the sound; it’s a
the local electronic act Prophecy and Southern certain sound of the era,” he says. “Now it’s
rockers Molly Hatchet to Rocket 88 to former being noticed and being duplicated digitally, as
Yes/Moody Blues keyboardist Patrick Moraz. best they can, but when I first started, [the gear]
Operating under the quite appropriate moniker was all being dumped … people were saying,
of Audio Playground, the complex boasts three ‘Oh, I’ve got to get into this digital thing,’ and
studios, fully equipped with an enormous everybody was forgetting the original sound,
amount of high-end recording equipment, both and after a while, people started going, ‘You
digital and analog. It’s a facility that can clearly know, I miss that sound.’”
handle just about any kind of recording, for just Archiving is an important task for any muse-
about any kind of artist. However, the most fas- um, and Rivers takes it seriously. Each time he
cinating thing about the Audio Playground isn’t gets an addition to his collection that is func-
the studios, the vocal booth or the mixing facili- tional, or repairs a broken unit, he takes the
ties. It’s the museum. time to preserve the sounds of the device by
Audio Playground has the largest publicly recording a complete collection of those sounds
accessible collection of synthesizers and elec- in high resolution. After all, many of the devices
tronic music equipment in the United States. in his collection rely on electronic components —
With more than 1,300 pieces, many of which transistors, vacuum tubes and the like — that
are rare or one of a kind, Rivers has pieces of are no longer manufactured, and thus spare
KEYED UP: Joseph Rivers and a vintage gear stacked up in every available parts can be hard to come by. Ultimately, his
sampling of his collection space — in the hallways, in the studios — yet plan is to prepare interactive exhibits that will
most of the pieces are housed in a huge muse- allow visitors to listen to the sounds that each
um room, set up from floor to ceiling. device is capable of, building up a website that
will enable people to discover the basics of syn-
ARCHIVAL OBSESSIONS thesis and explore the various instruments in
About 14 years ago, Rivers found himself the collection. His website, www.keyboard
released from the Air Force, but legally unable museum.com (which is offline as of this writing),
to apply his specialized training in robotics in will contain Flash applications that demon-
12 : January 27 to Feburary 2, 2005 : ORLANDOWEEKLY
etic Some of the most
interesting pieces in
the Audio Playground
collection include:
ures
THE OBERHEIM EIGHT VOICE
The first true “polyphonic” synthesizer,
this enormous keyboard actually has eight
different mono-synth modules that are
hardwired together, and can store 16
patches per voice. First produced in 1977,
the Oberheim was used by such legends
as Styx, Rush and Herbie Hancock.