Rhodes, Bill
biographical statement
(1) Bill Rhodes, formerly a Professor of Music at Monmouth University, has been an educator for over thirty years. With a master's degree in Composition, knowledge of electronic musical instruments, Bill is an inspiration to the music industry. Bill Rhodes is currently a composer-pianist working for the Music Industries Corporation as a product specialist and consultant. In the early 1970's Bill worked for Music Technology Inc (Crumar) as well as Korg, Kawai, Akai, and other keyboard and synthesizer companies designing software and sounds for their equipment.
At the moment, Bill has released six albums on the Innovative Communications label (Hamburg, Germany) and two CDs on the Jazzical-digital label. Bill was also featured with Rick Wakeman from the mega-group "Yes" on a double CD on the Arcade label. His latest release, Concerto for the New Earth, was issued in 2000. Rhodes discusses the most important development in non-acoustic music since the voltage controlled oscillator, back in the sixties. This marvel of ingenuity is called MIDI, which is short for musical instrument digital interface. MIDI protocol has been widely accepted and utilized by musicians and composers since its conception in 1982/1983. The MIDI protocol provides an efficient format for conveying musical performance data, and the Standard MIDI Files specification ensures that different applications can share time-stamped MIDI data. While this alone is largely sufficient for the working MIDI musician, the storage efficiency and on-the-fly editing capability of MIDI data also made MIDI an attractive vehicle for generation of sounds in multimedia applications, computer games, or high-end karaoke equipment.
Rhodes defines MIDI, its development, and its functions on many levels of music production. As we already know, the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) protocol provides the user with a uniform and proficient means of conveying musical performance information as electronic data. MIDI information can be seen as a set of instructions, which tell a synthesizer or other MIDI equipped piece of gear how to “perform” a piece of music. The synthesizer or sampler receiving the MIDI data generates the actual sounds.
Rhodes also discusses sampling: what it is, how it’s done, and the many applications for sampling, including today’s sophisticated hard disk recording studios, which use sampling to record albums. (All CDs, DVDs, and other forms of digital recording are produced with sampling technology.)
Bill fills in the technological gaps and shares insights into future innovations in music technology in his interview, which is presented in two parts; the first part conducted in late 1987, and the second part, in the fall of 2000.
(2) Artist description
Bill Rhodes is an accomplished pianist and electronic composer, with credits including 28 Albums from 1978 to present. His Broadcast and Film Credits include The Lillehamer Olympics for European Broadcast, and various projects on German Independent Cable TV. He holds a Masters Degree in Musical Composition, and was Professor of Music at Monmouth University (NJ) from '88 to '94. Bill is currently performing nationally and in South Florida, and is also employed as a freelance product specialist (Studiologic Master Controllers & More...) in the Electronic Music Industry. He counts among his friends Bob Moog, Larry Fast, Keith Emerson, Steve Walsh, Craig Anderton, and Sean P. O'Connor (a.k.a. CE Behr) of Behrland AudioWorks in Deer Park, NY.
Music style
Electronic Classical
Musical influences
Stravinsky, Ravel, Keith Emerson, Wendy Carlos, Tomita, Larry Fast, Ravel, De Bussy, Bach, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff