Maz & Kilgore

Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to consult on user experience and interface design for a number of companies in the software world. (more…)

Our studio and live work in the music business 1983-1995

LAURIE ANDERSON
Strange Angels

keyboards, programming

ERIC CLAPTON
Journeyman

keyboards, programming

STEVE WINWOOD
Back In The High Life | Roll With It

keyboards, programming

TOM WAITS
Rain Dogs

keyboards

MADONNA
“Borderline” | Who’s That Girl-”24 Hours”

keyboards, songwriting, programming

PAUL McCARTNEY
Give My Regards to Broad Street

keyboards

THE BRECKER BROTHERS
Return Of The | Out Of The Loop

producers, songwriting, keyboards

JAMES TAYLOR
Never Die Young | October Road

keyboards, programming

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ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? - Nickelodeon
composer, music video

CHRIS CROSS - Showtime / ITV
composer, theme music, incidental cues

WORKING GIRL - 20th Century Fox
incidental cues, synth programming

WHO’S THAT GIRL? - Miramax
songwriting, sound track album

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Beginning in 1995, Maz and I worked as Creative Directors of the Social Interface Group at Microsoft. We had been working under Karen Fries and Barry Linnett on an application codenamed Utopia back in ‘93. They had assembled a team of programmers and artists to work on a radical new interface inspired by the emerging body of research into so called “social interfaces”. Much of this landmark research was performed by Stanford professors, Cliff Nass and Byron Reeves. (more…)

Here’s an incarnation of a graphic interface for creating and controlling probability-based ambient audio soundscapes. Click here or on the image to try it out.

WHAT IS THIS?
This is a set of 8 rack units. Each one contains a preset bank with a handful of sounds. You can trigger them as a “single shot”, by pressing the play button. A sound will loop indefinitely when the “Loop” mode button is selected.

RANDOM TRIGGERS
On the left hand side of each unit is a “random trigger generator”. Clicking the button marked RND engages the random trigger for that channel. The frequency knob controls the “rate” at which new random numbers are generated. That is, every time the LED goes on or off, a random number between 0-100 is generated.

If the random number is less than the value of “Amount” then the sound will play. The “Prob” knob adjusts the “amount of probability” or the threshold below which the random number will trigger the sound.

It’s best to test each sound by just playing it once with the play button. Some sounds are quite long. These long sounds are best triggered with either a very slow rate of chance or with a low probability of occurring.

MASTER: NEW, LOAD & SAVE
I’ve added the ability to save configurations for the full rack of eight units. You could tweak an existing patch and click “Save” and it will be updated. Tweak an existing patch but type in a new name is equivalent to “Save As”.

The Rotator: A Realtime Harmonic MIDI Processor

“Boure” Mac | Win

Back in the mid eighties, Maz & I decided to combine our two studios into one massive keyboard/programming room which came to be known as “The Lab”.

As we were both keyboard players, our combined arsenal at one point reached close to 30 synthesizers! Somewhere in that pile of gear was a six voice digitally controlled analog synthesizer made by Oberheim known as the Xpander.
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While searching through some storage boxes the other day, I came across an assortment of badges and, passes and photos. There were also several photos taken at various gigs in Japan. This one taken during a Teramasu Hino concert, live at the Tokyo Dome - or “The Egg” as it’s sometimes called. (more…)

I came across an assortment of backstage passes the other day. The one I’m most proud of is my artist/performer backstage pass from Live Aid (1985) where I played on stage with Hall & Oates, Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin of the Temptations, Mick Jagger and Tina Turner. (more…)