An Interview with KING IDIOT: Questions from forum members invited on GOS forum

[Garritan]

http://www.gigastrings.com/images/kingidiot.jpg Our fifth in a series of GOS \"Meet the Artist\" Interviews will feature King Idiot.

Who is KingIdiot?
Is he a real person or a virtual personality created on the NorthernSounds? Now is you chance to find out.

It is an honor to have one of Northern\'s Sound\'s very own as our featured guest. KingIdiot has emerged from this group as a cyber-sampling legend. He is one of the foremost consultants for gigalibraries and he is an incredible help to sample developers. When this lean mean sample-editing machine is not performing miracles with samples, he composes for popular video games. He is currently consulting and helping with the upcoming gigantic Vienna Orchestra project.

KingIdiot has been one of the most helpful, giving and prolific members on NorthernSounds and nobody has embodied the ideals of the forum more than he. He truly is the King, but by no means an Idiot (although he is a little crazy).

We are now inviting questions for KingIdiot from forum members. If you have any questions you would like to ask the King about the interactive music industry, tweaking samples, the Vienna project, other projects he is working on, or anything you would like to know; now is your opportunity to ask him. At the end of the questioning peroid, your questions will be presented to KingIdiot and we will then post his response in interview form.

Questions are now being taken in the GOS section of Northern Sounds.

Thank you for your interest and participation. Let the questions for begin!

Gary Garritan

[SteveHanlon]

I would like to commence the questioning. Well, Mr.,ummmm, Idiot, where do you see the portable studio solution heading? Is it a laptop able to run sequencer, sampler, mic pres, etc? Or are we confined to multiple components?

second question: are you married with kids?

third question: are you able to support yourself on composing alone? If not, what are other jobs you do?

Fourth question: what instruments do you play really well?

Fifth question: What is your real name? (is that like unmasking Darth vader?)

[Franky]

Lol ! gotta love that picture.

Franky.

[Joanne Babunovic]

Hi King,

When did you first start composing, and on which instrument?

What differentiates your work (composing style etc.) from others?

Thanks,
Joanne

[A_Sapp]

What\'s your setup for your work when you compose? (samplers, harware setup, ect.)

[meeehoon]

KingIdiot dude,

WHAAZZZUPPP?!?!?!

(1) Do you use Emagic Logic Audio as your sequencer?

(2) What other keyboards (other than XP-30) do you use to control your samples? If you have a few keyboards, then which one of those gives you the best control over your Giga Samples?

(3) Where abouts do you live?

Cheers:
meeehoon

[SCARBEE]

Hi King Idiot,

Are you booked the rest of the year?
Are you an expensive guy to hire?
Do you have ADSL?

Do you like Monty Pythons Flying Circus?

Thomas

[MrArkadine]

Hello King,

Have you ever thought about writing a book on sample editing/sound design?
And, what cereals do you eat that give you your mighty brain power? images/icons/smile.gif

Ruben

[Munsie]

Hail to the King!

First off I just wanted to thank Mr. King for the support he has given the Giga community. This kind of support from someone without a commercial tagline in their signature is truly amazing! images/icons/smile.gif

Ok, here\'s my questions:

1) What do you think is the easiest instrument to sample?

2) What do you think is the hardest instrument to sample? (Please answer why on both... thanks!)

3) What plug ins or tools do you use to master your productions?

4) What\'s the most popular video game you have written music for? 4b) What\'s the least popular game you did music for? images/icons/smile.gif

5) What do you enjoy more?
a) Performing live
b) Recording in your studio
c) Tweaking, creating samples?

6) If you had an unlimited budget and man power available, what sample library would you develop and why?

Thanks for your time!

[Francis Belardino]

No questions at this time but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the great and all powerful, King... Your help over the past year or so has been invaluable.

All the best to you, King!

[Garritan]

Last chance to ask KingIdiot your questions. We\'ll be wrapping up the questions in the next day or so. Then the King will give you his answers.

[clonewar]

Hi King, I have a few questions:

1) How did you \'break in\' to the video game music industry? Did you ever do any jobs for free or very little pay?

2) Are you still planning on producing a heavy metal guitar library?

3) You\'ve stated several times that the guitar is your main instrument, do you ever use a midi guitar controller to play/trigger samples? If so, what kinds of samples do you find work well with a guitar controller (besides guitar samples)?

4) Do you use any hardware synths or sound modules in your work? If so, which ones?

5) I remember you mentioning that you use a Roland VS workstation, is that your main tool for multi-track audio recording? If so, why do you prefer it over computer software based recording?

6) Are you primarily a PC or Mac user? Why?

I think that\'s about it. images/icons/smile.gif I just want to say a big THANKS for all of the support you give this community!!

Mike

[Houston Haynes]

King,

If you were president of TASCAM for a day and all of the Giga-decisions you made that day would *stick* with the GigaStudio product for the remainder of its life cycle, what would you add/delete/modify and why?

If you had a chance to compose in another field, which would it be? (such as sound tracks for the Animal Planet TV shows on Discovery, etc.) Is this a niche that you sought out, or was it a path that *found you*?

[Robert Kral]

Gday KING!

We\'ve all benefited from your contributions and involvement on the Forum and I was wondering: Are you a full time musician / midi specialist?

What would your dream - job be?

Have you become involved in library production / tweaking etc to the extent you would like? (You were thinking of a tweaking service, but it does seem that now you are involved with pro library development for other library producers - is that correct?).

Anything you can share about Vienna Symphonic Samples?

Thanks again for your huge contributions to the forum and to library development!

[Jan]

What is your life philosophy, what is important to you in life?
Do you believe in an ultimate creator, God?

I have downloaded some of your ART files, and I never had the opportunity to thank you for your excellent support, so this is a great opportunity to do so: THAAAANKKK YOOUUUUU! images/icons/grin.gif

[dalamein]

King

Thank you for all you have contributed on this forum. Are you sure there aint two of you out there?

What is your first starting point for creating a new score? Are you very analytical before you start the composing process, or do you just sit down play on your XP30 and start composing your music? How do you approach it?

2.)Based on reading many of your discussions, I feel that programming is your strong points. Many sound libraries require knowledge on programming. This is very time consuming, but the results are effective. If you had to give us advice, how does one start to understand the processes involved with programming the many soundlibraries available to us?

3. Are you still planning on constructing .art files for older libraries out there such as US etc?

Thanks once again for your advice and valuable service.

David images/icons/rolleyes.gif

[csduke]

To repeat the sentiments of everyone else here, thanks for your input both in words, .art files and beta-testing. I hope I will someday understand everything you have said images/icons/wink.gif Thanks.

I\'m certain you have a set of approaches (patterns) for solving particular problems you hear in out-of-the-box samples. Have you ever considered approaching Keyboard, Electronic Musician et. al. to write a series of articles on the subject? For example, one article might concern ways of manipulating sustained string samples so they sound better when played at a faster pace while another might introduce ways of reducing the voice count overhead of an instrument without losing too much quality. These articles would be a great read for most everyone and probably help you organize your own thoughts as well. I\'d hit up Bruce Rich. for some names and numbers.

Are you related to the Charles and Emily Idiots from Newport? Oh, and please don’t publish a picture of yourself as I have a vision of you as a homely, severely myopic, ill shaped shut-in. I imagine this to make myself feel better about the distance between your impressive knowledge of all things sampling and my lack of knowledge in such matters images/icons/wink.gif Thanks again and best of fortunes in your life and work.

[Mel Tron]

Hi King. Do you think that Samples will EVER be able to emulate the expression of Real Players? Or is all we are doing creating a pseudo wash of inorganic sound designed to fool ourselves and others that we are actually creating music?

[Z6]

King, I echo everyone\'s sentiment here. You are the King indeed (I\'m saving many of your comments for a future date when I might understand them images/icons/confused.gif better).

I have a slightly OT question. I know you own a Ztar. I\'m having a lot of trouble accessing lower velocity layers with it - I want to \'play\' gigasamples \'live\' (in my bedroom). I\'m told that certain \'modules\' respond better than giga.

But since you\'re such a tech wiz, I wondered whether you\'ve come across the same problem? And whether you\'ve found a way to get the Ztar to respond more in the way that a keyboard might? I find myself \'transmitting\' 127 way before I want to. (btw: I\'ve tried tweaking the trimpot on the motherboard - to little avail. I don\'t want to miss out on all the lovely multi-velocity layered instruments now available.)

Also, generally, how do you find the Ztar, and how do you integrate it into your compositional work?

Last question: Where can I get to hear your music? (Outside of games; I never play them - I would become addicted too easily, and waste away in front of the monitor.)

Best of luck with all of your endeavors, you are a shining light on this forum.

[Rob Elliott]

King,

I just want to ALSO say that your help to us newbies goes beyond the call of duty. I have largely bought into Giga and the associated Libraries based on your posts (Tascam and the developers that read these post should ALL send you their Libraries for free.) The value of a \'third party\' testimony is enormous.

BTW, awesome work on GOS Looped Detache\'s.

My question is simple. I live in the Portland area. What would you recommend I do to find a \'writing gig\'. I am not interested in moving to LA but I would love the oppty to write for - whatever - games, PBS, cable, etc... How would you go about this? Thanks in advance.

Rob

[KingIdiot]

Just to let everyone know,

I\'ve got the questions and will be answering them this weekend if all goes well. I\'ve got a nasty deadline for Friday. I\'ve got to compose music for 11 in game movies, and only jsut started on them today, having to finish all the other stuff that needed to be done. Wheee!