Todd Rundgren and Roger Powell are well known as synthesists, producers and recording artists throughout the music industry. Unlike many "popular" recording artists, their use of synthesizers as well as recording studio accessories, does not end with "cliched" effects. On the contrary, both have extensive experience with technology, allowing a wide creative framework.

At the time of this interview, Todd Rundgren, Roger Powell, Kasim Sulton, and John Wilcox, all members of Utopia, were less than a week and a half from the start of a sixty-day national tour to support the American release of "Ra", the group's latest L.P.

The performance is highly theatrical and includes a thirty minutes video tape (made by Rundgren in his video synthesis studio), a fourteen foot gold sphinx with a laser in its third eye, a twenty-four foot pyramid, fountains and flame throwers.

Of special interest is Roger Powell's "Probe Keyboard System", The Probe is a plexiglass keyboard controller. It is designed to be "worn" like a guitar and controls an off stage six voice polyphonic synthesizer. With such a system, the performer is freed to interact spontaneously with the audience.

Carter Thomas: How did you first become interested in the possibilities of electronic music?

Todd Rundgren: I became interested before I became a professional musician. What was called "electronic music" didn't have a lot of synthesizer, it was mostly music concrete, tape manipulation and editing.

Synapse: Which composers did you listen to? Stockhausen?

Todd: Oddly enough, no. I used to listen to these collections on Turnabout Records and things like that. I didn't have any money, so I never bought anything that wasn't in a bargain bin to start with and these things cost about $1.99.

Synapse: Did this influence what you think about electronic music now?

Todd: Yeah, it did. I don't think in strict terms... I think in more broad terms, which is why some people consider what I do to be "excessive," because it doesn't resemble strict musical measures, and stuff like that. It harkens back to that more liberated approach to making electronic music.

Synapse: Can you think of your music more as timbral and textural music?

Todd: In some way, yeah. In some ways it is to stimulate certain aural senses and hopefully to incite the listener to higher forms of imagery. In other words, most of the music that people listen to has sort of a pedestrian imagery that goes with it and electronic music to me has a more... some people call it psychedelic, but to me it's a more abstract, less materialistic imagery that goes along with it.

Roger Powell: Well, I got exposed to it about the same time. When I was growing up in the '50s, my parents started me on piano lessons and I got interested in avant-garde music and that of course led to various electronic compositions. I was listening to the same people, Henry and Ussachevsky and some of the really early computer music experiments. I was really into it more cerebrally, but most of it once I heard it left me cold. I felt it was still pretty much the domain of the technicians and the engineers and it didn't seem to me that there were many human musical elements interposed in it. Then, of course, Walter Carlos came out with his famous album. I thought, well here's a small ray of hope. Someone has at least taken music that can be recognized to help bridge this gap between what has gone before and this new wave of electronic music. But then again, I still felt that it was kind of a pointless exercise because the instruments do speak for themselves and they can create timbers of their own.

Synapse: Can you tell me about some of the technology and electronics that you're using in the staging of your show that you're putting together here tonight?

Roger: Well, the most exciting thing in my life at the moment is the arrival of the new polyphonic synthesizer that I'm playing which has been dubbed the "probe keyboard system," and that manifests itself in six synthesizers which are located off the stage and they are remotely controlled via a thin, flexible cable which is connected to a fiberglass enclosed keyboard. And on this keyboard are mounted various potentiometers and switches which allow rather sophisticated control of the six synthesizer modules which are off the stage. So this is one thing that we've got with us now and there are some new guitar synthesizer boxes happening over in Todd's department.

Synapse: Can you tell me a little bit about those?

Todd: We have a custom built system using E-mu modules and I am also using some Eventide equipment, like a harmonizer, and flanger. I've been controlling the harmonizers with a foot pedal that will give you a two octave range, up or down an octave. In other words, I don't use hardly anything conventional except for an echo box. I don't use any of the conventional guitar player effects, like a wah-wah pedal or a voice box. The guitar is being processed on almost a studio level.

Roger: Both lead instruments have pretty much what you would want to have if you were recording them in a studio. There are certain processing devices which you would automatically use if you were recording. There's no reason to deprive yourself of that sound while you're on the stage. You know, you get used to a certain sound and that's your sound and these things are really just extensions of your instrument, they're not like extra pieces of gear. After a while they become almost as important as the fifth string on the guitar.

Synapse: Are you running any other instruments through the synthesizer, like the drums?

Todd: The drums are processed at the mixing console with similar things. All the effects that we have could be produced at the console, but we have control over them.

Synapse: You have individual control over a set of studio modules and your soundman has control over the whole group through another set of modules?

Todd: Yes. It's a modulated group.

Synapse: Are there any instruments that you feel should be developed?

Todd: There is no good synthetic percussion device, maybe because there isn't a theory of synthetic percussion.

Synapse: Have you tried a Synare?

Todd: Haven't tried that... I don't know, maybe I have tried it.

Roger: Is that a mono instrument?

Synapse: Yes.

Roger: That's essentially what's wrong. There's no point in having a mono instrument. That's the same as having one drum with infinite tuning. What you want to have is different attacks and timbres and things like that rather than one drum with different notes or different volumes; it's the same as the Moog drum, it doesn't matter how many more pads they give you, if you're only running essentially one basic sound. Also drums invariably sound better as drums than as clinks and clunks, you know, they just have more power. There is very limited use for a percussion synthesizer until someone develops a whole theory of synthetic percussion, which no professional percussionist of note has devoted himself to so far as I know.

Todd: In other word, the synthesizer became validated because of Rick Wakeman and all those who popularized it, for he is essentially a keyboard player and devotes a little bit of time to the synthesizer. It becomes established as an instrument more because of people who devote something, either to development of technique, for instance Jan Hammer or for instance Roger, who has, for all practical purposes, given up all other keyboards for a synthesizer at this point, and is going to devote himself totally to exploiting the possibilities of that, and until a drummer will give you totally all of his drums to devote himself to a new approach to percussion, it will essentially always be a compromise, whatever attempts people make so I think that percussion is the farthest behind.

Roger: Yeah, well the thing is, drummers ordinally are not the more technologically minded people anyway. They aren't the people who have to deal with electric instruments. Guitar players and especially keyboard players have really had this burden in a certain sense; these people are the ones who are exploring the more electronic areas so what we need is to have a drummer who knows enough electronic theory and also has the motivation that Todd was talking about, to get together to have these two things meet.

Synapse: Have you had any training in electronics?

Roger: Not in terms of actual circuit design. I know Ohm's Law and I was a radio announcer and disc jockey for a while. I know a little bit about how electricity moves around in a circuit but it's too intricate for me to actually design something and be assured that it would work and be the latest. But you know, I picked up enough of the terminology and enough of the "mechanics" of electronics, if you will, that I know generally what's possible and I could specify how things should look and work on the outside which is a real key to getting them designed anyway, but you have to make yourself aware of enough of it to be intrigued by the possibilities and to know sort of what can be done.

Synapse: How about you, Todd?

Todd: I don't have any training in anything.

Synapse: Do you do any designing?

Todd: I do theoretical designing but I don't do any concrete designing. I deal with it from the idealistic end; like what ultimately do I want it to do. I have had some contact with it, you know, and it's not a particularly difficult thing to learn. It's just that I'm so occupied with other things.

Synapse: Do you feel you understand what's happening?

Todd: Oh, yeah, I mean, I know more about it than the average musician. I have put together my own 16 track studio and my own video studio, It's just that I personally don't have the discipline in that area to sit down and maintain a thread of thought through a whole electronic circuit. It's a difficult thing for me to do. I could condition myself to do it but I have other things that occupy me anyway.

Synapse: Could you tell me something about your show" What you're doing technologically and what you're doing visually?

Todd: While the show is meant to replicate something on as many different levels as possible, it's sort of a little bit like getting into the realm of magic, because some of its technology is so advanced and inaccessible to the general public, even other musicians. Also we've been working at... it with the intention of eliminating a lot of unnecessary interface like knob twiddling and tuning and things like that, so in that sense it goes one more step beyond just mundane technology as people think of it. It becomes more accessible to you as a creative musician and less as a creative technician. In other words, the technology is being made simple to address and still maintaining the flexibility so that we can be free to be creative with these tools, and that's one of the objectives. If you spend too much time fiddling around with the equipment, then it's almost better just to go back to amplifier and guitar and not fuck with it.

Roger: You have to make a quantum leap, you can't go half way and get things done just right.

Synapse: I heard you were using laser beams and video on the show.

Todd: The video has been transferred to film. There's no adequate way of projecting video without creating a lot of technical impossibilities... and so it's being transferred to film and will be projected.

Synapse: You did the video on your studio?

Todd: Yeah, it's our studio.

Synapse: And is it using a video synthesizer?

Todd: Yes, a lot of it's synthesized and some of it is not synthesized.

Synapse: What type of video synthesizer is it?

Todd: There's a couple of them. There's one from EMS, the Spectron Video Synthesizer and one from a company in Philadelphia, called BJS, it's called the Cromaton. I have a couple of custom made pieces of equipment and a few colorizers and switches. The usual junk that you need to keep a video studio working.

Synapse: Do you do any interface between the sound and the image?

Todd: So far we haven't done any direct interface. I mean there is some minor interfacing, for instance we modulate aspects of the picture with sound but there are technical limitations in that as well, for instance the appeal of video synthesis is still primitive. It's been less exploited in a way. It's a much younger field and a lot of the things we'd like control over, we don't yet have control over.

Synapse: But is the music that you do on stage in any way an analogy to the video or doesn't it matter?

Todd: The imagery is made to complement the sounds but as opposed to normal video we're using a lot of abstracts, shapes and colors. It's an extension of the approach in music to try and cause people to visualize in a more sophisticated level.

Roger: The video's not happening while we're playing. It's not happening simultaneously. It's a preproduction thing that was done.

Synapse: So you have to transfer it down to 16 or 35 millimeter?

Todd: Yeah, one of the other. It would probably be 16. I think that's adequate with the proper projector. With 35mm, the projector is just too big. We have other effects that we use during the show while we're playing line a laser. We have some special lighting, some special visual effects like fountains and flames, and wind...

Roger: Sleet and snow...

Todd: And acrobatics and all kinds of stuff.

Roger: Tornadoes...

Todd: A real theatrical affair. For the last couple of years we've been mostly just playing. We haven't dealt with the theatrics or props, or the sets. In fact, gearing up to using this stuff has taken eighteen months. This has been in construction for six months at least.

Synapse: You also did a new album that was just released. Would you like to say anything about the new album?

Todd: Well, it's new here, but it's not new to us. It came out in Japan in December when we toured there. It was finished long before that so we're gearing up now for two months on the road after which we've got to come off and record another album, so that's much closer in a way than the last album is. The album essentially was sort of like the sound track to our performance and so the performance to us in some ways is more relevant than the album. The album is like a record of the performance. We haven't gotten to give the performance that the record was made for. We intended to be doing this performance earlier but the technical things weren't ready. Roger just got his probe last week and a lot of things seem to have taken a while to get together. So now we're finally getting to perform the show that the album is a record of.

Synapse: Can you explain a little bit more about the probe? I think that people who read the magazine will be very interested in some of the things that it can do.

Roger: Well, I can get into a little more detail about it. The key thing was to have an instrument that could play chords and which would allow the performer in a contemporary group, who's usually barricaded behind a lot of keyboards, enough sound variation and polyphonic capability that he could just use this one instrument. So to overcome this problem, the first thing we had to do was isolate the keyboard from the synthesizer. I had to totally -- well, I didn't do it myself, but I have an engineer who was a partner with me in this venture and he had to totally redesign a keyboard. The keyboard is now using aircraft gauge aluminum instead of steel for it's framework and specially fabricated nylon parts and plexiglass pieces here and there. The keying system is not a buss bar system as is usual. There are photo isolators. Actually I think they are called "Opto" isolators, which are like LED's with photocells mounted across from them and then a key is depressed, a plexiglass baffle mounted on the key goes inside and breaks the light connection which means that there are no touching parts on the keying system. All the keys on the keyboard, which is four octaves, and all the switches which I have mounted on the instrument, which amounts to about 25 or 30 switches, are scanned by the same scanning circuit, so every 100 times a second all the keys and all the switches are scanned to see which ones are depressed. A lot of this information is serially encoded and then sent down a quarter inch cable, which has 19 information channels. That connects back to the synthesizers which are off the stage. Built into the synthesizer is a preset memory bank which allows you to set up 16 master presets. Each master preset could be set up so that all six voices were the same, or to the other extreme, you could have six different voices set up for each preset. This is useful in some cases where you're suggesting more than one instrument at once. At the left hand end of the keyboard there's a special area for the left hand to slide in to. There's actually an opening in the instrument, which allows the four fingers to position over potentiometers which control more important aspects of the sound such as the volume, the speed of modulation or vibrato, the detuning of the second bank of oscillators from the first bank which gives you chorus effects and out of tune rinky dink piano types of sounds. You can close all six filters all the way down and get a very mellow kind of sound and by rolling your finger on this control you can open the filters up and get a very dynamic brassy kind of effect. The thumb is sort of hidden underneath the instrument, in back, in its own contoured area where there is a pitch bend wheel and a modulation wheel, a similar technique as to what's used on a Minimoog except of course in this instrument it's all six voices at once. And then the banks of switches that I had do various things, like transpose the oscillators up and down octaves, turn the second bank of oscillators on or off, send modulation to the first bank or the second bank or both or selects pulse wave modulation; all the keyboard logic controls are there. I can play around with how the modules are assigned from the keys after they're scanned, they can either be scanned continuously so that every time you play a key you get the next voice in succession, one two three four five six, or if you've only played one or two notes and you hit it again it will go back to one. Basically all the keyboard logic that I had access to in the module itself is available at the keyboard and that's pretty much it. The case is fiberglass. The whole keyboard weighs less than a Les Paul guitar and, let's see, so far it hasn't blown up. I would like to add that it was engineered and manufactured by the Royalex Company in Dover, Massachusetts and I'm very much indebted to Jeremy Hill who was the project engineer. I mean, I paid him his money but I'm still sort of indebted to him for making it happen.

Synapse: Do you think that electronic music is going to be much more widely used and accepted due to the freedom of the instruments that are being created now?

Roger: I just want to say something real quick about that. People are listening to electronic music and they aren't even aware of it. Any time you go to a rock 'n roll concert, or any time you turn your radio on; however that sound is originally created has then become part of the electronic music medium because it's been transcribed hundreds of times or how ever many generation it takes for the final product to reach you. So I think maybe that people will become more aware of what is actually happening but the future is here, you know. We're here now. This is what's happening. There may be more acceptance of it on a more general level, yes, but I think that most people are unaware of how much it's in their lives already.

Todd: I don't think the objective is to see how many people can lay their hands on one of these instruments. For instance, what good is this technological advance going to do if all it does is bring these technologically facilitated, musical advances, down to people who take them so lightly that essentially it was never worth it. It may be a while before the performer that really takes the greatest advantage of this appears. You know, it may be Roger, it may not be Roger. I mean, hopefully it's Roger since he's got the first one, but the idea is that a lot of the people who would get the most out of this instrument, have the kind of personality where they wouldn't want to get up there with the instrument and stand there and play and boogie around. A lot of musicians use their instruments as something to hide behind as well as something to express themselves with. There are very few of them who will get out there and give a physical performance that warrants having that flexibility. So in a way, maybe it's only something for a very few people who are going to exploit the possibilities of it. Maybe it is for everybody in some form, but the level on which Roger's instrument functions is way beyond the capabilities of most keyboard players to operate it even now, let alone to play it and dance around at the same time. It may be quite a while before the synthesizer as a legitimate performing instrument becomes something as common as a guitar player or a drummer.

Synapse: What people in the field right now do you respect most in terms of electronic music?

Todd: I draw a big blank there. There's a real war going on out there about labels, and all kinds of shit. You know, I don't even think about what's electronic music and what isn't electronic music, but there are some people out there who are just looking for anything that has the slightest electronic buzz to it so they can shoot at it. It's part of a 1984 consciousness. It's like3, is technology taking over the world and are we going to have to listen to these synthesizers? Are we going to be forced: You know, like everybody that's born is going to have a jack installed in their head and have to plug into one of these things. So there's a whole battle of shit going on, and it's like Roger said, it becomes electronic as soon as anything to do with electronics toughed the instrument. When it gets down to that, the only non-electronic music is probably being played at Bar Mitzvahs and things like that, with a clarinet and an accordion.

Roger: Yeah, but even then they have a Shure vocal Master hooked into it.

Synapse: So in other words, your philosophy is sort of that you're doing loud speaker music, so it is electronic.

Todd: Yeah, everything. For instance, in our performance, anything that comes off the stage has been electronified somehow.

Roger: It's been electronified in many cases to make it sound acoustic. I mean, you have the power these days to create ambience with digital delays and other sophisticated devices. Well, what is that ambience? It's the total of the acoustic environment plus that other indeterminable factor of the human emotion that happens to be vibrating at that time in that place. There's more than just what you can measure on the oscilloscope.

Todd: I think in some ways we don't consider ourselves, hey, an electronic band. I think what we're trying to do has a lot to do with technology but that's not what we're trying to accomplish. You know, we're not trying to establish a new lever of technology or become associated with a new level of technology. We want to be associated with a certain sensibility about tools essentially, electronics being one of them. And the tools and facilities that are available to us on a number of levels; not only in the field of electronics but in the field of, for instance, psychic energy and things like that. They're just more tools and we want to make the most efficient use of those tools. We're not trying to become Utopia, whatever we stand for. I think in some ways it has to do with an attitude about these things that we're using. We don't use them in ignorance or fear, nor do we try to make them something that they're not. Ultimately, all the gadgets that we use are not responsible for our creative inspiration. We still have to come up with that ourselves.

Synapse: Do you shape your music in any way towards your audience or is it more a personal thing?

Todd: There's a lot of both aspects. We have to satisfy ourselves, we have to like our own records. And at the same time the whole reason why we have the band and the reason we're trying to accomplish these things is because we feel a certain responsibility to our audience,. In some ways we have to almost be elected by the people, which is our audience. In other words, they come and see us and they support what we do and they pay for records, and they pay for concert tickets and we take the money and with that money we're supposed to express something that as individuals they wouldn't have the facilities to express, so it's the same thing as being elected officials of the government. It's a whole phenomenon. Everyone is trying to get elected to this position.

Roger: They all have the greatest platforms.

Todd: Our platform is humanization of technology and just humanization of humans... like take the gig mess that's the world that we live in and without getting too crazed, dismantle what needs to be dismantled and construct what needs to be constructed but not stand around bitching all the time. "What a mess this is, I'm so frustrated."

Roger: Or "why bother if it's going to blow up in a week.:"

Todd: We figure if it's going to blow up in a week we might as well be doing something, so we don't have to worry about it blowing up... you know, doing nothing, all you do is just sit around and think about it blowing up so we'll delude ourselves and we'll pretend that it all really matters and we'll go out and bust our asses and we'll work for ourselves.

Synapse: Do you have any concrete plans for the future with the group?

Todd: Well, we're just touring a lot and we've got another album to do and after that there will probably be a lot of individual records coming out with different members of the band, once we get time. That's mostly what we're up to. We haven't even gotten on the road yet with this show so once we get on it, we'll be on it for a while.

Synapse: Do you think that electronic music will in some way become more popular, with groups like Utopia doing a lot of concerts for popular audiences? Do you think this will help the avant-garde composers who are doing electronic music and maybe given them a little boost?

Todd: In some ways. I don't even know what way music is going or where it's supposed to be. I figure there's a place for all kinds of music. I personally have a big belief in disposable music. I think that music should not be candy but in general should not be crystallized. A lot of music that's written is only temporarily relevant. And some of it is so temporarily relevant that it becomes evocative past the point that is relevant. That's how music lasts. For instance, most of the classical music that we listen to is more evocative than relevant. It'' not the background music to your life style. It's usually disco music. That's the background music of the life style nowadays or, it's the kind of music that most people are hearing as they go throughout the day. Anything a composer is doing will be relevant for a short time, and may become relevant again.

Roger: I think it's probably helped them somewhat because now Stockhausen is signed to Chrysalis Records. I think it brings up a lot of implications about artists who are achieving recognition in their own time, and fame and money, which didn't happen before.

Todd: It's the whole question of commercial art. There was a time when a lot of what artists did, they did out of what they considered moral responsibility and that was because if you didn't have a patron you didn't operate. It was like you couldn't hope to be a commercial success. A lot of artists just had to hope for the moral satisfaction that it gave them. Unless you had a patron you were only doing it for the fun of it, you know, for art's sake. It's only recently that it's become like a doctor or a lawyer. You can actually set out to become a successful commercial musician, you know, and how much art is involved in that? Is that art or is that craft? It's more of a craft or a manufacturing skill than it is art. Can anything that becomes commercially accepted be considered art? You know, in some ways, I don't even know what we do as it relates to an audience is art. I think we consider it more communication than art. And what we're trying to do and what we're trying to accomplish mostly is communication and not artistic milestones.

Synapse: Do you think of it as theater?

Todd: I guess. I guess in some ways it could be considered that. And it's not that we don't hit points that are not artistic, but for instance we can't operate this show without a certain amount of commercial return. We need to pay the electric bill and all that other stuff so in some ways it's not art. In some ways the concept is more art than the actual practice of it, and that can be said about just about anything that becomes commercially successful. So what is art? What do these people really want? What is an avant-garde composer really looking for? Is he looking for recognition and success or is he trying to discover something in music?

Roger: I found out from the time I got interested in things other than classical music that I wanted to be an avant-garde composer. That was really exciting to consider yourself to be on the forefront of musical frontiers and so forth, but I found in my course of beginning that trek that academia more or less prevented me from enjoying that. At the time I was going to music school, synthesizers weren't very prevalent and they didn't want to hear about it at all. So that sort of discouraged me and then I also discovered that a lot of these tools that I wanted to use were very expensive and you've either got to have a patron, benefactor, inheritance, or work your ass off.

Todd: Or work in education.

Roger: Even there, there are drawbacks to that because you're got to share with a lot of other people and you can't get in when you need to do something. I found that if I assiduously applied myself to my craft, it would enable me to have access to some of these tools and that was sort of what motivated me to get into this end of the business and I still hope that at some point... well I have, I've established a studio in my house which is exclusively devoted to experimental electronic music. I just hope that I can support my technological habit; but maybe at some point I'll get into the ultimate technology of rearranging my brain so I won't even need the physical manifestation of the tools. I'll just take a piano and make it sound like 40 synthesizers.