Jan Hammer

Around 1976 he started to use delay on his sound, originally from a Maestro Echoplex, and it remained an integral part of his rig ever since.

"I bought a Commodore 64 solely to run Dr. T's Algorithmic Composer package! Jim Johnson's phrase generator allows you to outline scales, bars, change probabilities, weighting, and several more quite involved parameters; what comes out is very usable. Two or three of the most recent episodes (in the fourth series) have most of the music written in this manner. Monophonic phrases are generated (by the computer), played across to another sequencer and then layered and repeated. Miami Vice has long cues and this kind of music can help bridge, say, three scenes."

Jan Hammer rocks out with his Fairlight and Yamaha KX5 remote keyboard on BBC Rock School series 2 from 1987

"I still use analogue tape machines in my studio [an Otari MTR90 24-track]."

According to the research of Catalinbread's Nicholas Kula, Hammer used a unit with the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

In this interview Jan Hammer says: "I'm still using the last version of Studio Vision on a Mac G4 dual-boot machine that I keep just for that purpose."

He creates the drums using his Fairlight CMI and LinnDrum

"I have my own Fairlight drum samples, custom Linn chips, as well as a new Kawai R100 drum machine with really nice sounds."

"The most beautiful addition to the studio recently was the Lexicon 480. I am experimenting with some esoteric MIDI-controlled effects, such as changing the reverb time from a keyboard's aftertouch or velocity parameters."