Robert Kinkel

DR: I want to skip ahead a little bit to your involvement with Savatage. The first record you were on was Hall of the Mountain King?

BK: Yeah, Hall of the Mountain King was the first record I played on with them. That's how I met Paul [O'Neill] and Jon [Oliva].

DR: Were they recording at Record Plant at the time?

BK: They were recording at Record Plant - that was the first record that Paul produced of theirs and Jim Ball was the engineer.

By this time, I had left Record Plant to go out and do session work and I was playing in a prog rock band led by Richard Termini. I'd be in sessions and a keyboard player would be brought in, and I was realizing that some of these guys would take four hours to play something that I could play in ten minutes. I started thinking, "Hey, I must be ok" because I never thought of myself as a great, great player. But I had chops and I was always practicing while I worked at Record Plant.

There was an early sampling keyboard called the Emulator II, which was the first one that made it easy to spread out samples. I was one of five people in the city that had one of those. I also had a Prophet 5, a Yamaha DX7 and a few other things. That was the era when I was doing jingles - that was when I did the Hefty commercial and was being successful in that world. I got a call from Jim Ball out of the blue who says, "Hey I'm working with this guy who wants to do a whole orchestra thing. Can you do that sort of thing with your samplers?". So I said "Sure" and came down to the studio and we did "Prelude to Madness". That whole thing is basically me and the band. I played every single part on that - the whole orchestra is me - and then we just all got along really well.

DR: I want to skip ahead a little bit to your involvement with Savatage. The first record you were on was Hall of the Mountain King?

BK: Yeah, Hall of the Mountain King was the first record I played on with them. That's how I met Paul [O'Neill] and Jon [Oliva].

DR: Were they recording at Record Plant at the time?

BK: They were recording at Record Plant - that was the first record that Paul produced of theirs and Jim Ball was the engineer.

By this time, I had left Record Plant to go out and do session work and I was playing in a prog rock band led by Richard Termini. I'd be in sessions and a keyboard player would be brought in, and I was realizing that some of these guys would take four hours to play something that I could play in ten minutes. I started thinking, "Hey, I must be ok" because I never thought of myself as a great, great player. But I had chops and I was always practicing while I worked at Record Plant.

There was an early sampling keyboard called the Emulator II, which was the first one that made it easy to spread out samples. I was one of five people in the city that had one of those. I also had a Prophet 5, a Yamaha DX7 and a few other things. That was the era when I was doing jingles - that was when I did the Hefty commercial and was being successful in that world. I got a call from Jim Ball out of the blue who says, "Hey I'm working with this guy who wants to do a whole orchestra thing. Can you do that sort of thing with your samplers?". So I said "Sure" and came down to the studio and we did "Prelude to Madness". That whole thing is basically me and the band. I played every single part on that - the whole orchestra is me - and then we just all got along really well.

DR: I want to skip ahead a little bit to your involvement with Savatage. The first record you were on was Hall of the Mountain King?

BK: Yeah, Hall of the Mountain King was the first record I played on with them. That's how I met Paul [O'Neill] and Jon [Oliva].

DR: Were they recording at Record Plant at the time?

BK: They were recording at Record Plant - that was the first record that Paul produced of theirs and Jim Ball was the engineer.

By this time, I had left Record Plant to go out and do session work and I was playing in a prog rock band led by Richard Termini. I'd be in sessions and a keyboard player would be brought in, and I was realizing that some of these guys would take four hours to play something that I could play in ten minutes. I started thinking, "Hey, I must be ok" because I never thought of myself as a great, great player. But I had chops and I was always practicing while I worked at Record Plant.

There was an early sampling keyboard called the Emulator II, which was the first one that made it easy to spread out samples. I was one of five people in the city that had one of those. I also had a Prophet 5, a Yamaha DX7 and a few other things. That was the era when I was doing jingles - that was when I did the Hefty commercial and was being successful in that world. I got a call from Jim Ball out of the blue who says, "Hey I'm working with this guy who wants to do a whole orchestra thing. Can you do that sort of thing with your samplers?". So I said "Sure" and came down to the studio and we did "Prelude to Madness". That whole thing is basically me and the band. I played every single part on that - the whole orchestra is me - and then we just all got along really well.

Robert Kinkel is confirmed to use the Korg Trinity, as shown in a photo from the article "A Conversation with Bob Kinkel" on the website Music and Art Interviews.

Robert Kinkel is confirmed to use the Yamaha Motif XS6 61-Key Synthesizer Workstation, as shown in a photo from "A Conversation with Bob Kinkel" on the website Music and Art Interviews.

Robert Kinkel is confirmed to use a Yamaha MOTIF XS8, as evidenced by his Instagram post where he is seen with the instrument. The post, authored by Kinkel himself, showcases him and his virtual collaborators performing a cover of a legendary song.