Simon Franglen is a composer of music for TV, films, stage plays and commercials, and also a record producer and keyboard player/programmer. He works mainly at home - in his Padded Cell studio - with his own Synclavier. Before there are any shouts of 'lucky devil', remember that you don't get to be a Synclavier owner unless you are pretty good at what you do. Obviously, megastars like Stevie Wonder and Sting can buy Synclaviers out of their small change, but for a jobbing composer a Synclavier is a major purchase. So why spend all that money?

"I was a programmer for a couple of years before being able to buy one myself, and I suppose you could say, if certain people were built to play certain instruments, then I was built to play the Synclavier. If people ask me what I play, I say I play Synclavier; I don't play keyboards, although I do happen to have other keyboards in my system."

To Simon Franglen, the Synclavier is a very natural instrument to play.

"I don't think when I use it. With any instrument - violin, guitar, piano etc - if you have to think how to use it, it loses its point, because you are not thinking about the music. It becomes a machine rather than a musical instrument."

Since the Synclavier represents a major investment, there has to be a justification for that investment. You do not just have one because you fancy the idea of being in the Synclavier club. There has to be a financial motive. For Simon, it made financial sense to buy his own system rather than continually renting other people's, and the benefits of having its facilities available 24 hours a day are obvious, of course. There are other attractions: "The variety of work you get by using the Synclavier is quite stunning. The wide range of facilities that you can offer an artist, producer or director means that no two jobs are the same. I'm in the fortunate position of tending to work with more established artists, to whom quality is more important than cost."

The Padded Cell studio is, in a word, compact. The studio is just wide enough to fit in the REIMS mixing console. Simon's keyboard arrangement is designed for maximum ease of use, with the Synclavier keyboard protruding from under the mixer - which is raised by eight inches to make this possible. In front of the Synclavier keyboard is the Macintosh II keyboard. In action, Simon continually swaps back and forth between faders, keyboard and computer keys, so the arrangement makes a lot of sense.

Simon's Synclavier system is not the world's largest, but certainly of adequate capability: 64 voices, 24 megabytes of RAM, plus a 180 megabyte hard disk. At the top of his shopping list at the moment is an optical disk unit (costing over £20,000). Simon currently stores his sample library on three optical disks, each of which can hold up to 2000 megabytes of data, but he has to hire the actual unit when necessary. The Synclavier's internal hard disk holds a library of 'greatest hits' samples for day to day use.

So how does a Synclavier owner rate his machine against other musical technology?

"What makes it the best machine in the world is the hundred and something little red buttons on the keyboard. Where on other 'workstations' you go: Control A - Option B - Command C - drop this in - set this up... all you do on the Synclavier is hit a button. It is as simple as that. You just hit a button and work.

"It is the most ergonomic package currently available, and even if you ignore the sheer size and quality, you are still left with the most versatile system I've ever seen. I know other manufacturers are addressing a mass market, but sleeker packaging doesn't necessarily make equipment any easier to use."

As you can tell, here speaks a dedicated Synclavier man. And for a final comment...

"The whole thing about working with the Synclavier is control. Getting the best out of the music. And this is the best way I know of doing that."

January 15, 2020

Hello old friend.

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