MIDI can make mediocre musicians sound good, good musicians sound great, and great musicians prolific. Trevor Rabin falls into the third category. He has embraced and derives major benefits from computer technology, but he is still analog when it comes to making music. Even if you are one of a small group that hasn't heard his work with Yes you probably have heard one of his film scores or the NBA theme song.

Trevor Rabin in his studio

Trevor's guitars

His background has been well-documented on Wikipedia and in interviews like this one. In short Trevor grew up in a very creative household. His father was first chair in the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra, and his mother was a piano teacher and a painter. He has studied many kinds of music during his lifetime as his recent and amazingly diverse CD Jacaranda clearly illustrates. Classically trained in all aspects of symphonic music, he used his ears to learn rock and jazz, and then combined all of it to create his own sound.

He has one of the most well-equipped project studios I have ever seen. In addition to a large assortment of outboard gear there is an awesome collection of stringed instruments of all kinds hanging on the wall. He plays them directly or through a collection of amps into Digital Performer running on his Mac. There is "live" room that is largely taken up by an acoustic piano that he keeps mic'ed for piano parts, and a machine room that is full of older Emu samplers and Gigas. For him the computer is a tool to record what he plays.

I came out of the interview thinking that it's a pleasure to meet someone within whom passion, experience, and aptitude are so well matched.

I remember the first tour you did with Yes well. It was a great revival for them...

Film scoring is about spotting and very linear, as opposed to writing a song, which is more A-A-B-A. Do you have a different approach when you're writing for film or do you just get some inspiration and say that's going to be a song or a that's a film piece?

Did you do any film composing before you did any of the pop work?

What equipment were you using at the time?

You can hear things immediately now, so that's a profound change...

There was one piece, a beautiful piano piece called "Killarney 1 & 2" on Jacaranda. Was that a miced piano or a plug-in?

Given that your background in classical music, how have you benefited from using a software application like Performer? And is there anything you've felt like you've had to give up?

Emu Sampler
Museum

Performer has been a great help. I think, in general, the problem with any software is that people don't learn the art of writing for orchestra. Now, if you want to do a string part, which has long strings and then going into double stops and stuff like that, you have to use a different sample. You can't just write it out and think of it. You can do that but it's like now I have to change to a different sample and what key switch is it that changes over to another set of samples. So it really slows me down.

I think I've got about every sample known to man to make it sound reasonable. But I just prefer when I hear it from an orchestra, and luckily about 80% of my projects have been with a real orchestra. There have been occasions where we don't have the budget for a huge orchestra and I usually try to talk them into "can we at least get 15 people? 20 people?" Once or twice I've had to do it just on synth. It sounds alright but…

Do you do much interchanging of files with other composers?

Do you write everything out before you play it?

So, in general, would the tools that you use, quite a few, obviously lots of analog or dedicated hardware I should say…if you could say, "Boy, I'm having a problem with this. I wish somebody would come up with that."

Your Dobro playing is all over Jacaranda. Did you start playing that recently?

Oh yeah, I love playing it. It's recent. When I say "recent" in my world I mean the last 15 years. I needed it on a very early film score. A movie I did called "Home Grown" with Billy Bob Thornton. It was an independent, quirky kind of movie, but it needed a Dobro and I started and once I started getting into it, I really worked at it and just love it.

There's a song, "Me and My Boy" and there's a bunch of different sounds, guitar sounds from Dobro to electric sounds and everything. How did you process the various instruments? For example the Dobro, how do you mic it?

And then there were some heavy electric sounds. What were those?

Imagine a metal company making a guitar...

Do you find yourself going more towards the piano or the guitar for inspiration? Or are they interchangeable at this point?

While you were recording Jacaranda between various film scoring projects how did you keep track of everything?

Do you always finish each musical idea you start or do you compile them over time…?

You do everything inside the computer now?

How has your approach to composition arrangement changed from pre-Yes to Yes to film composing to your new CD?

Do you do your own drums?

And you brought in one of the best, Vinnie Colaiuta, on Jacaranda.

Do you have any desire to play live again?

Congratulations!

The world is shifted it seems, from where you'd create an album and then tour to support the sales of the album, whereas now it seems flip flopped. You create the album to support your tour.

Do you have something you would call your musical anchor? There's some jazz influence and there's obviously the Dobro stuff. There's heavy flame-throwing guitar. There's crunchy stuff. It's all over the map. What's your core?

Is that your dog on "Gazania" there at the end?

This dog has heard A LOT of music

Yes, it is.