I love being inspired. And I love inspiring people. This morning I saw a post by Nathan Shafer of Pedal Nerds featuring a NOVA video. That NOVA video was about Tom Scholz of the legendary band – Boston. Now, I’m not the biggest Boston fan and I really don’t know much info about Tom Scholz, so this was a good opportunity to learn something. And in the end, I was quite inspired.
Tom Scholz is an anomaly. He’s a pro/seasoned musician as well as an engineer that graduated from MIT. That mix is quite weird, but could be hugely advantageous to the world of music. The ability to think like a musician and convert that thought into engineering terms to actually build the device to make that happen. Tom’s claim to fame in the world of guitar gear is the Rockman which is a portable headphone amp for guitar.
Check out this episode of Sound Machine below:
Tom Scholz: Sound Machine
Let me know what you think by commenting below!
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3 years ago
Hank…I’ve been an apprentice at the feet of the Master, Tom Scholz for really most of my life. The man isn’t just MIT educated, he holds an MS as well as a BS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. He worked for Polaroid for about 7 or 8 years as I recall to support his music habit. The first Boston album was recorded in the basement studio he built in his apartment house. Every sound in that record is Tom, minus the drums and the soaring tenor vocals of the late Brad Delp. Since we’re talking the ’70s, this means analog tape. He still records to analog tape and will tell you, in very specific technical terminology, what the horrendous shortcomings of digital audio production are. I recall when I was 13 y.o., I rode my bike up to Peaches Records on Milwaukee’s northwest side. It was towards the end of summer and I was looking to score an album of classical music (because that’s all my parents would allow) and heard a song playing on an endcap pair of speakers with a huge flying saucer guitar display and a few rows of nicely stacked records at the front of the display. The song that was playing was Hitch A Ride and I stood there transfixed. Near the end of the song there came an extended outro solo. Two guitars playing an almost call and response and then playing together an octave apart. I thought, I don’t want to just listen. I want to learn to play like that. When I left the store, sandwiched in between two classical albums, was Boston 1. I kicked down for the second classical album as I reckoned it’d be easier to sneak it in the house and upstairs to my room. It worked.
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