ROOM WITH A VU

By Britt Strickland

Willies Place

Sound designer/ musician/ composer Willie Wilcoxs new solution for an old problem
MIXING CONSOLE: Digidesign ProControl (at the USA/Sci-Fi Channel Studio), Control 24 (Willies Place) MONITORING: Tannoy 800A XL Active [2 pr.], Sennheiser HD 250 Linear MK 2 headphones [4] MICROPHONES: AKG C414b-TL2, C4000b OUTBOARD: Line 6 Pod Pro, Bass Pod, Echo Pro; Midiman Super DAC 2496 SYNTHS/SAMPLERS/MIDI: Korg Triton (76 key), Midiman Midi Sport 8x8 [2], Delta 1010; Clavia Nord Rack 3, Ddrum 4 pads/brain, Emu XL-7 Command Station COMPUTERS: Apple Gwith SuperDrive and 80-GB IDE internal drive, Dr. Bott DVIator [2], Apple Studio 17-inch displays [2], Soundchaser PC, Apple G3 DAW EQUIPMENT: Digidesign Pro Tools Mix3, I/O, 1622 I/O [2]; Club Mac 80-GB FireWire hard drives [2] SOFTWARE: Digidesign Pro Tools 5.1, Reverb One; Waves Gold Bundle, Renaissance Collection 2, Restoration; Line 6 Amp Farm, Echo Farm; Gallery Alkali, Mtools, Virtual VTR; Wave Mechanics Ultra Tools, Wave Mechanics Speed, Sound Blender, Pitch Blender; Access Virus, TASCAM GigaStudio, Sonic Foundry Acid, Propellerheads Reason SYNCHRONIZATION: Aardvark Aardsync 2 workstation OVERALL HEIGHT: 54 inches RACK SPACES: 48 COMPONENTS: LAN3000 modular workstation, Desk Clamp 300 series flat-panel monitor arms with extension speaker arms and tilt platform, cable management system CONTACT: Ergotron, www.ergotron.com PRICE: Not available at press time The urge to settle into one professional discipline is strong, and the path of least resistance certainly does have its charms. But for composer/producer/musician/inventor Willie Wilcox, the status quo isnt quite seductive enough, and he continues to display a persistent drive for technical as well as creative progression in audio recording, musical composition, and yes, even studio furniture design. Starting his career as a drummer with Hall and Oates and later doing sessions with Mick Jagger and Transvision Vamp, Wilcox went on to become a member of the band Utopia, working with Todd Rundgren and the other members of the group and recording, producing, writing, drumming, and singing on more than fifteen albums. Five major publishing deals as a writer/producer led to successful work with the likes of Pointer Sisters, Luther Vandross, Natalie Cole, Stacey Q (#1 dance record), and Meatloaf. Currently, as the senior sound designer and music composer at the Sci-Fi Channel and
ERGOTRON MIX COMPOSE WORKSTATION 76
WORK SURFACES: 48 x 30 inches for each

JANUARY2002

PHOTOS BY WES BENDER.
USA Cable, Wilcoxs restless talents have found a home that affords him a fitting range of new and interesting challenges. Any day could find him writing and producing an orchestral score for one of the channels Exposure short films, or utilizing a variety of musical genres and audio technology to sound design the latest I am Sci-Fi celebrity trailers. You have to wear a lot of different hats, says Wilcox. Sometimes I am doing drum n bass stuff, and sometimes its techno stuff. Sometimes its heavy guitar-oriented tracks. Always a proponent of the organic artistic flow of live performance, Wilcox often adds live drum parts via his Ddrum 4 set to the compositions he creates on his Korg Triton keyboard. There are a lot of different things that you are called upon to do, so I have to use different tools to facilitate those styles. Finding the right tools to do what he does has led Wilcox to use a variety of DAW setups and configurations. Currently he has two nearly identical DAW workstations. One is at the USA

Sci-Fi studios in Jersey City, NJ, and the other is at Willies home studio in Lebanon Township, NJ, better known as Willies Place. For video and audio file exchanges between these two locations and the USA studios in Los Angeles, Wilcox uses Sci-Fis and his own FTP site. Managing these various DAWs and multimedia formats has led to a true appreciation of proper syncing. When you have jitter-free clocking of an entire system, like the Aardsync 2, stresses Wilcox, it really tightens up the entire imaging. But there was one remaining obstacle that he wanted to overcome.
FENG SHEI FOR THE AUDIO-INCLINED
There are a lot of guys that are composing music and are audio engineers, Wilcox explains, and they are doing it simultaneously. I think, obviously, the advent of the computer has spawned this new individual. Based on that, there has to be a lot of people exactly like myself that have encountered the same kinds of problems.
One of these problems is the challenge of ergonomic gear placement, and the accessibility of all aspects of an engineers workstation. Technology has made a lot of us loners. You end up doing all this stuff by yourself and you need to be able to have your hands on everything. Prior to now, it seemed impossible for me to be able to get to everything. One solution that Wilcox envisioned was a complete re-take on how the actual skeleton of the workspace was constructed a literal redesign of the furniture that holds the recording equipment was required. The result is the Mix Compose Workstation 76. For Wilcox, the first stop was Ergotron, a company known for developing computer-related furniture and ergonomic solutions for business and healthcare environments. With my

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For more on Ergotron furniture go to www.ergotron.com; for more information on Willie Wilcox visit www.williewilcox.com.
audio experience and Ergotrons product solutions, there was a perfect pairing. As the pro audio design consultant on the project, Wilcox worked with the Ergotron team on every aspect of the workstation, trying to make key components flexible and accessible to the DAW user. Whether youre sitting at the composing station or mixing station, you just grab the two flat-screen monitors that originate in the corner of the workstation unit, which are attached to two articulating arms, and swing them to either station location. No more looking up or straining to view your software. The user puts the monitors where he or she wants them. The same monitors service each station! Writing, performing, and producing music to accompany on-screen images often forced Wilcox to compromise ideal stereo positioning with his monitors. This, too, was something he addressed. Each stereo pair of speakers is suspended from the workstation frame and can be moved into the ideal position for the user. The user is no longer restricted to xed height and width for playback monitoring. Even the worksurfaces are adjustable. It is a completely modular system. The Mix Compose Workstation is slated to be available in the first quarter of 2002. In the meantime, Willie is also involved in an artist development project with Click Model Management, as well as a unique band project in collaboration with a graphic artist and a producer. Im constantly in the process of re-inventing myself, otherwise I am incredibly bored, says Wilcox. Not surprisingly, the urge to settle is nowhere to be found.