Intuitive Music

Larry Fast

Larry Fast is told to be a master of the synthesizer and one of the most influential electronic musicians in the 70’s.

Grown up in New Jersey, Larry Fast studied piano and violin and later became interested in building synthesizers, becoming a consultant to Moog Music during the development the Polymoog and Memorymoog instruments.

Fast would worked later with numerous artists. In 1973, he was required by the keyboardist Rick Wakeman to build some custom made synthesizers and he gave him technical assistance on synthesis during the recordings of Yes legendary album “Tales of Topographic Oceans”. He would later work for Hall and Oates, Foreigner, Barbara Streisand, Air Supply, and Meat Loaf. Larry Fast was also a member onstage of Wendy Carlos’ Switched On Bach Ensemble.

Larry Fast has recorded numerous electronic works under the moniker of Synergy, featuring experimentation based on digital synthesis and sequencial music. His first release was “Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra” in 1975, which was quite revolutionary in terms of synthesis and sequencing. After this release, he worked as a synthesizer technical assistant for the German progressive rock band Nektar during the recordings of the album “Recycled”. Between 1977 and 1982, Larry Fast worked closely as a synthesist and sequencer in the production the first four solo albums of Peter Gabriel, and toured with him as a keyboardist.

The Synergy series includes numerous electronic releases during the 70’s, including the albums “Sequencer” (1976), “Cords” (1978), and “Games” (1979). In 1981, he pioneered the use of the computer in electronic music with the album “Computer Experiments”, and later “Metropolitan Suite” in 1987. He also worked for film soundtracks like “The Jupiter Menace” in 1982 and “Gremlins” in 1984.

In the 90’s, Larry Fast developed along with Wendy Carlos a state-of-the-art digital process of soundtrack restoration and surround stereoization conversion called: Digi-Surround Stereo Sound.

In 2000, Larry Fast was involved in the live tour of the bass player Tony Levin of King Crimson and also participated in the recordings of his solo albums “Waters of Eden” (2000) and “Pieces of Sun” (2002).

A compilation titled “Back In Time 3″ was released in 2001, including three synthesized versions by Larry Fast of popular tracks from the Commodore 64 vintage computer. During this time Fast was also involved in music compositions for an attraction at Tokyo DisneySea. He has also wrote more than 80 music pieces for the XM Satellite Radio in the U.S.

Larry Fast has also worked for artists such as Kate Bush, Barbra Streisand, and Annie Haslam.