[DAVID WEISER PERFORMING ON THE KURZWEIL PC3]

BILL HOLLAND: I noticed that the analog sounds in here are really good in terms of anything. I pulled up a patch called like Blade Runner ARP and I mean there are some cool like vintage kind of analog stuff in there. It seems like the programming, which if you look up here, is this the editor for it?

DAVID WEISER: This is the brand new computer editor. Absolutely. I actually haven't done any programming on this yet. This is like luxury. I think I'd quadruple my output with this thing, but it looks exactly the way I wanted it to.

BILL HOLLAND: Awesome. Yeah, I mean I was looking through here and it looks like yeah you pretty much can do anything. You can control your layers, add banks.

DAVID WEISER: [INAUDIBLE]

BILL HOLLAND: Yeah.

DAVID WEISER: Sound Tower, the guys who did this, they've done the editor for Moog and for Dave Smith and for Motif. They're a very, very productive group and they're great to work with. They're a real pleasure to deal with. This is something that's going to represent the new Kurzweil. USB connectivity, things showing up in the desktop environment seamlessly and interacting with the desktop users the way they ought to, you know. We've definitely stepped up to the modern era now and we brought all the ancillary features up to date, whether it's USB or having a little flash media card like you have in a camera for the back. You can update your OS via USB. It takes about a minute. All about that kind of stuff is really easy to get around the machine. All the loading and navigating. There's an information button, so when you're inside of a program, you hit info and it tells you what the sliders do because they're not hard labeled. If it's from a famous song, it will tell you, "Blah! This is from a Steely Dan song here," you know. That's, you know.

BILL HOLLAND: It's pretty awesome

DAVID WEISER: It does everything but plays it for you at that point.

BILL HOLLAND: That's pretty sweet. Yeah.

DAVID WEISER: When you're in the music store, there's a -- Well, when at home too -- There's a function called easy audition. Every program has a small sequence tied to it. So, when you're in a music storem, you hit a bass sound and you hit the play button, the actual physical button, it'll give you a bass riff. If you're on a drum program, it'll give you a drum riff. So, might have, you know, a beginner who's in a music store who can't play an appropriate slap bass line, so you have him hit play and they go [VOCALIZES SLAP BASS RIFFAGE] and, you know, they get Flea or they get the Beastie Boys. We're trying to make the name more relevant too, like the Blade Runner that you mentioned, and evoke something right away. You know what it means whether it's Timbaland or the Beastie Boys or, you know, anything that's current like that, Fergie, any of the newer pop people who we're referencing in here. I think we need to expand Kurzweil's appeal to electronica and hip hop and techno and dance and pop.

BILL HOLLAND: It's always been a big limit to Kurzweil. They've always been really solid workstations and synthesizers but so many electronic people and hip hop artists and, you know, pretty much everybody in my realm, nobody wanted o touch them just because yeah they felt kind of like more of this performance like Elton John was using it I think or --

DAVID WEISER: Yeah. There were some in here like there was -- is on Terry Gross for half hour going off about his 2500 and how much he loves it. We didn't pay him to do it either. It's really nice. I almost drove off the road when I heard it. There are artists but they're not enough who were exposed to it before with the old stuff, the K series, so this we're targeting a bigger, broader, hipper kind of crowd that's not just going to be the shredders like [VOCALIZING SHRED KEYBOARD PLAYING] kind of guys. I love those guys and they're totally represented in here, but we've also got funk and blues players and rock players. Whether it's classic rock wedding band kind of stuff, we got it covered. Whether it's bedroom DJs, bedroom recording guys, we got it covered. And with a thousand presets, if you don't want to tweak it all, you can just jump right in and you're up and running out of the box. The sliders do well. You know, they're assigned to do really cool things so you don't even need to go in and edit if you don't want to get in and edit and tweak around. You can just scroll through the programs, and with a thousand, that's going to keep you busy for a while.

BILL HOLLAND: Cool, man. Well, thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

DAVID WEISER: Well. Thanks. That was all right.

BILL HOLLAND: Yeah. That's fine, man. And we will be back with more from NAMM 2008 in Anaheim on Gearwire.Com.