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Article by: David Ferris, Macworld.com

Omar
Hakim has gone from banging on a toy drum as a child to mastering a
Roland V-Drums kit in his adulthood, never missing a beat. How has the
jazz and pop percussionist kept on top of things as the music world has
gone increasingly digital? By keeping an open mind and being willing to
try new things. "The drummers that embrace this are going to discover a
whole new palette available to them, sonically and creatively," Hakim
says. This approach to change has certainly paid off for Hakim: he's
played drums for an eclectic roster of musicians including Sting, Miles
Davis, and David Bowie. And whether he's playing drums or producing
records, Hakim never strays far from his 500MHz Power Mac G4 -- a
machine that helps him make beautiful music.

Q: How did you get started with drumming?

A:
I started playing drums when I was very young, like four or five years
old. It started out as a gift from one of my uncles, a toy drum, and
they noticed I had a natural affinity to rhythm. I immediately started
playing a march cadence I had heard on television or something. My
father [Hasan Hakim, a trombonist for Duke Ellington] eventually got me
a real snare drum. I started playing with my father professionally at
10. I did my first road tour at 15 years old. I'm 42, so I've been a
pro for 30-some years now. It's been a long love affair with music.

Q: At what point did computerized music enter the picture?

A:
The computer entered my life via a friend of mine who was a recording
engineer and who is now one of the technical directors for CBS
television, a guy named Fountain Jones. In the seventies, we were
kicking around with the home systems available at the time, which would
have been the Tascam, TMX four-track and eight-track machines, also
machines by Atari. In the seventies and early eighties, Tascam came out
with the cassette decks you could multi-track on. They got a lot more
portable, and then around the mid-eighties, people started writing
software for MIDI sequencing on the computer. It allowed me initially
to multi-track myself because I play drums and keyboards and guitar,
and I sing. So I was able at that time to record a drum track, overdub
myself playing keyboards, overdub myself playing guitar. It was my home
exercise for songwriting. Now I'm able to plug in my keyboards and
actually create a whole orchestra of music by myself. In 1986, when I
got Mark of the Unicorn Performer on a Mac Plus, that's when I really
started to get some work done. Back then we would record SMPTE time
code on one track of our multi-track machine and then get the computer
slaved to the time code. Then we'd record our guitars and vocals and
that sort of thing. The only problem is that you couldn't edit the tape
as easily as you could edit the MIDI data on the computer. A few years
later, hard disk recording [came along]. Mark of the Unicorn Performer
eventually became Digital Performer, allowing you to record audio to
your hard drive. That's when the whole industry changed over. In fact,
these days most of the recording sessions I do as a professional
involve recording tracks directly to hard disk.

Q: What else are you up to?

A:
I've been experimenting with software synthesizers recently, which is
very cool. In other words, you could have sampling and analog
synthesis, with your computer as the tone generator. The complete
virtual studio that lives inside the computer is fast becoming a
reality. Audio recording, MIDI recording, and synthesis are all
possible from your Mac.

Q: How important has the drum machine been to your musical development?

A:
The drum machine came into my personal usage as a survival means. There
were a bunch of drummers when drum machines came out in the early
eighties who felt very threatened by the whole thing. Once artists got
their hands on drum machines, there wasn't such a demand for drummers,
particularly in pop music. So I said, "If you can't beat 'em, join
'em." I thought, "Who's better to program a drum machine than a
drummer?" Immediately I went out and purchased the most popular drum
machine and learned how to use it and marketed myself around New York
as a programmer. Then the machines evolved into drum devices that could
be played with sticks -- the Simmons electronic drum set and the Roland
OctoPad, the Dynacord Add-One. I experimented with all these drums at
one time or another while I was drumming for Sting.

Q: What do you use now?

A:
Right now I'm using a product from Roland called the V-Drum, which is
an amazing product because it allows me to create virtual drum sets.
Drummers finally have an instrument that kind of puts them in the same
league as keyboard synthesists have been in for years -- the ability to
create more than one sound on the instrument. The V-Drums allow me to
have a wider percussion palette than ever. I'm not limited to just the
traditional drum set sound with synth. I can have a drum set of
industrial construction sounds. I can have a drum set of exotic Asian
instruments.

Q: What do all these changes mean for drummers?

A:
It does a lot for drummers if they're willing to open up their minds
and move past the traditional aspects of drumming. There are a lot of
drummers who are very attached to "Well, it doesn't sound like a drum.
It doesn't feel like a cymbal." That's something that a lot of drummers
will have to work past. What we're going to see is a whole generation
of electronic drummers and it's probably not going to be that much
different from the generations of electronic guitarists and electronic
bass players we've seen the last 20 or 30 years. There are guys that
play electric guitar and electric bass that don't really deal with the
acoustic version of the instrument. I guess that's no different than
keyboard players in the sixties and seventies. You probably had your
diehard guys saying, "It doesn't sound like a piano." But then you had
a few artists -- like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Weather Report --
who decided to take these electronic instruments and make them their
own. The drummers who embrace this change are going to discover a whole
new palette available to them, sonically and creatively.

Q: What other tools for drummers are you hoping to see?

A:
I can honestly say that right now my hands are very full with the tools
I have available. If you had asked me this question three years ago, I
could have given you a really long list. But with the advent of Pro
Tools and Digital Performer and all of these third-party developers
that create these wonderful software plug-ins for equalizers and
reverbs and effects boxes, and the guys who are developing software
synth, my hands are full learning.

Q: What do you think about Napster?

A:
The fact that Napster has identified a user base out there that is
interested in downloading music is a positive thing. I also think that
what's come out of all of the hoopla and the negative press and
everything is that it's forced everyone to organize ethical ways of
selling intellectual property. Maybe it took the Napster incident to
push down the accelerator pedal. I don't support copyright
infringement, as a musician who actually feeds his family from my
intellectual property. We can't forget the importance of supporting the
arts in America.

Q: Have you ever used Napster?

A:
I've gone to the site, I've checked it out, I've seen the list, but I
don't use Napster. I'm one of those guys who goes to the record store
and looks around. I actually make a list of CDs and DVDs in my Palm
Pilot whenever I hear something. I like the process of buying CDs.

Q: Do you think new services like iTunes, which help people to organize their music digitally, change how we consume music?

A:
No, it doesn't. It's no different than 20 years ago when people went
out and bought their favorite 45s and arranged them on the spindle in
the order they wanted to hear them.

Q: What's up next for you?

A:
Because of my love of the technology and engineering, I'm going to be
moving my career more into the production roles. I'm actually looking
for artists. I spend a lot of my time in clubs looking for young
talent. I just finished [drumming on] a very interesting album for an
artist called Cheb Mami. He's famous in America for singing on Sting's Desert Rose. We tracked that whole record with the Pro
Tools system. I'm going to start a record with Bobby McFerrin, Chick
Corea on keyboard, Richard Bona on base, and myself on drums. I'm also
about to start tracks on an album of my own.

Source MacWorld.com