On Eric Persing

One of my favorite things in this world are synthesizers. When I was a kid I used to called them keyboards without being aware of the complexities of these type of instruments. One thing I did know, I really loved their sound.

Today I was watching a video on 90’s Audio Sample CD’s and found the following as a top comment:

While not the subject of the video, I do think it’s a bit important to highlight the core creator behind these samples that were used not in only video games, but Film, Television and countless records from hundreds of thousands of artist. And that person is none other than Eric Persing. Eric created the sounds within the Distorted Reality CD Sampler with his company Spectrasonics and also, he was chief sound designer at Roland for many years. The core factory presets on synths like the MKS-20, D-50, JD-800, the entire XV, XP, JV line of PCM based Synths, Eric developed these presets. Being a Roland buff not ONE day goes by that I DON’T hear one of Eric’s patches in a commercial, TV show or film. I have been recently reading where the likes of Ariana Grande and many more Top 10 artists vocally mention the use his latest flagship Virtual Instrument - Omnisphere, on their albums. Omnisphere also contains all of Spectrasonics’ old CD Samplers, including Distorted Reality.

What John Williams is to Film Scores, Eric Persing is to the modern day PCM patch.

I know Spectrasonics and their legendary Omnisphere but I wasn’t aware that the mind behind it has been of great importance in the defining sound palettes of several genres and musical epochs thanks to his contributions on preset design for several legendary synths.

Here’s the video about the 90’s audio CD’s:

Roland’s promo videos with Eric Persing:

I also found this undeniably 80’s sounding album by Eric that doesn’t seem to be available in the streaming services: