I hired Rick to replace Rich Stevens as NCET's maintenance engineer. He had just returned from a road tour with the Doobie Brothers, worked at Wally Heider’s recording studio, and was designing a very sophisticated audio console for Neil Young. Rick is not only a skilled technician, but a very talented photographer, and a true 'artist' in spirit. He taught me, in a show we did at Video Free America, that the proper level for sound playback was not 'loud,' as I had earlier believed, but 'just clearly audible.' As he explained, that draws your audience further into the presentation.
We hit it off immediately, and Rick has been possibly my best friend ever since. Rick and I collaborated on much video work late into the night (though I’m afraid little survives today). He did work with me on the Father Tapes, and he created the wonderful sound design for Suite for Paul. On Suite for Paul, Rick spent sometimes all night developing the audio track, and I would find him, in the morning, with endless loops of tape wound over push-pins imbedded in the walls and ceiling - the audio room looked rather like a huge spider's web.
Sometimes life brings produces the greatest treasures, clothed, as he was when I first met him, in a great, dark fur coat.
DH
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Rick is a talented sound engineer and a lover of music, and was immediately drawn to the Buchla Box mucic synthesizer. He spent many nights creating tracks, some of which became scores for video works by himself and other artists.
Here are a couple of Rick's productions, recently discovered in his own archives. They give a good sense of what lovely tones and intriguing textures could be achieved in analog audio.
