Openwhyd: The community of music lovers

t was in 1970 that Hideki Matsutake was grabbed by the playback of Walter Carlos's Switched-On Bach using a synthesizer and a computer at the American Pavilion of Expo '70 in Osaka. In June the following year at his age of 19, he makes his first step into professional music as an apprentice to Isao Tomita, providing him the chance of operating one of the few Moog III-P sythesizer units existing in Japan.
Establishing a company of his own named Musical Advertising Corporation (MAC) in 1974, his involvements with new music artists such as Yoshitaka Minami and Akiko Yano started. In 1978 he participated in the production of Ryuichi Sakamoto's first album, Thousand Knives. In the following years between 1978 to 1982, Matsutake served Yellow Magic Orchestra as its sound programmer, eventually to become known as "the fourth member" of the band. He also led sequencing work for numerous Technopop albums by other artists, especially at the beginning of the 80s.
In 1981, Matsutake formed "Logic System" with Makoto Irie, with whom he toured to perform in other Asian countries several times. The unit has released 10 albums to date, 2 out of them released in 8 countries. Its latest album is Tansu Matrix, released in 2008.
Matsutake is currently Chairman of Japan Synthesizer Programmers Association (JSPA).