The three of us, Steve Garth, Fred Maher and Jayce Murphy, have been  heavily involved in the developing world of digital audio workstations most of our careers. We were there at the beginning when Dave Smith, founder of Sequential Circuits,  introduced  the Musical Instrument Digital Interface protocol, with the sole intention of connecting and controlling electronic synthesizers from different  manufacturers together. Little did he know at the time how MIDI would trigger the revolution of a new genre of computer based music creation and recording.

Since the days of the rudimentary linear recording MIDI sequencers in the early 80’s, computer recording technology has evolved into the powerful Digital Audio Workstations we use now. There is very little music created today that has not had computer technology involved in some aspect of its production. Software companies continue to develop exciting and inspiring products, and computers continue to become more powerful and affordable. It’s a great time to be involved in computer recording.

However as each generation of software and computer technology evolves, it brings with it a new level of technical complexity that oftentimes limits productive creativity. In our initial discussions we all agreed that artists are artists. Most are not technicians, and should not be expected to be. Furthermore, we felt today’s artists were in need of a one stop shop for technical advice, support and training on every aspect of their systems. The only solution was to set up a company specifically dedicated to that task.

That company is OBEDIA, the central resource for computer based musicians and recording artists, no matter their level of expertise, what products they are using or where they are based in the world.