About William Coakley
In the late 60s and early 70s, William Coakley worked with Bob Moog. William introduced the idea of using a divider system for tone generation, which formed the conceptual basis for the development of the Polymoog. Also, at that time, the Orchestron was conceived with David VanKoevering who distributed the product.
In the early eighties, he assisted Oberheim Electronics with enhancements, corrections and marketing ideas for the Oberheim sequencing system. William Coakley was the first to perform live using this system.
In the late eighties, William worked with Kurzweil staff (Hal Chamberlain) in developing software for the Midi Board. He also assisted Steinberg Jones, Passport Designs, Opcode, Digidesign and others in developing various software packages… alpha/beta.
William Coakley has an engineering background including research and development of Fourier-related algorithms for spectral alteration and noise elimination.
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A Lifetime in Music
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College Instructor
Created the courses at Palm Beach Community College for Music Technology, Recording and Production. Instructor for 4 years teaching those courses.
Author
THE ELECTRONIC MUSIC DICTIONARY. The first of its kind published in 1988.
Musician
Composer • Producer • Arranger
Proficient in: Keyboards, Flute.
Other instruments: Violin, Drums, Tenor Sax, Guitar.
Perfect pitch.
Technician
Piano tuner/technician. Concert piano tuner for Baldwin Piano Co. during the 70s. Also, qualified Electronics Service Technician.
The Perfect Piano Series
Coakley developed and marketed the world-renowned CD-ROM of Steinway and Kawai pianos (Five-star rating). It became KEYBOARD MAGAZINE’s piano pick for 1995.
In 1996 he introduced Volume II (Five-star rating in Electronic Musician, May issue, page 152) featuring the Fazioli 10′ 2″ Concert Grand. He then licensed the Steinway piano to Ensoniq who featured it in the ZR76 keyboard and EXP-4 expander card.
A Rig Rundown From The Past
The Old Keyboard Setup
This was my setup in 1984 when I played at the Hyatt Regency and later the LA Cafe in Manalapan, Florida. Notice a piece of the 3- track AMPEX in the background. No stand manufacturer made a stand that I could use, so Gary Marcinkowski fitted some exhaust pipe extensions onto the Ultimate Support stand. The ceiling height is 8 feet.
On the top from the left was the Ursa Major Space Station, the first digital reverb under $15,000. The Eventide 949 Harmonizer was next, and above it was an Aural Exciter held down by bungee cords. To the right of that was the Oberheim Drums and Sequencer. Below was the OB-Xa; then the Emu E1, Polymoog and the CP70 Piano. Mounted vertically to the extreme right was a dbx 165 Overeasy compressor.
The sound system consisted of 4 ElectroVoice cabinets with 18″ woofers, vented midrange and 4 tweeters. The vented midrange was the key to a great sound, but EV abandoned its use for some unknown reason.