Standing On The Edge

In Standing On The Edge, Robert Margouleff shares his stories of pushing the boundaries of art and technology while helping create some of the most significant and influential music of our time. Beginning with the production of his first film, Ciao! Manhattan, with Andy Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick, Margouleff takes us behind the scenes of the tragic beauty of New York s East Village and the Factory as he discovers a powerful new way to score his movie: the Moog synthesizer. He then gives us a first-hand account of how he and his partner, Malcolm Cecil, invented the world s largest analog synthesizer, TONTO (The Original New Timbral Orchestra) and used it to help unleash Stevie Wonder s genius on his era-defining classic albums Music Of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness First Finale. In legendary studios like Electric Lady and the Record Plant, Margouleff becomes a leading producer and engineer for artists like Billy Preston, Jeff Beck, DEVO, The Isley Brothers, and David Sanborn. As an early adopter of immersive audio, he installs quad monitors to give his musicians an inspiring surround experience and develops a new mixing process for home theater that brings many of Hollywood s biggest blockbusters to life. These achievements alone would make for a rich, compelling narrative, but Standing On The Edge offers much more. Margouleff interweaves his personal experiences with the teachers, friends, mentors, and influences who shaped him and gave him the insight, sensitivity, and humanity to empower so many others to realize their creative dreams. He could stand on the edge and create magic with these major artists because of those who helped him along the way. His memoir is an entertaining document of a key period in music history that brings readers deep into his world of record and film production and will inspire new generations of music-makers to stand on the edge themselves.