Jack "OAT" Rayner - Roland Fantom-G6

He might not be a household name, but Jack “OAT” Rayner has made quite the mark behind the scenes, remixing, writing and recording for some of the most popular names in the music business. The owner of two studios, Rayner has been cutting and scoring tracks for well over a decade. And he knows the tools of the trade very well.

His songwriting and production trade arrived while he was student at Hamilton High School in Culver City, Calif., with a little inspiration from a friend who came to school one day with a song that she wrote. Barely a teenager, Rayner was dancing and immersed in choreography at the performing arts school, when he realized that songwriting would be the bridge for his musical gap.

The classroom became an impromptu studio for Rayner, who started collaborating back and forth with his friend, line by line. It was an opportunity for the budding musician to experiment and learn to compose a variety of styles, including rap, pop, R&B and ballads.

In fact, Rayner's first song was a ballad, written with his high school friend with some now-familiar tools. “I produced it on a Roland XP-80 and a Roland VS-1680 sequencer. She'd dump all the instruments onto that and add the vocals. You could plug mics in the back and have a great sound.”

Working with sequencers and samplers, Rayner realized he could remix music for choreography, in an effort to make songs fit his shows better. At 17, he had his sights set on a Roland SP-808, a sampler with a D-beam and a multi-track sequencer. “All of that was amazing. I used to come home every day...and I was like, I want it, I want it. Finally, someone who was very dear to me bought me the SP-808 and from that one piece of gear, I learned how to pattern layers, how to use the samples, how to cut stuff and reverse stuff and play and tweak with sounds. It was a kind of sound that was unique. And from there, everything else kind of came.”

Rayner's first gig was remixing for a show and he later worked on a video for the “Inspector Gadget” movie. It was all a self-education for Rayner, which included some time invested in calls to tech support. “I spent many a day on the phone with Roland just trying to figure out what MIDI was,” he recalls. “With no one teaching you what MIDI is, you have no idea what it is...it took a minute to understand that.”

Since his break, Rayner's worked his studio magic for some of the biggest in contemporary music, including Avril Lavigne, for whom he scored an entire section for the production, as they needed a piece of music between set changes. Rayner's also scored a video for Miley Cyrus' show opening, and has worked with large fashion brands, including having cut the music for Nike, Adidas and Diesel's shows.

Currently, Rayner's working on songs for a number of clients, including the “America's Got Talent” television show and Macy's Passport, a charity runway event.

So how did Rayner attain such a position? He credits his determination and working every single day, including keeping himself available and trying hard to connect with new people. “When I meet people, I try to invite them to work in the studio to work with them, especially if they're talented. When I watch them play and hear them do something incredible and unique, I just definitely want to bring it in. It has led to good karma for me.”

Rayner's production duties sometimes include advising artists who seek direction. “They can sometimes be caught up inside of their own head,“ he says. “I listen to all kinds of music, and I'll be able to–from the outside–see what they might be missing. I can see that they might be a little out of date in the way they're writing their words, it might be too straightforward. Or they just might need to loosen up some things. I like to let the person I'm working with write their own thing, and then I just give my two cents in which usually winds up being about 25 percent of the writing.”

But, Rayner's not always stuck in the studio, as he's recently been performing with platinum recording artist Fannius III, which is another feather in the cap for this producer/writer/remixer.

“Every month is different and the way I think the music industry is right now, unless you're a super producer–unless you're a Timbaland or someone like that–you sort of have to be a little more flexible with what you can and are willing to do to make income,” he says, adding that musicians and producers need to be open-minded and flexible to earn money in the industry.

Rayner also believes in the power of promotion via websites like MySpace. “It's a quick free way for people to come and check out your music. It's an EPK kit all in one click and that's invaluable. When it comes down to it, MySpace is giving you a great platform to keep music alive.”

And for the up-and-coming artist, Rayner sees TuneCore as another great online stop. “Record companies are really hard to get a hold of, and those deals are becoming more and more intense on what they want to have ownership of, so I'd just get your music out there, and as long as you're not scared that you won't be able to make another hit, feel free and let the music flow–you'll be able to make more.”

Rayner's studio setup includes an Apple iMac computer loaded with ProTools, Cubase and Ableton Live, plus Native Instruments plug-ins. He also runs a Nord Lead 2X keyboard with Roland Fantom-XR rack and E-mu Planet Phatt modules.

So, even though Rayner's incredibly familiar with much of the gear that's used in his business, he hadn't had much of a chance to work with the Roland Fantom-G6 Workstation Keyboard.

And that's where Roland and Guitar Center offered Rayner his Test Drive. As a valued customer of Guitar Center, Rayner was selected to receive a G6 at the Guitar Center Hollywood location and a private one-on-one tutorial from a Roland product specialist at the company's Los Angeles headquarters. “I've seen it once when I was at Guitar Center for something, but I'm not familiar with the G6 as of yet,” he said, moments before getting his Test Drive experience. “It looks pretty, I can't wait to play with it, but I don't know how to use it exactly yet.”

And looks are just one small aspect of the G6 (even though it sports an attractive heavy-duty casing with aluminum panel). Part of the most powerful and luxurious live workstation in Roland's history, the Fantom-G series workstations sport an advanced sound engine, revolutionary ARX SuperNATURAL™ expansion bay, large-sized color LCD, powerful new audio/MIDI sequencer and more.

Rayner's tutorial with product specialist Dan Krisher of Roland started off with single sounds, learning the easy-to-operate, logically laid out Fantom-G6 operations and running through different modes by previewing via a simple menu. Rayner was also introduced to the multifunction dynamic pads, which could be configured to trigger beats, samples and entire songs.

Rayner was shown the various performance environments and found it to be an impressive instrument for recording live sets, patch sets and studio sets. “It's really, really easy to layer things, and it's a very powerful machine.”

“I definitely think it's going to change my live music and my studio recordings,” he said. “I really like the sounds, they are incredible...The time stretching was just really quick–it time stretched all your MIDI, all your audio, in real time. If you want to go slower, it was perfect and quick.”

And after spending some time alone with the G6, Rayner appears as impressed as ever. We caught up with Rayner two weeks after his tutorial at Roland.

“Last night, I brought it with me to Vegas and played it in my hotel room,” he said. “I just created a set for the first song and it's really, really easy–it's going to be great. It kind of removed all three things that I have on stage, because I had a keyboard and I had a sampler, and this kind of takes care of all those things...It replaced my computer, so if I want backing tracks in the show, I can run it off of my keyboard. And I don't need a phrase sampler either, because there's already a sampler on the actual keyboard."

At first, Rayner was kind of wary of the G6, as it included some of the same sounds as his sound module. But now, Rayner intends to incorporate the G6 as a part of his studio setup. “When I started really going through it, the drum sounds were incredible for making tracks–they're really good. I found a lot of cool synths and basses, and just splitting it up in the layers you can make, it's just like, endless possibilities. It's a really good machine. It really is!”