The Gathering
Douglas Spotted Eagle has a confession to make. Long before most people heard of the Internet or considered using a personal computer for recreational purposes, the Native American flute player—known as "Spot" among friends—obtained an illegal copy of Sound Forge®. He wanted to see whether this little-known "shareware" created by an equally unknown software company would actually let him edit professional-quality audio on his computer, which was asking for a lot in the dark ages of the early 1990s.
It worked pretty well. Spot got hooked.
As he tells the story today from Native Restoration, his recording studio in the mountains of rural Utah, Spot says he called technical support with a question regarding his cracked copy. "They let me know then and there that I had a pirate code and that they wouldn't help me," Spot remembers.
In those days, Curtis Palmer, one of the creators of Sound Forge®, answered support calls and shipped the software as part of his "executive" duties. When he met Spot earlier this year, he distinctly remembered the incident, Spot says. "It was amazing to me that Curtis remembered me from that long ago." But Curtis disabused him of that notion. After all, "how many Spotted Eagles are there?" Spot remembers Curtis asking. To which Spot responded: "Well, we're not on the endangered species list any longer!"
Ultimately, Spot met another Sony Creative Software employee who convinced him to start checking out the company's other products. Spot did, ending his use of illicit shareware, and a new relationship was born. "I've been involved with Sony Creative Software ever since. I track my success with theirs. As their product got better so did mine," Spot says.
Considered a virtuoso performer on the Native American flute, which he has played since the age of 12, and a preeminent composer of contemporary ethnic music, Spot's career as a performer, composer, and recording genius is as amazing and multifaceted as a marquise diamond. His skills as a producer have recently earned him both a Grammy and an Emmy.
As a teenager in the late 1970s, he sang and played guitar in a rock 'n' roll band that actually opened five concerts for Z.Z. Top. In 1988, after the breakup of his marriage, he made a tape of original music in tribute to his children. It found its way to Tom Bee, a former Motown artist who had just established Sound of America Records, better known as SOAR. Though he hadn't planned to become a recording artist with a record label, he did.
Sony Creative Software products are solid. They don't put anything out until 
Douglas Spotted Eagle
Now under contract with Virgin/Higher Octave, he has since recorded 14 solo albums and collaborated on more than 40 projects, including the Kevin Costner production of "500 Nations." His voice, percussion, and performances can be heard on projects as diverse as Saturday morning cartoons to the X-Files, and his sounds in movies like "Truman" and "Geronimo." Altogether, he figures he's collaborated on more than 300 CD, film, and television projects, including a CD under the Sony Creative Software, Loops for ACID™ label, entitled Voices of Native America. It features Native American instrumentals and vocals and is used by filmmakers and musicians in their own projects.
For Spot, who cut his recording teeth on analog systems, the digital world has opened up a universe of possibilities as evidenced by his long list of accomplishments.
A special case in point, he says, is the three-day Gathering of Nations. The world's largest reunion of indigenous people attracts 50,000 visitors and 3,000 dancers and singers who represent 700 tribes from Canada and the United States. They converge on the University of New Mexico's arena each spring for their annual celebration of Native American culture. In one weekend, more than 200 songs are performed on as many as 65 stages, and Spot's Native Restoration Studios is there to record and capture the spirit of the event on a double CD.
For Gathering of Nations 2000, Spot and his colleagues, Herman Begay and David Hamilton, did something different. They chose to do the recording on a hard-disk system equipped with a suite of Sony Creative Software products including Sound Forge®, CD Architect™, and Vegas™ Video. Because the team had never jumped so far into the digital fray and wasn't sure how the equipment would hold up during the three-day marathon, Spot also used DAT tapes for backup.
Next time, Spot says he'll leave the DAT machines at home.
"Once we got in the rhythm, we were screaming," he says. First, he, Begay, and Hamilton had to record the performances, choose which of the 200 to feature on a 40-song CD, and do the edit. By Monday, they burned the CD and shipped it off to the duplicator. They accomplished all this while still in Albuquerque, working from a hotel room that they had transformed into an editing suite.
Using digital equipment in a professional studio is one thing, but a live situation is an altogether different and infinitely riskier proposition. "Most people are afraid to death of it," Spot says. "One thing that I can say for Sony Creative Software is that their products are solid. They don't put anything out until it's 200 percent." After all, Spot staked his reputation on it.
It's onward and upward from here, he says. He does his last performance in the fall, after which he plans to take a two-year hiatus to collaborate on a project with other Native Americans. Capturing live performances, such as he did for the Gathering, also ranks high on his agenda, and, in fact, his studio will be recording a Broadway tribute to Nat King Cole shortly.
Looking back over his career and his embrace of the digital age, Spot doesn't play coy. "I'd like to think that I'm at the upper end of those using digital techniques, but Sony Creative Software demystified all this stuff for me," he says. "Every record I've done since the days when Sound Forge was a shareware product has involved a Sony Creative Software product. They gave me tools that contributed to my success."
Not bad for a guy who started off using bootlegged goods.
