Producer Michael Ortega

Michael Ortega got his start playing vibes after meeting Roy Ayers while working as a chef during Roy's 1976 tour in San Jose. Roy helped arrange a purchase through his contacts at Deagan/Slingerland and mentored Michael on jazz and the music business. The logistics of vibraphone amplification gave way to the development of pickups that allowed the vibes to be processed through signal processors and experiments in electronics. This led to the development of a vibraphone synthesizer interface that was invented by Gray Labs. 

       That interface was quickly modified to include interfaces for wind, string and percussion instruments. Soon MIDI was invented and an era of computer music dominated composition. Ever since that time Michael has been on the cutting edge of music technology by beta testing for musical hardware and software companies including, Yamaha, Roland, Voyetra, Opcode, Digidesign, Music Quest, Kinda Loud and Universal Audio.

    Michael  started songwriting and production while being involved with Digital Synthesizer company Gray Labs Research Inc. in 1978. At Gray Labs he was involved in the design of wave based synthesizers and interfaces for acoustic instruments. He discovered a love for sound design and developed patches for many different types of synthesizers. After developing a huge library of custom designed sounds he would use these sounds in the production of songs and jingles.

He was one of the first to use MIDI and worked on what is now known as "Virtual Recording." He continued to be on forefront of computer software and hardware technology lending his knowledge to multiple user support groups such as the DAW-Mac, DAW-PC, Motu-Mac, Opcode users group and the Spectrasonics support group.

     During the marketing of computer music technology Michael had a chance to meet and become friends with many legendary jazz musicians including Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Grover Washington Jr., Joe Sample, Wayne Shorter, Kenny G., George Duke, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Jimmy and Percy Heath and Tom Schuman.

    Since 1982 his focus has been on composition and production as owner of Aural Seduction Audio Productions. He has recorded and worked with The Heath Brothers, Tony Lindsey (Santana) Eddie Hall, Danny Hull, The Doobie Brothers, Myron Dove (Santana & Stevie Wonder) Clifford Coulter, D'Layna Dixon, Vitamin C, Ben Brown, Gary Brown, Kirby Coleman, Lenny Williams, Ron E. Beck (Tower of Power), The Stick Band, Makoto Horuchi, Kutmaster Kurt, Skylark, Qwest Records, and Andy Stokes.