ABOUT TOSHIFUMI KUNIMOTO:
Toshifumi Kunimoto, born in Sapporo Hokkaido Japan in 1957, received his BS degree in 1980 and MS degree in 1982 from the Faculty of Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo. He joined Yamaha in 1982, where he contributed to the physical modeling of musical instruments and hardware effects. He was engaged in LSI design for electronic and music synthesizer products and in 1987 was re-assigned to the engineering project of the historic VL1 synthesizer, followed by a few others including the AN1x, EX5 and Motif.
In 2001, he came back to the world of effects, his home ground, with the Virtual Circuit Modeling technology – software which is used not just to replicate hardware effects and the like but to provide software solutions at the component level. These developments were carried out under his leadership by one of Yamaha’s most progressive engineering groups, called K’s LAB, formed in 1987 to create a new tone generator technology. Six years later they came out with the world's first synthesizers to utilize physical modeling. Toshifumi Kunimoto is now working in the Center for Advanced Sound Technologies/YAMAHA Japan as Deputy General Manager.