RoyEl Futureman Wooten
(Five time Grammy Award winner)

As a permanent founding member of the Star Chronicles team. Futureman is one of the most innovative, forward thinking figures in modern music. Part of what makes Futureman such an innovative musician is the incorporation of science and invention into his work. His first invention, called the Drumitar is used extensively in the music of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, which allows him the ability to replicate the sound of an entire contemporary drum kit, with the movement of just a few fingers on a guitar shaped instrument. The great jazz drummer Max Roach said once to Futureman that after seeing him perform he knew that “that was the ,most creative approach to drumming he had ever seen.” His second invention, the “RoyEl,” resembles a piano but plays notes not found in the traditional western music scales. His third invention, the Dorothy Graye, also resembles a smaller piano and is dedicated to his mother Dorothy who inspired a practice method to learn the keys. This instrument is based to play off of the composer’s scriabin color to sound keys, with the universal mathematics guiding the exploration of tunings, such as the periodic table of elements and the golden ratio.