[1] Fast grew up in Livingston, New Jersey and attended Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, where he obtained a degree in History.

There he took his previous training in piano and violin and melded them with computer science to become interested in synthesized music and to build his own primitive sound-making electronic devices.

He was introduced to Rick Wakeman, the keyboard player from the band Yes, during a local radio interview, and traveled to the UK to work with Yes on their 1973 album Tales from Topographic Oceans.

At least two tracks from the album Audion (1981) were used as the basis for music in Commodore 64 computer games: Rob Hubbard's scores for the C64 version of Zoids and Master of Magic, which were unofficial partial-covers of songs Ancestors and Shibolet.

These are rumored to be a tongue-in-cheek response to statements that appeared on albums by the rock group Queen that they used no synthesizers, which were made to inform listeners who assumed otherwise.