music and me

i came across an email at work that asked people who play music to introduce themselves. i figured a lengthly summary would make a good blog post.

i got started with music as a kid mashing various Casio keyboards - especially the SK-1 sampling keyboard. belching into that thing and hitting the DEMO key could never be better music to a child. prank calling people was fun too - screaming or belching into the keyboard beforehand, followed up by mashing the keys when someone answered. there was also this one time i brought my trusty SK-1 to junior high and recorded myself saying "let me out!". i taped the middle-c key down and stuck it in my locker and went to class, leaving it to repeat playback. it was strange explaining everything to both the principal and the teacher who found it...

from there i really got into using our new family 386 computer when i was ~12 years old. i was really into playing and editing both Wolf 3D, DOOM - tinkering with map, sprite, sound and music editing. at that same time i was also experimenting with the original amiga MOD-style "tracker" music. making sample-based music in MS-DOS was pretty whacky in comparison to more recent years. in terms of formats i had went from MOD's to Composer669 to ScreamTracker3 to ImpulseTracker. i got hold of all my samples from too much time spent on local BBS', downloading other songs, as well as sampling my music collection and VHS movies. i was the ultimate nerd in regards music. i stopped listening to Metallica and started listening to crazy computer music. tracker music wans't anything like the popular Adlib/SoundBlaster FM / General-MIDI music at the time. i had a chance to toy around with Cakewalk on Windows 3.1 for DOOM music editing and was left wanting to use tracker music for my modifications instead.

i was eventually exposed to rock instruments in high school. i obtained a kick and tom drum, borrowed a snare drum and started playing 3-piece drums (without any cymbals) with a school friend named Doug Balmes. it was pretty hard to call the two of us an actual band. we managed to get skipped at our high school "battle of the band" rehearsals because dougs brother was dating the girl who managed it. if we had actually rehearsed i can guarantee we would have never been allowed to play in front of people. we picked up a backup singer (dougs girlfriend at the time) and bass player for the special night (who was lucky enough to hide behind an alien mask). the bass player never heard nor played a single note for any of our original material before it was time to go on in front of the packed echoey gymnasium crowd. it's a little hard to remember because my memory is still clouded with the intense amount of embarrassment from that night, but i think we were the only band who didn't get a single clap of applause. the only thing that happened was some girl yelled "you suck" in between songs in our set. needless to say, that night saw the end of "The Virtues of Milk". at some point hanging around with other high school musical acquaintances and friends i learned the mighty power of the bar chord on guitar. i started borrowing a friends guitar and Digitech RP10 to plug in to my SoundBlaster's line-in so i could play guitar along with whatever tracker music i had made.

at some point in high school i was turned on to an album called "The Downward Spiral" from Nine Inch Nails. it was the first "real music" i started to listen to again since ditching heavy metal for tracker music a few years prior. i had connected with it because it was the first album i had heard that actually used electronics and samples that sounded very cool and had meaning. Trent Reznor is still my biggest influences today in regards to anything related to sound and music.

then came the internet and QUAKE.

i still used DOS tracker programs (Impulse Tracker) up until i emailed American McGee and sent in a music demo to id Software in 1997. over the course of a few months i kept in contact with American to eventually get a song of mine published as part of the QUAKE2 soundtrack. as a teenager it felt pretty cool to be credited under Rob Zombie in a computer game. i was only 18 and had just graduated high school that year - so listening back you can imagine why i cringe at what the "public at large" has heard from me.

it was after i heard the QUAKE2 track in a friends car that i started to grasp there was more to sequencing music on a computer with a home stereo system. i realized in horror that "Climb" sounded really crappy and muddy outside of my basement bedroom. it was at that point that i started to get interested in the "engineering" aspect of sound and music - learning how fundamental sound and mixing works, as well as exposing myself to the associated tools that accompany the process.

thanks to the internet i've spent the past 10 years learning and practicing multitrack recording and mixing in my spare time. throughout that time i also started applying what i've learned to sound design.

in that time i've acquainted myself with playing and recording drums, guitar, bass and keys. i try to avoid vocals since i don't care for my singing voice. like most nerds i don't have anything interesting worth singing about.

these days i still noodle around with music at home and work as a sound designer in the gaming industry. more recently i am jamming on drums with a few people from work doing some cover tunes.

time for lunch.