It all started in 1999 when I got my hands on Retro AS-1 ......
And now I'm here

 

You were making music with a device I used for making calls!
Jokes aside, I just watched the Boss DR-5 in action and I'm pretty sure that machine was amazing at its time.

 

Mi mom, my grandma, mi first guitar and me.

 

I played guitar at an early age and always read the music trade magazines. When I had some real money I
bought a multitimbral synthesizer from Roland and a 4 track multitrack recorder. Sometime it was there,
the first PC to make music. I bought a PC with a soundcard and somehow I was drawn into the WorldWideWeb.

I actually only wanted to make music, today I sit in front of the PC and write in real time
at Audiosexpro, who would have thought that back then that today everything is digital.

 

That's an easy question to answer. I started on cassette multitrack decks as so many others did in the 80's.
I had already recorded in "real" studios. I got tired of paying through the nose and being at the mercy
of so called engineer/producers who would put their own stamp on MY music. I didn't like paying big
bucks for final product that I felt that didn't even come close to what I wanted. After 4-trk cassettes,
I moved up. I built a real studio around a reel to reel recorder, an analog mixing desk and mostly analog
outboard gear. Early digital stuff didn't sound all that great to me but slowly I kept advancing. First with
digital rack gear and DAT for mixdowns. I integrated a pc into the setup in 2000. That was a good balance.
I would still record some tracks to tape....drums and bass mostly as tape's natural compression sounded
better with those instruments. I would then overdub, mixdown and master in the box. I recorded my own
music and many other local artists with that setup. Then I lost it all to my bitch of an ex-wife. Now, of course,
I'm all digital and mostly do live mobile recording and FOH sound as I don't own a building to put a new studio
in. I do miss that old setup tho....some great music, musicians and good times.

 

When someone turned me on to Garageband in 2008, a switch clicked in my head. A long time before that, I had given-up on writing song and recording them on four-track cassette decks, frustrated that my ideas were restricted to my self-limited with guitar and keyboard instruments and only four tracks (even with bouncing). I've had a lifetime's worth of musical inclinations and things to express in songs.

 

In November '78 I had gone to see The Grateful Dead in Madison Square Garden and was still heavily, heavily tripping on some liquid acid a kind stranger had dripped, dripped and dripped again ("oops" he said) on my tongue and trying my best to get to my friend's apartment near Brooklyn College on the D train, but couldn't see the world outside of the subway car and couldn't read anything that could have helped me discern where on route I was or anywhere at all the train was stopping (I don't remember either the show or how I even made my way to the subway). I was functionally blind but for the people inhabiting the space with me at that moment in time.There were some German tourists in the scene, a portly couple with red haired twins about six years old that I remember looking cleaner than any children that I had ever seen in my life, their cheeks glowing like gleaming apples in the neon light of the car and their matching all white outfits almost painful to look out, the light reflecting off of them like toothpicks in my eyes. I had gotten the idea that they were the holders of all knowledge, and so strode over towards them to ask them in their wisdom to help me out of my predicament. I must have looked fairly crazed with my long hair stringy and wet from being caught in the rain after the show, my patchwork outfit and wizard hat too much for them to take and my huge dilated LSD pupils odd and dangerously threatening, for after the second step towards them they grabbed up their children (seemingly pre-planned in the event of imminent demise at the hand of a seeming murdering maniac like me) in their arms and literally ran away and into the next car, the father keeping looking over his shoulder back towards me to make sure I was not in pursuit. I was heartbroken, imagining that I'd never be able to leave and spend the rest of my days rattling along on the tracks and only making fleeting friendships with those commuting to work.

The train had reached the end station and I found myself alone. I dared not leave the car which I still couldn't see out of even though the doors were open. I was still absolutely blazing in my hallucinogenic state. A few minutes later a few people came into the car and I felt much better. The subway car pulled out of the station and on it's way in the direction in which I first came. After a while I noticed a short and pleasant looking hispanic man and got up the nerve to ask for his help..but he didn't speak any english...but who groked that I was in need of help and who understood me through my horrible and rudimentary high school spanish that I NEEDED DESPERATELY to disembark when we got to Avenue H. When the train stopped he led me out by the arm, blessed me in the name of God and hurried back inside. As the train pulled away I realized that my next predicament was finding my friend's building, but I remembered his instructions and surprising myself found myself in the building's vestibule and the rows of apartment buzzers happily in front of my nose. Although not wearing a watch I just knew that it was wayyy much later than it should have been for me to land there. Now probably in the 6th hour of my tripping adventure I was coming slowly down and was able to find Eli's name and tentatively pressed his button. It took a while for him to buzz me in. The elevator ride up to his floor was it's own adventure in the slow moving magical though odd feeling brown box, and I was soooo very happy to walk up to his door after the hours and tribulation to finally find my way there. He greeted me with a smile and commented on how totally fucked up that I looked. I could tell that he had been fast asleep, and he said that he couldn't hang out with me because he had an exam at 8 am. He told me to wait a second, and when he returned he handed me the paperback version of Hunter S Thompson's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, and then went into his closet and fetched his Teac 4 track recorder and then handed me his 1964 Fender Strat and a cable...the rest is history.

 

Last edited: Oct 1, 2022

It was an early autumn of 2016. I got hired as a mixing engineer intern (with no experience whatsoever, but I knew I wanna have a job related to music), and the studio had Cubase 5 there. So the studio head, learning that I have no experience, adviced me too look up Ask Video guide for Cubase 5, which I did.
A few lessons in they talk about MIDI and synths and it strikes me. Holy shit, I can just do my own music like that? Hooooowly shieet, I actually CAN?!
And so it went. Guess I was always interested, but never knew that.

 

when i heard this damn awesome guitar sound i was blown away ....

 

been musical since I first remember, always had decent original music inside my head, which I suppose is the rarest & most important thing right?

Everything after that, was about needs must, and figuring out better or affordable ways to advance on what was available at the time to get the job done. Be that for live work or studio reccording.

 

I had a casio keyboard and a fisherprice recorder when I was 4 years old. The rest has then somehow emerged over time.

 

piano/keys. And then the mighty Alesis MMT-8 to start sequencing. Maybe I used cakewalk first, but I think it was the Alesis.

 

For me it was Six Wives Of Henry The VIII. Truly a life changing album. In fact I still cling to that adolescent fantasy.

 

that reminds me of a time me and some friends went to one of the concerts at the skating rink in central park back in the 70's. i forget who was playing that night and since we didn't have tickets, we were of the many that sat on the grass outside to listen. i was drinking a beer and some guy came up to me and asked me if he could have a sip. i said sure and handed it to him. when he gave it back, he said, "do you mind if i put something in it?" of course being the times it was i said, "sure'. so he took out an eyedropper and put a few drops in.

wound up speeding my brains out. i never felt so good before, or ever since, in my entire life since that night . was on top of the world. felt like i could do anything. felt like i could become president of the planet and every single person would love me, lol. when we went back to hang out in my friends neighborhood and having a blast with everybody where i was a stranger to the people who knew my friend, i was totally out of my usual introverted shell.

those concerts were great... god, who did i see.... allman brothers... mahavishnu... poco.... others i forget yet just a drop in the bucket of the huge amount of great bands/artists that played that venue. led zeppelin ffs, played there... you can find a the list on wikipedia... its enormous. didn't see them there sadly but i did everytime they played the garden and at nassau coliseum.
anyway let that be a lesson do you young'uns ... don't do drugs

 

Last edited: Oct 2, 2022

That was quite an amazing time. If I remember correctly it was called The Shaefer Music Festival (that really awful tasting beer company was the sponsor) which later was sponsored by Dr. Pepper, and it cost just $1°° to get in. We only started going to concerts there in 1976 when allowed to travel into the city alone without the parents.

 

It all began when I was younger in the 90 when I went to club in Belgium and listen to electronic music. And started to buy analogue gears, TB303, 808, 909, SH101. But now my interest in music making has wanished has I understood this business is rotten by false stars like david guetta or charlott dewitte who succeed in music because there famillies are rich, in the music business and the good religion (I can't write or I will be banned). the kind of shit I used to see on Instagram, stupid girls skaking there ass and boobs in front of a mixing desk but are not abble to produce music, and play ghost producer music, disgusting ... but that 's the facts.

 

I can't remember, I was really high.

 

When I was in my early teens my grandfather worked for the papers as a reviewer, and used to get sent records of all kinds, being a very young and impressionable lad I quickly developed a interest in experimental synth music, Kraut rock and early synth pop.... (the warning signs where all there). When I got my first job working in the centre of Glasgow about late 1981 aged 17/18, I used to hang about the music shops, stare at the synths and beg the staff to let me have a play, not that I could actually play the keyboard at the time, but they held a deep fascination for me. A year later Sound on Sound released the first copy of their magazine, which I bought and then somehow I managed to get credit to buy a Roland Juno 6, (which I must confess my mother was not that impressed with) I've not really stopped since.

 

My dad dragged me along to recording studios when I was about 3-4yo. He also rehearsed and recorded with his band in the basement of our house (drums, guitars, basses, keys/Rhodes, vocals, trumpets, etc).

 

What was that app that Propellerheads released before Reason? It emulated a 303 and an 808?

ReBirth.

It was the warez version of ReBirth that made me think that perhaps producing music would be a fun thing to do. Prior to that, it just seemed like a black art that required twenty years of painful practice to make anything that sounded any good.