The name 720k came from the old floppy disk format.

I OCCASIONALLY play around in bars in Youngstown, but I'm thinking that DJing my own tracks is the best way to go. Less stress, less hassle of equipment fears.

The internet and MP3s have completely transformed it. Even the electronic music community -- hell, ESPECIALLY the electronic music community has gone through radical changes due to the advances in music storage and playback technologies. Personally, I miss tangible records and having a record in your hand. They still exist, but they're a dying breed. However, digital labels, like it or not, are the future. And from what I'm seeing through my own personal little window to the "industry," it's forcing labels to be more fair to their artists. Maybe not in Top 40land, but definitely to your average musician. Many labels are finally starting to approach the music world with a little bit of grudging slack, and I don't have a problem with that aspect in the least.

Sure, as long as I could continue with what I want to write. And when you love music as much as I do, there's always time for that. ;)

I've been doing this in one way or another since I was 14 years old, knowing next-to-nothing about rave culture, and still intensely drawn toward electronic music. At the time, my good friend Ben Cole and I were playing with keyboards, tape recorders, and later, tracking software on my even then ancient 286 computer. Trackers gave me the reassurance that electronic music could be sequenced and created, even by two nerdy kids. We released a self-made (although semi-professionally printed) tape in 1997 called "SMC." Believe me, it was cheesy, way too fast, and cluttered. 

As the years went on, I did most things solo. I joined an industrial internet music group called 7YNIVf, and released crude industrial tracks that I'm ashamed and proud of at the same time. It was a great time for learning, and the tracks garnered the respect of many people in the mid/late-90s ANSI art scene. Ben and I also got a short-lived band going with another friend of mine, and we took a stab at making acoustic/electronic music. It came out more pop-folkish than electronic, but still sounded good, and people in our high school circulated the one-song tape we made. I wish we'd had more time to make music in a band setting like that. It was a cool process, and we all clicked musically.

I slowed way down on writing music for a while until late 2000. The rave scene had lived up to and exceeded my personal expectations, and I was hooked on it. I was also tired of industrial due to losing a lot of teenage angst, and exchanging it for friendliness, compassion, excellent music, and positivity. So, I began making more dance-oriented music. I wrote a slew of tracks, some of which I can't even remember the names, and was feeling pretty good about their sound. My friends thought so too, and supported me 100%. Their support really guided me into getting a little more serious about making music. My friend and then-coworker, Julian, had a friend named Mark (Velvet Jones) who was a DJ/composer and was starting up a techno night in Youngstown. Jules introduced us, and we instantly became friends. Until that point, I had never met a techno DJ, let alone another electronic musician, and had him listen to my tracks. He loved the sound, and had me over the next week to show him my process. We collaborated, and he showed me the basics of DJing, how to work with MIDI, and introduced me to the other DJs and artists in the area. Everyone seemed to like what they heard, and I was billed as the headliner for the opening night of Nite Fever at Nyabinghi. I was a nervous wreck, even though the attendance was weak. The other DJs were all staring over my shoulder while I had a couple of computers and a mixer onstage, trying to get my tracks to blend. It went alright, and as time went on, Jones and I hit more parties, collaborated on house tracks, and he kept trying to teach me how to spin vinyl.

Jones moved to Cleveland, and I was back to being mostly solo. I kept at it, though, and made more friends in the local DJ scene. I caught up with a then-frienemy of mine, Matt, and we started practicing a mixed Live PA/DJ set. We heard about a bar in Austintown called the Blue Room, and decided to go check it out. It was a small place in a Days Inn bar, but every Sunday it was filled with electronica heads. The techno night, The Liquid Sound Lounge, was run by Sam Snow, who would soon become one of my best friends. He gave us a timeslot, and the sets went well every time. I would play with my synths, sampler, and drum machine, and Matt would spin records. It wasn't much of a musical act in retrospect, but we worked the crowd like few others there could. The energy was there, the right crowd was always there, and our enthusiasm for what we were doing definitely didn't do any harm on anything except the poor dancefloor wood. :)

Matt eventually got more heavily involved in his IT business, so I was back by myself again, but kept composing tracks. I started building up a heavy arsenal of MIDI gear. The Yamaha SU-700 sampler was one amazing sampler at the time. I started picking up old disco records in dusty basements and got into sampling in a big way. I coupled it with an MPC-2000 and some synths, and I was doing nothing in my spare time but composing. I got to play at my first "rave" in 2003, Funky Charms 4. At the time I was dabbling in DnB, so I played a completely live drum and bass set at the party by myself. It was one of the greatest nights of my life. The room I played in instantly got packed when I started my intro, and it stayed that way until the very end, with tons of ravers dancing the whole time. Nothing can ever compare to that feeling when you step down from the stage and are greeted by a swarm of grateful people. Man, it was a nice night.

Shortly afterward, I got ahold of Reason 2.5 and my musical life changed forever. The day after getting Reason, I picked up an Oxygen 8 and started writing on an entirely different plane. It just made sense to me. I'm a gear head, so seeing a rack of virtual instruments in front of me just made sense. I started learning and mastering it, and kept writing tracks throughout the years. I still use Reason to this day, and until I see a better program with an equally intuitive interface, I'll continue to. Some producers fail to see the greatness and potential of it, and are surprised when they hear a track of mine and that it was written only with Reason. This always reminds me of a very important thing I learned, that once you find the system that feels right, make sure that you work with it and let your process mesh with it. The finished track never lies about the artist that way.

So, onward to present day. I've sold off many of my MIDI machines and have traded most of it in for a cozy computer corner with studio monitors and USB MIDI controllers. It's compact, but comfortable, which is key. I put out my first release since Pong earlier this year, and have signed some disco house tracks with a couple great digital labels. Definitely looking forward to more musical experience, and it will come, no doubt. I know how cliche it is to say, but music is ingrained in me, and it's one of the most important aspects of my life. I no longer simply like or listen to music; I deeply love it. Music is my core being, and I can't and don't want to imagine a life without it.

Musical influences are vast and varied, including, but definitely not limited to Depeche Mode, George Clinton, REM, Tricky, Jello Biafra, Henry Rollins (spoken word, not the music), DJ Shadow, J. R. "Bob" Dobbs and his fanclub's anti-music, New Order, The Talking Heads, and countless others. It never ends.

Toss-up between Port Aransas, TX and Sherman, NY.

Home-built Intel Core Duo machine running Windows XP and Mac OS X, Propellerhead Reason 4.0, an M-Audio Oxygen 8, M-Audio KeyRig 49, Evolution UC-33e, Roland Phrase Lab MC-09 sampler/(unofficially a 303 emulator,) Korg Electribe A, Professor Television's photo-theremin, Yamaha DJX-2, my circuit-bent Speak n' Spell, my homemade talkbox, and I think that's it. I run on Mackie MR-5 studio monitors.