i've spun a few records at small parties, and i played keyboard (and sang) in a commercial music group at community college. i can do some DJ mixing in ableton live. I once DJ'd at an open turntable night at a club.. I had to use the records that were available there, like Jennifer Lopez and such. Luckily the two gay guys on the dancefloor were Jennifer Lopez fanatics and went nuts and even gave me props after I was done. The DJ booth in a club has a very different sound and feel than DJing at home. The mixer has more knobs, the moniter speaker and the house speakers are completely seperate and the high wattage system responds radically to changes in volume, but in the booth you can't really hear what level the music is at on the dancefloor until it's so loud that the bass starts feeding back through the turntables. The audience digs it when it's right on that threshold, probably not only because it is loud, but because you start to get little feedback resonations that make the music sound live.

it gives people access to music without having to buy a cd. even a good quality mp3 isn't as good as cd quality. record companies would do better to inform people of that, instead of just looking scared and taking legal action.

not sure. generally some costs are always covered by the artist, and some by the label. the funny thing about artists on labels is that it shows that they have more extra money than most people, but are still increadibly desperate. i had a bad experience just trying to sell a couple of my cds with my family so generally try to avoid pressures from anyone besides myself regarding my music. it's hard enough to learn and actually get any decent music finished. i don't need desperate people wanting me to make them rich with an overriding grudge precluding them from being helpful, so i avoid family business or bands and probably can't afford to be on a label, and they aren't interested in artists like me anyways so i guess it works out

i started by messing around with a keyboard when i was young, then when i was 12 or 13 i started using a tape deck to chop up things I recorded from the radio and re-arrange things or make them sound funny.

By 16 i had tried out some of the old midi programs, had tried some basic digital audio editing, and had found that with my music teacher's nice keyboard i could make some nice sounding music without much practice. That was as short lived as editing with a cheap cassette deck. By 18, after having tried LSD and meditation, my view on music become somewhat more inclusive and i become more interested in the inspiration that leads to music and vise versa, and the acoustic and perceptual quality of sounds rather than the idea that you could ever find the perfect melody or something.

your average consumer computer then became capable of limited live manipulation of recorded sounds or real-time generation. an arpeggiator synth mixed with wind chimes reminded me of the nirvanic or emotional experiences of my youthful meditative explorations.

at times i thought of music and sound as something which had already formed and exsisted outside of time. but perhaps this is true of all things and it only seemed particularly noticible with music because of it's vibrations being similar to spiritual or emotional vibrations, ecstatic states, who knows, maybe even the rhythems and forces of the universe.

by 2002 i was into some simple songwriting on guitar as well as using the 1998 era computer more to the extent allowed by the technology, programming and my own limited but sometimes passionately driven abilities.

inspired by micro editing and the current quickening of computer arrangement practices, and feeling affected by the uncertain limbo of freedom, culture, the environment, and current events - i am currently doing a little bit here and there, always with a plethora of unfinished sample based sketches, the occasional lyric, but as always, trying to focus on the grand hiatus of life that is the basis of all great things and trying to slowely relearn to tune into what has perhaps already formed and just appears to "normal" consciousness as a tedious and linear step by step process leading eventually to death in the face of divine adversity.

influenced by the sounds of synths, and samplers etc. To me this is like saying I'm influenced by the sound of the guitar. Much of what I hear when I'm working on my own music activates my memory or I enter memory-like state, occasionally even kind of a clairvoyant type of thing. The music on this site was made over years, and I was probably in a different state of mind for every instance that a sound or loop was made or idea was conceived. Then another track might jsut be jamming crazily on the guitar.

I'm sometimes influenced by nature or memories of places that I like. It would be hard for at least some of my music to not be influenced by various states of meditation that I've experienced throughout the years. And then some stuff where I'm just messing around, and half the time it still ends up sounding deep. There's a lot of mystery, and a lot to discover - not just from a scientific or technical perspective - but also an emotional and spiritual perspective. That's my biggest influence.. tuning back in to kind of a resonant state.

possibly influened by music like BT, Underworld, way out west, etc

the spokane river and three springs (especially before someone took out the massive berry bush!!confess now evil do-ers!! ), and drumheller springs in spokane, the northwest, local hills and scenery when i was in rural Elk.

A trip to west Texas, New Mexico and White Sands during a dust storm were a HUGE influence on "Mystery of the Desert." and you might say that White Sands is a favorite spot now, having been there twice.
never been to the tropics. maybe i would like that. who knows.

i have an old synth: the esq 1, and a cheezy old casio practice keyboard, a funny old yamaha porta sound synth keyboard and i have a good acoustic guitar (old ovation). computer programs include AudioMulch (straightforward, analog-seeming looping and effects that i use mostly for mixing sounds together), Orion (simple old version with synth and sampler/filtering), cool edit pro 2 (nice editor that i also use for recording and multitrack recording), fruity loops (occasionally do something in that.)

trying out a demo of orion platinum