It's my name. I suppose I could have chosen something weird or obnoxious, or even sexually explicit, but then it wouldn't be acceptable by most people. And it's just ME so why not?

I play 'live' in my house. And I like it. But to tell you the truth, I'm not into performing simply because it's hard to find good musicians to play WITH that aren't hundreds of miles away. When you've been playing as long as _I_ have your standards are pretty high, but ESPECIALLY no kiddies, druggies, smokers, or people who can't play on tempo. So I guess that leaves 'just me.'

I think that independent people have a better shot of 'getting somewhere' without having to sign their lives over under a confiscatory contract via RIAA. But of course, if a _decent_ contract came from RIAA, I'd consider it...

Only if they paid me enough money, and didn't confiscate it back via "hidden fees and costs". That kind of contract is what keeps 'the system' working the way it does. 'Big RIAA' is crying a lot these days. But there _ARE_ decent artists out there, many even on this web site (you can find them if you look hard). I wonder why RIAA doesn't go after them...?

I started playing guitar (sort of) at age 6 with a pile of junk electric that was 'reworked' by my parents to fix problems with the neck. Unfotunately this caused the nedk to be flat as a pancake and strings too far from the fretboard. Needless to say I eventually 'hacked' a solution involving a nail and rubber bands (poor man's capo) and overcame the shoddiness through sheer determination. Eventually I got a decent guitar to play, built my own amps and effects, and after going into the Navy I started collecting more 'cool stuff'. My mother started a music store and I was able to get some equipment (at low cost) THAT way, and so collected enough stuff to do my own thing, more or less. Eventually I got more into recording and instead of writing my own music software (which I had wanted to do) and eventually purchased Cakewalk because it got cheap. I've always written original stuff and occasionally performed with others, and learned a lot from a couple of them. But the genre and circumstances weren't 'me' and so I stick to doing recording from home.

50's rock, 60's rock, 70's rock, 80's rock, 90's rock, and 21st century stuff. I like it all (except the disco shhhhtuff). And I'm not a fan of religious music, unless I can ignore the words and just listen to it. Music should entertain, not irritate.

favorite spot is "the beach". I also like San Diego because of it's weather, proximity to most everything I would want, and of course 'the beach'.

For General MIDI I use an SB PCI 512 using 8Mb sound font file "slightly edited" (to correct certain problems).
For the old stuff (prior to 2010), I just used the sound recorder and media player to overdub 'the hard way', encoding mp3 with the Xing mp3 encoder. and prettying things up with 'Nero' wave editor.

NOW I use Cakewalk Music Creator 3, and a Cakewalk USB sound adaptor (which is worth the extra $ I think).

The instruments I use are a Fender Sratocaster, a custom-made P-Bass copy (with my name on it), a Franciscan (inexpensive flat-top) 6 string steel acoustic, a 12 string Applause acoustic, a nylong string DiGiorgio classical with a carved headstock and Brazilian rosewood top (take THAT, environmentalists wackos), a Roland JX-3P, a Yamaha MG8/2fx 8 channel mixer (with digital effects), and a Peavey Musician amp with a cabinet I made that has 2 12" in it. I also have a small practice amp made by Peavey. Effects include Aria chorus, Boss noise gate, re-worked Ross distortion (higher gain, more 'tube-like' sound), D'Armond volume pedal, V-Tech vocal mic, a pre-CBS Fender reverb unit (solid state), and a stereo reverb unit that I made decades ago with 12" hammond springs in it. The computers that I use for recording are running Windows XP, but occasionally I'll use 'Audacity' on a FreeBSD machine for various purposes.

music theory web page

http://www.mrp3.com/bobf/music_theory.html