It's just me, playing my axe and doing vocals and using the computer for MIDI and recording. Honestly. And I sometimes do fun things with my computer to improve it. But I don't 'cheat' like using 'Auto Tune' or anything like that.
My older stuff was done 'the hard way' - adding one track at a time until it was 'good enough' and hope that the end mix came out ok. For the most part it did. Eventually I bought 'Cakewalk Music Creator 3' and started experimenting around with it it to get better results., so songs posted since 2010 are using THIS method.
Experimenting with theory and style is something I'm into, so expect a lot of different styles here.
My preference is Rock with a Jazz influence.
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. Unfortunately this caused the neck 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.
I play 'live' in my house. And I like it. Hopefully my neighbors don't mind. 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.'
50's rock, 60's rock, 70's rock, 80's rock, 90's rock, 'noughties' rock (00's), and later 21st century stuff. I like it all (except the 70's disco shhhhtuff and the whiny female vocalists of the 90's). 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. Right?
Fender Stratocaster guitar, P-bass (copy), Franciscan (cheap) 6 string acoustic, Applause 12 string acoustic, Roland JX-3P, Yamaha MG8/2fx 8 channel mixer (with digital effects), and a handful of effects and pedals for the guitar (including a Ross distortion I re-worked to give me a better sound). For General MIDI I use an SB PCI 512 using 8Mb sound font file "slightly edited" (to correct certain problems).
Most recently (Feb 2013) I am using a 'prototype' monophonic synthesizer (codename 'Piranha') that I am seriously considering 'crowdsourcing'. I have a photo of it [yes I built it].
Prior to 2010 I would just used the sound recorder and media player in windows to overdub 'the hard way', encoding mp3 with tools like Xing mp3 encoder. and prettying things up 'after the fact' with tools like 'Nero' wave editor. The results were 'acceptable' but not quite as good as I would have liked.
NOW I use Cakewalk Music Creator 3, and a Cakewalk USB sound adaptor (which is worth the extra $ I think).
Other equipment I use include a nylon string DiGiorgio classical with a carved headstock and Brazilian rosewood top (take THAT, environmentalists wackos), and 2 Peavey amps (a Musician amp with a cabinet I made that has 2 12" in it, and a practice amp). 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, and a 1960's era (pre-CBS) Fender reverb unit (solid state). The computers that I use for recording are running Windows XP (because I need it for Cakewalk and the MIDI adaptor), but occasionally I'll use 'Audacity' on a FreeBSD machine for various purposes, like post-editing and mp3/ogg conversion. I also use an open source 'ethernet MIDI' application to send MIDI from the machine running Cakewalk to the machine with the soundblaster card on it, since this improves the timing accuracy by NOT having the same computer 'do it all'.
music theory web page
http://www.mrp3.com/bobf/music_theory.html
