Hi! I'm me, I'm the only one who can be me, and I'm proud of me! Dangit, those motivational tapes weren't worth $#@&! How about I go cry in the corner, and you listen to my awesome and perfectly competent music until I'm done?
I started out with just a MIDI program called MusicMasterworks (which, for its job, was extremely good). Uncle John gave me his old keyboard, and with the purchase of a USB-MIDI converter I had both a synthesizer and an easy tool for transcribing notes. I made some really good music, despite have extremely limited instrument variety. Then we had to wipe the hard drive, and we couldn't reinstall MusicMasterworks without paying all over again. For a while I used and online, TEXT-BASED Midi-maker. I hope I don't have to explain why typing music like a text file (without comment ability) was a nightmare. So I got Renoise instead, and it works like a dream. I can make my own instruments, I have a variety of effects at my disposal (with automated sliders, no less!), and it's much easier to record.
I don't play live, sorry. All I do is arrange music together on my own time, taking as long on the details as I want. I suppose if I had to do something live, I could hook up a microphone and do the lyrics live, maybe fiddle with some knobs and switches that aren't even plugged into anything, something like that.
EDIT FROM LATER: I have now done three live performances where I constructed a song while on the stage, in about 5 minutes (a talent show that had two showings, and a runthrough), but I don't plan on expanding that song into a full song. Quick and dirty is its purpose.
I do have a DJing gig set up at a Renaissance Wedding, which is awesome in its own right, not to mention that even though I'm playing my own and others' finished works, it still brings the count up to 4. So I guess I do live stuff now, depending on how things turn out. I still prefer being able to work for hours getting a song just right, though.
Moby and Doctor Steel had a big effect on me, and since most people don't know who DS is, you'd best Google him and find out. I also play a lot of games on my computer (I haven't got any other systems, not even one), so the music coming from the speakers in the middle of a good Cactus game (music by John Marwin, usually) is a strong inspiration. My music calmed down a bit once I started listening to Solar Fields, and I think that I have more variety now.
A Yamaha PSR-290 keyboard, Renoise 1.x, a recording program that came with my sound card (because the Renoise is unregistered), and various samples and VSTs from the web or my microphone (the samples, not VSTs).
EDIT FROM LATER: I now have Renoise 2 for Linux (I have an Ubuntu partition now, and it works great!), Renoise 2 for Windows (for Breanna's laptop, which I was going to use in the talent show, and then it turned out otherwise because they were going on a trip that day and I couldn't borrow it), and Renoise 2 for Mac (because Mrs.Wells, my English teacher, let me borrow her laptop. She's awesome not just for that, but she's going to leave the program installed so that she can learn it herself!), all on my desktop.
I love my new monitor! It makes everything nicely color-balanced and wide-screened. Also, having to monitors really is the bomb.
