Enigma™
05-03-2009, 09:04 PM
I've been absent for a WHILE from here... I've been a lurker, focusing on work, life, and other projects however none of them have been really music related. I've learned to solve a Rubik's Cube in under 20 seconds, I've traveled from Texas to Cuba to Edmonton to Kitchener, I've gotten some of the highest scores you can get in Guitar Hero, I've become a BlackBerry Expert (I'm now a technical trainer for Research In Motion, so anything BlackBerry related, please ask me... My specialty is servers from Exchange to Domino to Groupwise BES as well as the handhelds) and all the while I was in a band that I played keyboards for, I was the musical producer, engineer, etc.
Anyway, I left music for a while, my Kurzweil collected dust. I sold stuff, (I still have my beloved Kurz) and focused on Guitar for a bit, but nothing serious.
I left the band and it was a very poisionous relationship, and made me NOT want to play music or have anything to do with it.
On my most recent trip, I've been COMPLETELY inspired to play music again and I have 2 contributing factors.
1 - Alex Argento.
He's been a musical inspiration of mine for a while, but I've never had a real inkling to get INTO his music. I've listened to it, but never dissected it and while on vacation in Domincan, his album was the only album on my playlist.
He shared with me "Moving Around E" before it had guitars on it, when he was pre-producing it and I fell in love with that song... and then when I bought his album I was blown away by the entire thing. Completely amazing to me that 1 guy that I've talked to 1 on 1 about stuff was able to make that music by himself.
So the fact that yes, he plays it, that he wrote it and that it can be done inspired me to want to learn how to play the way he does. (Partially - I don't want to sound LIKE him, but I love his phrasing and while I have some raw technique, I feel like I lack in the expressive part of my playing and want to develop that part of my playing)
2 - When in Dominican, there was a jazz piano player there who I had the opportunity to improvise with, and he showed me how "easy" jazz can be (Not super complicated stuff, but he really helped me to understand voicings and how you can phrase things in a way that sound complicated but are actually very simple)
He played some music for me, and I played some music for him. Stuff that I thought was so simple he was completely in awe of, but stuff he found simple was inspiring to me and so we shared e-mail addresses and we're going to collobrate on stuff as well. His name is Pablo, and he was very very good at what he does... But the fact that he was able to show me a new way of looking at music was awesome.
He showed me that hitting the RIGHT notes are more important that playing as fast as you can. He showed me how to feel it and make it easy as long as you have technique, and of course, no offence to Jordan but it's not something that I've fully been able to appreciate from Dream Theater. (I focus with DT so much on technique and keeping up with the notes that I can't focus on just playing the music, so this should really get me to a place that I can even deeper enjoy both LTE/DT/Prog in general)
So my departure from music has come full circle and I feel ready to rejoin the music community. I'm really going to focus not on playing technical but playing with expression, and hopefully coming up with some cool music otherwise.
My project(s) recently that I've decided to work on is Alex's album Ego - I want to transcribe the keyboard parts for most of the music and as a side project, I want to work on a song or two in that fusion vein similar to Alex.
So expect to see some stuff coming the forum's way from me with music in place, and I'll most likely be looking for suggestions and help from people with more musical experience than I.
As a bi-product however, I'll be more active in the forum again, making sure stuff works and that everyone is behaving (Though I've had no reason to intervene for the most part) and also trying to come up with some cool contests and see if we can get some more music posted in the form of backing tracks, jam tracks, etc.
I've dedicated several servers that I've built to web hosting, FTP hosting, file hosting etc... So if people need files hosted I can 150% be available for that, just e-mail me at enigma@enigmahack.com or enigmahack@hotmail.com
That being said, I'm hauling out my DrumKits from Hell, Sonar 5 that I bought a while ago, and I'm looking for a decent soundcard (External USB) that I can use with my Laptop and I'm looking for suggestions :)
I don't have any really specific qualifications other than:
A - ASIO support (Low latency so I can record guitar parts)
B - Good driver support (Vista specifically)
C - Mostly Cheap (Under 200$ US)
D - USB
That's what I'm looking for.
Suggestions are more than welcome - I'm going to consider everything people suggest especially with experience. MIDI support would be cool, but not required. Audio support (24 bit. 96khz would be sweet, but again I just want something that'll do the trick)
Thanks in advance, and hi again to everyone who remembers me.
Anyone that doesn't - Just know I've been around for more than 2 forum revisions and before there was a full website... I'm basically older than dirt here ;-)
:-D
Anyway, I left music for a while, my Kurzweil collected dust. I sold stuff, (I still have my beloved Kurz) and focused on Guitar for a bit, but nothing serious.
I left the band and it was a very poisionous relationship, and made me NOT want to play music or have anything to do with it.
On my most recent trip, I've been COMPLETELY inspired to play music again and I have 2 contributing factors.
1 - Alex Argento.
He's been a musical inspiration of mine for a while, but I've never had a real inkling to get INTO his music. I've listened to it, but never dissected it and while on vacation in Domincan, his album was the only album on my playlist.
He shared with me "Moving Around E" before it had guitars on it, when he was pre-producing it and I fell in love with that song... and then when I bought his album I was blown away by the entire thing. Completely amazing to me that 1 guy that I've talked to 1 on 1 about stuff was able to make that music by himself.
So the fact that yes, he plays it, that he wrote it and that it can be done inspired me to want to learn how to play the way he does. (Partially - I don't want to sound LIKE him, but I love his phrasing and while I have some raw technique, I feel like I lack in the expressive part of my playing and want to develop that part of my playing)
2 - When in Dominican, there was a jazz piano player there who I had the opportunity to improvise with, and he showed me how "easy" jazz can be (Not super complicated stuff, but he really helped me to understand voicings and how you can phrase things in a way that sound complicated but are actually very simple)
He played some music for me, and I played some music for him. Stuff that I thought was so simple he was completely in awe of, but stuff he found simple was inspiring to me and so we shared e-mail addresses and we're going to collobrate on stuff as well. His name is Pablo, and he was very very good at what he does... But the fact that he was able to show me a new way of looking at music was awesome.
He showed me that hitting the RIGHT notes are more important that playing as fast as you can. He showed me how to feel it and make it easy as long as you have technique, and of course, no offence to Jordan but it's not something that I've fully been able to appreciate from Dream Theater. (I focus with DT so much on technique and keeping up with the notes that I can't focus on just playing the music, so this should really get me to a place that I can even deeper enjoy both LTE/DT/Prog in general)
So my departure from music has come full circle and I feel ready to rejoin the music community. I'm really going to focus not on playing technical but playing with expression, and hopefully coming up with some cool music otherwise.
My project(s) recently that I've decided to work on is Alex's album Ego - I want to transcribe the keyboard parts for most of the music and as a side project, I want to work on a song or two in that fusion vein similar to Alex.
So expect to see some stuff coming the forum's way from me with music in place, and I'll most likely be looking for suggestions and help from people with more musical experience than I.
As a bi-product however, I'll be more active in the forum again, making sure stuff works and that everyone is behaving (Though I've had no reason to intervene for the most part) and also trying to come up with some cool contests and see if we can get some more music posted in the form of backing tracks, jam tracks, etc.
I've dedicated several servers that I've built to web hosting, FTP hosting, file hosting etc... So if people need files hosted I can 150% be available for that, just e-mail me at enigma@enigmahack.com or enigmahack@hotmail.com
That being said, I'm hauling out my DrumKits from Hell, Sonar 5 that I bought a while ago, and I'm looking for a decent soundcard (External USB) that I can use with my Laptop and I'm looking for suggestions :)
I don't have any really specific qualifications other than:
A - ASIO support (Low latency so I can record guitar parts)
B - Good driver support (Vista specifically)
C - Mostly Cheap (Under 200$ US)
D - USB
That's what I'm looking for.
Suggestions are more than welcome - I'm going to consider everything people suggest especially with experience. MIDI support would be cool, but not required. Audio support (24 bit. 96khz would be sweet, but again I just want something that'll do the trick)
Thanks in advance, and hi again to everyone who remembers me.
Anyone that doesn't - Just know I've been around for more than 2 forum revisions and before there was a full website... I'm basically older than dirt here ;-)
:-D