I developed an interest in electronic instruments and music at a very early age. One of my favorite childhood toys was called a “Sound Gizmo.” It was a simple synthesizer with 2 LFO’s, white noise, and a preset amplitude envelope called “fade.” That was enough for hours of fun, and hours of annoyance for anyone within earshot. My first electronic musical instrument was a Stylophone. It was even more annoying for those who were around when I jammed out on it (as much as a 8-year-old can jam).

When I was a poor teenager, I bought a slightly broken Tascam 4-track from a friend of mine and started recording tracks using my Boss DR-220 drum machine and a Casio SK-1 sampling keyboard played through a delay. It was terrible music. Later, that same friend lent me an EMAX II sampler With 2MB of memory (He just bought a brand new ASR-10). Now I was getting some where. However, I was still without a sequencer until about a year later when I bought my first computer and a set of MIDI cables. I was officially “in business.”

Using the EMAX, I was able to write some pretty cool techno with the 2MB of memory. I spent every spare penny on synths and drum machines (software synths and samplers hadn’t come of age yet). But, I noticed that my music was lacking something. It was the early 90’s and rave culture was in full effect, and of course, I was quite involved with it. I had great musical ideas, but I had a hard time arranging them properly. I realized that I needed to buy a set turntables and learn how to mix before I could really get a proper feel for the music. So, that’s what I did. Soon after, my songwriting abilities really took off and my development as an electronic artist was complete.