Biography modified/updated on 19 october 2007
I liked a lot listening to music, and using computers, since I was a small child. I took a year of piano lessons, when about 10 years old, but for some reasons I stopped. Later, when 15 years old (1991), I began experimenting with an assisted composition program (as I call it), with which I was able to "paint" notes with a mouse, with the computer facilitating the process in some ways that I now don't remember. Then I discovered that other programs (called "trackers"), while being more difficult to use for me, who had little experience in composition, produced more interesting results, starting from the "quality" of sound. I was using Commodore Amiga computers at that time.
Those days internet was not yet widespread, but I soon discovered the world of BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems), which were computers connected to the phone line, usually set up by amateurs, which usually only a few users could call at once (each visiting user needed a separate phone line at the maintainer's side). I uploaded my works there, and was glad when they got downloaded one or two times a day.
At that time I was known by the alias of Stun, and was active in the so-called demo-scene. I joined some groups (chronologically Mystic, Biosynthetic Design and Nah-Kolor) and worked together with designers, programmers and graphic artists to create so-called demos and intros, in other words kind of real-time processed multimedia creations, which aren't simple animations to display on computers, but programs which calculate the effects while watching and listening. To get the idea watch the videos here: www.demoscene.tv (note that this site displays video recordings, not the original programs). You can find some productions of this kind, to which I have participated, in the video section of this site of mine.
Now the situation is different: on the internet, my music gets downloaded and streamed hundreds of times a day (some days thousands), and from september 1999 (when I started to publish my music on the web) to june 2007, the total has exceeded 1 million (counting both completed and incomplete downloads and streams).
In the meantime I evolved. First of all I learned (and still learn) harmony and composition, and I'm able to play the guitar and (less) the keyboard, the flute and ethnic percussions (some studies are going on). I also learned another interesting and amusing aspect of music: improvising. Instead of learning to play other people's tunes, I prefer to become skillful at improvising my own creations.
To compose I still use a computer, a modern one, but I have a lot more sound sources at my disposal, from synthesizers, samplers, and effects to treat the sound. For writing music I still use the mouse, by writing notes, modulations, dynamics and in general settings to control hardware (MIDI compatible) and software instruments, but in some tunes I insert electric or classical guitar parts performed by myself , and perform some electronic parts at the musical keyboard, sometimes partially improvising (with both).
My (most important) music teachers have been (chronologically):
Other persons who have contributed particularly to my musical evolution (chronologically):
Making music with electronic devices means, most of the times, having a lot of different sounds available; purely synthetic ones, characteristic of electronic music, but also simulations of acoustic and electric ones. I like to experiment with particular timbre combinations, and it is very rare that two of my tunes use the same instrument setup (probably it never happened). I also like to experiment with genres: moving around new age, trance, ambient, jazz, classical, metal, and more, sometimes combining them and doing something which I stylistically never heard before, like "newage-jungle" or "space-jazz". Though, I am aware that genre definitions serve only as labels to navigate in the big sea of compositions, maybe useful only to find what we could be looking for, and to communicate.
It's already since some years that I'm trying to obtain a record deal. The problem seems to be that my music is (apparently) not compatible -- stylistically -- with the catalogue of most record labels, although they usually like it. My hope has not yet faded, though.
As a marginal note, I'm semi-paraplegic -- injured at the spinal cord -- since end 1998, and can't walk normally (I usually sit on a wheelchair). This seems not to have hindered my musical life, apart from not being able to use properly and comfortably such devices as a wah pedal for guitar, or a sustain pedal for keyboards. In effect, since I am in this physical situation, my musical activity has averagely intensified.
I hope you'll like my sounds. If you didn't do it yet, visit my free music archive, on the web.