My Gear
Some geeks, musicians and audiophile types out there might be curious as to what kind of equipment I use in my recordings, and what instruments I learned on or played with since the beginning. To satisfy them, I will try to list as many as I can remember, in roughly the order I got them, but not neccessarily (please don't send me emails corrrecting my fading memory). Many of them were gifts from friends and family.
As well as I can remember:
My first instrument was my mom's piano, an upright Cable Nelson which I started banging on at my grandparent's house when I was 3, and later taught myself to play (with my mom's help), then a toy snare drum I got for xmas one year when I was about 5 which I put a hole through in about ten minutes (much to the relief of my parents), a plastic guitar which I trod on in a fit of rage brought on by an argument with my babysitter, then a rented Conn trumpet in the fourth grade (sold at my post-earthquake garage sale in 1989 - still kicking myself for that one), a birthday or xmas no-name acoustic guitar with action so high it made my fingers
bleed to practice, then a rented Hofner-copy bass guitar (which I learned to play by playing along to Beatles and Wings records), a high-school Baritone Horn (this was also the first time I played a standup bass), a xmas Sitar from India in terrible repair (Oh I begged for that one), a stolen violin given to me as a gift - later stolen (by the same guy who later married the girl who stole it), and eventually the first instrument I ever bought with my own money: a Sequential Circuits Six-Trak Synthesizer. Later, I got a Casio SK-1 (one of the first cheap, commercially available samplers) from my friend Steven Clark as a gift - at the time I got it I must have played with it 8 hours a day, every day, for about two years. Incredibly fun machine. I still have the Sitar, the Six-Trak, and the SK-1, though I seldom play them anymore.
I started out recording using my parent's Radio Shack stereo (with a combined turntable, cassette deck and 8-track player), hooked up to a cheap Sony Walkman, with an even cheaper Radio Shack microphone (seriously, it cost about .50). I recorded my first multi-track piece this way - a duet for Baritone horns. I was 16. Around that time, I collected every piece of cable, every adapter, every Y-jack and every little toy that could make a sound or move an audio signal where I wanted it to go.
The list continues:
A Hofner-style electric guitar (with violin shaped body like Paul McCartney's bass - I can't remember where I got that beautiful guitar, but it was swiped, er, loaned to a friend who never gave it back and subsequently claimed to have lost it).
A twelve-string, cherry wood guitar (a wonderful gift from my dad).
An acoustic guitar from Tom (which I still have and play - thanks, Tom!).
Several wooden and bamboo flutes, gifts from Robin Barber upon returning from his trip to Asia.
A cream-colored Takemine Electric guitar signed by Joe Satriani and some other metalheads, which I promply traded for a keyboard amp (This guitar was a prize for winning a display contest - one of the many perks of working in a record store).
A black Fender Stratocaster copy (I really wish I knew what happened to this awesome guitar - I have no recollection of trading or selling it).
A Fender Musicmaster Bass (vintage, 60's model, a guilt-gift) - which I yanked all the frets off of and sanded the fingerboard down so it could be played as fretless (since my favorite bass player is Mick Karn, formerly of the British pop group Japan ).
A Gibson S-G guitar (mid-70's model, purchased dirt cheap from my dear friend Donnalyn Murphy).
A clay, handmade flute (gift from my parents, bought at a Dickens Fair).
Yamaha Recorder.
Tambourine.
An Australian Aboriginal Bullroarer (Purchased from Lark in the Morning, at Ghirardelli Square in S.F.).
Ibanez Custom Blazer Bass.
ARP Odyssey Synthesizer (This, the Blazer and the recorder were all from a trade with a friend).
A borrowed Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 Synthesizer which I had for a few weeks - a classic. I now have the soft version called the Pro-53, which sounds amazingly like the original but has a teensy weensy tiny wee li'l inky dinky screen-resolution interface which annoys the crap outta me).
Korg Poly-61 Synthesizer (bought from Pat's old gf Stephanie, later sold to my ex-gf) Another classic with a fantastic arpeggiator.
Alesis SR-16 Drum Machine (Workhorse, still in constant use but with fairly boring sounds).
A unique clay Dumbek (North African hand drum with a cat-skin head, made by an Iraqi drum maker in Wisconsin, which I stupidly traded my beautiful cherry wood 12-string guitar for - but it's a great drum and I've played it for years).
A Tar (a Sudanese frame drum, bought at a little Indian music store in Berkeley where I used to buy strings for my sitar).
Matador Bongos.
Korg EX-800 Synthesizer Module (gift from Ron Leeson).
Unknown, three-stringed, (allegedly Korean) Lute similar in shape and size to the Japanese Shamisen, bought at a garage sale, now hanging on my wall as decoration since it's got a broken string and I have no idea how to tune it.
Various shakers and bells, one I handmade from an animal bone with little jingle bells strung to it.
B.C Rich NJ series Mockingbird electric (traded Ron some special Sony TV speakers for this great guitar).
Another Fender Stratocaster, this one a Squire (which I eventually traded for the Korg X5, though originally purchased with intent to sand, paint and make into an art project).
Roland JP-8000 Synthesizer (which I bought brand new for 1200 bucks at Guitar Center when Leo's Pro Audio shop told me their last Nord Lead was purchased 30 minutes before I walked into the store by Third Eye Blind).
Korg X5 Synthesizer - Probably getting the most use of my entire arsenal atm. Great keyboard, with an unusal feature: fully tunable to several preset scales, including the ability to create your own from scratch.
Emu Orbit 9091 Synth Module (E-Bay).
Yamaha AN200 Desktop Control Synthesizer. It's more than a groovebox - I've read the manual 8 times from cover to cover and I'm just getting into it. Very cool, very deep machine.
A new shaker from Cost Plus, made in Ghana out of cocoa bean husks. Sounds like dry bones rattling...
An E-mu XBoard 25 Midi controller. It came with oodles of sounds to play with, and works beautifully with Ableton.
My two lates acquisitions (oh my god when will it END??) a Brazilian berimbau I found on craigslist, and another purchase from the same place - a Korg Kaossilator. Craigslist has been very good to me. I've heard some baaaad stories, but my luck has just been superb with meeting really cool people and finding things I want or need at the price I'm able to afford. Hat's off to David for the berimbau and John for Kaossilator. Good people.
Recording tools:
A borrowed Tascam Porta-Studio.
Tascam 424 Multi-track tape recorder.
Digitech RDS Digital Delay (3.6 second delay. A little noisy, but awesome for those days when you just feel like playing with yourself. Or impersonating Robert Fripp).
Alesis Quadraverb - Awesome signal processor and reverb. Absolutely essential.
Electrix Warp Factory Vocoder (gift from Lisle Ellis, primarily used to make my drum machine sound very weird).
Behringer Virtualizer Pro 2024P - Mainly bought for the amplifier models, but haven't even got to them yet.
ProCo 48-point Patchbay - Bought on E-bay.
Behringer Ultrapatch Pro 48-point patchbay (the ProCo developed a glitch)
Behringer Eurorack MXB1002 Mixer (Built like a fuckin' tank!).
About ten thousand miles of cables, patch cords, adapters and Y-jacks.
Various pedal effects, Wah's, and Volume Pedals from my 'I'm a guitarist' days. Have been considering hooking them all up to my keyboards for more expressive control, but I'm lazy and don't have much floorspace.
ElectroVoice MC150 Pro Microphone.
My previous home-assembled AMD - based computers, and my current eMachines T3092, running various versions of Sony's Acid, Sound Forge, Vegas Video, and more recently, Ableton Live. I occasionally use Fruity Loops Producer, and even less occasionally, Hammerhead.
