Freesound Forums

There was a request to setup a thread here where 'daring' Freesounders can introduce themselves.
This is the ideal place to tell people what software and hardware you have/use and maybe a few lines about your composing style / interests etc.

More than an 'introduction' think of your post as a way to "advertise yourself" for possible future collaborations. What information do you think people would like to know or should know if they want to collaborate with you?

... and I might as well start the thread.

About myself
37 years of age, interested in computer music since my teens.
I am not a musician/sound professional or musically trained. Music and sound are just a hobby for me.

My gear / hardware / software
(just listing the things I actually use often)
This list is only a draft at the moment, I will add more detail. Will also update the list periodically to keep it up-to-date with my equipment / software.

Equipment
- Zoom H1 handheld sound recorder
- a couple of cheap web mics
- For mixing I mostly use some half decent headphones. If I am lucky and nobody is around I can use the Hi-Fi stereo speakers

Computer spec / Operating system
- Windows Laptop

Software
- Reason
- Ableton Live
- Reaper

I'm 37 as well -

In my real-life-regular-job - I'm a pastor. I preach and minister to a smallish congregation in Minnesota. And since we are a smallish congregation I am responsible for the musical part of our worship. I've played brass instruments since I was a kid. I started on a trumpet, switched to baritone/trombone/euphonium as a teenager (braces on my teeth necessitated the switch to a larger mouthpiece). I started teaching myself the guitar after high school. And in the past couple of years I've been using Ableton Live (lite) to create addition music - both to accompany our worship services, and for my own amusement.

My brother is a film-maker and he and I have collaborated on a number of projects.

I also paint and draw and am interested photography. And also also I write - poetry and short stories (in addition to the weekly sermon.)

If you're interested (since we're advertising ourselves...) you can check me out at:

http://thatjeffcarterwashere.blogspot.com/
http://thatjeffcarterwashere.bandcamp.com/
http://soundcloud.com/thatjeffcarter-was-here
http://vimeo.com/thatjeffcarterwashere
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thatjeffcarter-Was-Here/210360095722528"

Background:
I am 22, and I love music. Listening and Composing both.
I'm originally from India (moved to the US 5 years ago), so I obviously love Bollywood music, but I like almost every single other form that I've been exposed to. A sort of a derivative of AlienXXX's signature - the difference between good and bad music is mostly in your head.
While composing music, I wish to learn more and more how to move away from reason's drum-programmer based approach (I tend to use that a lot, and I feel it's limiting my creativity now). I want to learn more about processing audio more than midi.
Dunno how to play any instrument except for bang my hands on anything I can find (and the rhythm is usually there ) Dunno how to sing, but would love to do so someday, especially Hindustani Classical!
I've been influenced by a very few people (don't get me wrong, I love listening to different types of music but some artists have just had their own personality in real life and through their music). The biggest factor that got me into music, though, was Enigma's song Sadeness. It still remains one of my most favorite songs of all time. And then there are various bollywood influences, but Enigma got me started (although in the past few years experimenting, I have deviated away from new age quite a bit).

I am very fond of anything that involves heavy and creative usage of pads and/or heavy ethnic percussion.

Apart from music, I am a biology major, I tutor, and I like to game a bit. AND! -- I love cricket (the sport).

My equipment (snapshot as on 7th Feb 2012, 22:55 PST):
Software:
/Propellerhead Reason 5 - (Have been messing around with it for 3 years, but I still don't know the first thing about LFOs or oscillators except for know a little bit what thing I will hear when I switch the waveform or the pitch or something like that)
/Steinberg Cubase - only because I am unhappy with some reverb and EQ settings in Reason. Only used for one of my tracks so far (ever)
/Audacity - use it very rarely
/Audition - rarely use it except for cleaning some samples from freesound or other sources that need cleaning
/Winamp - for almost all songs I hear, either mine or someone else's

Hardware:
/Sony Vaio Laptop (Win 7 Professional), and its inbuilt mic
/Logitech desktop speakers with subwoofers
/Sony MDR-V150 headphones
/Behringer C-1U mic (condenser, but doesn't need phantom power; draws it from the PC because it's got a USB connection, and not the 0.5 mm jack)

Instruments:
Casio CTK 720 keyboard (used only as a controller, but it lacks pitch or mod inputs or touch sensitivity on the keys)
A pair of egg shakers
An acoustic guitar which I brought along with me from India, but all I know on there is 5 or so chords, and that too very poorly
Tablas (not my own, though, someone's lent it to me for the time being; this is one instrument I honestly wish I knew how to play)

That's about it. I'll update this when something changes.

Try this one on for size.

15, M, N London, UK. Pretty musically trained, G6 Cello, G5 Jazz Piano, Singing, Music Theory. Initiated into Alt rock and indie from my early years, and that's turned into DnB, postrock, dubstep and house production as well as composition for a music GCSE in 4 months or so. Been producing on PC for about a year, and I'm determined to make it work, say targeting a payed, official release by 18 - that's 2 and a half years. I don't like the conveyer belt my situation seems to have set up for me and music seems to be the best, most fulfilling alternative.

Hardware -
3.2 GB RAM
M-Audio Fast Track Pro
Old Yamaha 'fake piano' keyboard for MIDI controller
Shure SM58
Yamaha Pacifica
Cello, Piano, Acoustic Guitar

Software -
Cubase Studio 5
NI Massive/FM8/Absynth/Razor
u-he Ace/Zebra
Audio Damage Eos/Replicant/Ronin/Tattoo
FabFilter One/Simplon
Whatever Cubase's got as standard

http://soundcloud.com/trickery_dnb

That's what I've got out in the big bad world at the moment. Electro house track due in a few days.

Anyone producing bass music, hit me up. I'm busy, but I still think it;d be fun.

Hey All,

I'm 23, recently graduated from Bennington College in VT, USA. Played percussion and took jazz voice lessons in high school but now I approach music from a visual arts perspective and call it sound (which pretty much took me by surprise like 2 years ago). At Bennington, visual arts was my "major" but the two mediums I worked with were architecture and sound. My electronic music is influenced largely by the avante-guard composers in France during the 60's, especially Pierre Schaeffer, Luc Ferrari, Iannis Xenakis and Olivier Messiaen. I always work with field recordings and usually also my own voice. I like to think of architecture and sound as two sides of the same coin: theoretical and visceral, respectively.

- At the moment I'm using ProTools9 with an old M-Audio Fast-Track and I have a ZoomH2 which I also (rarely) use as a microphone.
- I have everything installed on an external hard-drive so I can use it on any computer (plus ProTools runs faster that way! ), but MY laptop is an HP TouchSmart with Windows7.
- As far as plug-ins go, I am in LOVE with GRM Tools, which makes it hard to make myself use other plug-ins unfortunantly, I only have the demo versions in my own setup because they are crazy powerful and therefore equally expensive (demo means I can't save presets, so have to bus transformed sounds to another track to keep them and the bussed sound fades in and out, which can be pretty lame if feedback is involved, but I CAN automate in real time).
- In addition to a real version of GRM Tools, the software I wish I could afford is Metasyth, its a graphic synthesis program, and so much more. I loved working with it my senior year at Bennington.

I guess maybe the most important things about my work, in any medium, are that I:

- strive to create novel or new types of space.
- am inspired most by light
- think memory is the most powerful tool an artist has, both their own and the audience's.
- am obsessed with textures regarding all the senses, phenomenology is my fav art theory
- think colors/ color theory is woefully under-used in both architecture and sound.

In the future I hope to show as an installation artist, and probably teach, in addition to my acousmatic music.

Places you can find my music online:
- of course I love posting my favorite field recordings to Freesound...
- soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/joannageralyn
- bandcamp: http://jggmusic.bandcamp.com/

My first album was recently released by Italian label Cognito Percepti, it is available most places you can buy digital music, especially:
- beatport: http://www.beatport.com/release/public-places-private-spaces/822211
- amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Public-Places-Private-Spaces/dp/B005X3LO4U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid;=1328854368&sr;=8-1

...and that's probably more than enough talking about myself for now...

ok, my turn.

I'm 36. I work as a video producer/editor/technician.
I took lessons of clarinet and saxophone in my youth and played in several local bands (pop, ska, funk) for some years. oh, those were the years...

I was a student of the master of digital arts" (audio) from IUA-UPF a bunch of years ago, which really opened my eyes (and ears) to electronic music, audio and video installations and so on, but I never really did anything 'professionally' related to it, apart from being a hobbyst and and enthusiast about producing computer music ever since.

On my spare time, now I mostly like to work with ableton live, which I think is great for working with samples, and too many plugins to be named here, but basically anything sample-related (traditional samplers, drum samplers and, of course, reaktor and max/msp for mangling sounds). Sometimes I also use FL studio, renoise and other sequencers, because I think they're great for some step-sequencing and precise edits.

My musical background is founded mostly on black music, I love jazz, soul, funk, and of course, electronica: from musique concrete and abstract/experimental/IDM stuff like alva noto, autechre and such to more beat-oriented styles like house or techno, minimal, etc. as long as they're not too hard on the ears.

I'm open to collabs on my free time. Actually I have an idea in mind about a continuous collaboration between freesound members that I'd like to comment with AlienXXX sometime.

Oh, I forgot to mention my recording gear:
-Zoom H4
-minidisc recorder with custom preamp and stereo mic.
-Rode NT3 mic
-a custom contact microphone I made last weekend from a 0.75€ merry christmas musical greeting card. And it works! lol.

you can check some of my sh*t at http://www.soundcloud.com/ramacod

ok, enough.
next!

About myself
50+ years of age, interested in field-recording. I just sit outdoors and record for houres. After recording I pick out the good parts. My wife does the typing and difficult editing because my arms do not work proper. We're a team.

Recording is my hobby. My second hobby is to create Horror with my sounds. (see my horror pack)
No musical education (sing very good when I am standing under the shoower haha).
No audio-technical education.
Learning bij try and error and listening to pro's I have met.
Studying en the internet (eg. freesound-forum.

Equipment
- Sony PCM D50 recorder with a very good all-cover windjammer / windsheeld.
- A extra Rode SVM mic for loud envirionments and when I need a mic on a boom-pole.
- For mixing and recording I only use a very good end cheep (€20,-) headphone (philips SHP 2000).
- A Toshiba laptop L300 (has a good soundcart)

Software
- Audacity (realy great)
- paulstretch, software for my Horror-pack

klankbeeld wrote:
About myself
50+ years of age

50+??? 50+67=117
Sorry, no Offend intended but I couldnt control myself

I had my first blow, so to say, at music, when i was a small boy. I asked my parents if i could play an instrument and they decided that the recorder (small flute that strangely translates into a recorder in english, how ironic ). They did well, and before long time had passed i completely lost interest in music..... god i hated that flute.

The years passed and for my 15th birthday i got enough money to buy me a decent spanish guitar. 20 years later i still play it today (at age 35), and my collection has evolved a little. Two spanish guitars, one hand built and the old one. A couple of electric guitars, a bass which i made my self and a western guitar. I also teach one of my kids to play. My musical influences varies from blues and jazz, to rock pop and ambience. I don't wan't to name any names, that would be to waste good space here. There's just too many

In the mean time i've become a dad, husband and a cabinetmaker of the old school. Currently working on everything from designer furniture, windows and doors, to new rooftops and and everything in between. As long as it contains wood.

A good friend introduced me to the kind of audio that freesound representes. He helped me on the way to get things recorded, and i really appreciate that more than he can imagine. I've learned a lot from reading posts here, but this dare thing has totally blown me into a new chapter. My first experience with DAW software was when i made my first dare, in dare 7. For some reason i had to join in, but i didn't have a clue of what i was to do, or what software i had to use. So i chose jokosher. It seemed to be a fair choice; not too complicated, and not too cheap either.

So i've been at this audio mixing/producing/what-ya-call-it for about four months now. I've learned a great deal about working in Ardour, along with audacity, jack, petri-foo (thanks copyc4t) and a lot of other opensource audio software made for linux (mind you, that ardour can be used on macs too without any problems). But mainly everything goes through ardour. It really baffles me just how versatile and powerful it is.

So to sum it all up. I'm 35, i'm not educated in any way, regarding music and audio. I've played the guitar for ages.

Gear: A bashed up dual core 3.00 ghz desktop, with 2 gigs of ram, running linux. A set of creative 5.1 speakers and a pair of sennheiser hd 201 earmuffins. My favorite audio software is ardour 3 beta 2, Hydrogen 0.9.5, audacity, jack and petri-foo.

For field recording i have a Sony HI-MD walkman MZ-NH1 minidisc and a zoom h2. Current favorite mics are a pair of Shure WL183, with some home made windshields.

....Oh, and some guitars

Hi everyone,

Im a 34 year old mechanical engineer, and know nothing about music.
Except for some accordeon lessons I had when I was 8 to 10 years old.
I HATED the accordeon, but there was an old one from my older sister, and my mom told me I had to go and take some music lessons.(for some reason I couldnt play an other instrument)
I ended up (ten years old) in the accordeon ensamble lead by the famous accordeon sisters Annie and Paula van Wanrooy, between other people that were at least 3 times my age.
This all lead, to make the story short, to me not wanting to do anything with music anymore.......

BUT, Then 3 or 4 years later I started to party!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I mean serious partying, like every weekend, from thursday evening to monday morning!!
Visiting Parkzicht in Rotterdam where the (dutch)hardcore house music started.(or at least thats what they told me)
And visiting all the clubs and partys I could go, I re-developed a taste for music.
But still, I was only enjoying music, not making it.
About half year ago, I got a new phone with all sorts of apps like synths and stuff.
I was playing with it at work, during a break, and a co worker told me he was playing as well.
Only he was doing it on his computer, and used a real synth.
The next day I went home with a copy of FL-studio, and thats where it got started.

Im using a crappy old computer, no soundcard or anything.
(pentium 2000 megaherts 1Gb ram onboardsound)
Im using headphones, chinese awfullness from 2,99 (cracking like crazy)
Or when Im lucky, my livingroom hifi.
Like I said, Im using Fl-studio and also I like audicity.
Im playing with goldwave now, witch seems to be a nice program.
And for the recordings I use my phone
Really got me this one "The LG 2x Speed", Lol!! I only wanted a phone.....

So, Thanx to LG for getting me on Freesound!

toiletrolltube wrote:

escortmarius wrote:

klankbeeld wrote:
About myself
50+ years of age

50+??? 50+67=117
Sorry, no Offend intended but I couldnt control myself

Where did you get 67 from?

My mom turned 68 today....

escortmarius wrote:

toiletrolltube wrote:

escortmarius wrote:

klankbeeld wrote:
About myself
50+ years of age

50+??? 50+67=117
Sorry, no Offend intended but I couldnt control myself

Where did you get 67 from?

My mom turned 68 today....

Mom, the make jokes about me ;-(

I've enjoyed reading everyone's intro's so I guess it must be my turn... I was born at an early age.... some 53 years ago at last count. One of my favourite quotes is from Terry Pratchett - "inside evey old man is a young man wondering what the hell happened" I've been an artist for most of my life, but a visual one, a painter. Here's my blog for anyone interested: http://postcardfrompuniho.blogspot.com

After painting, music and sound has always been my passion, though I don't consider myself much of a musician..! No art or musical training whatsoever. Music at school consisted of a box of bells rattles and whistles we all got to make a noise on if we were good adnd well behaved and the pushy kids always got the triangle... ...so I'm making up for it now. I taught myself to play guitar and now I play classical, but very poorly. I also like making things so I made a classical guitar and then I made another one. I've come to the conclusion that I probably make them better than I can play them. I've made three so far and also one solidbody electric Les Paul copy. I'd like to build a lute next. Now I'm going to sample my guitars - I feel like the little red hen sometimes...

Back in the Old Days I never dreamed that one day I'd have the kind of equipment to make profesional sounding recordings. SO much has changed in the last decade or two... I first got a Korg Triton music workstation and sampler about ten years ago and was amazed by it's capabilities. I still use it, but these days it's being wasted as simply a midi keyboard for Propellerhead Reason 6 software. I also use Cubase and Audacity, and my latest toy is a Korg padKontrol which I love, especially for the roll function! This last year I also joined a local drumming circle adn found that I have a flair for djembe drumming. Now to master the triangle....

@puniho

Loved your intro.
As i always say: "men never grow up. They just get older"
If the dares have put you or anyone in touch with the little kid inside them, then i have achieved my goal.

Well, even if my entry for dare 10 might be the only one ever, (don't expect many snow blizzards in this Italian town on the beach ) I guess I'll take this occasion to introduce myself too, copying afleetingspeck's layout as I liked it. ...Copying? Me? Well, "nomen, omen" as they say

Background:
I'm a "what the hell happened" young spirit in a 42 years old body; my only musical learning background consists in 2 years studying piano when I was a child, I know the basics of theory but no rules about harmonization and composition. I started sequencing on the 16x2 character display of my Roland D-20, then I moved to Cakewalk for DOS when I got my first PC (a 286), so my approach to music on electronic gear has been MIDI only for all this time, and it shows

The musical genres that tickle my soul are so many that it's a real mess: my car stereo is full of progressive, metal, "beauty and the beast" bands, electronic, and then I dance caribbean (my current main interest). Caribbean rhythms turn me into an awesome leg/table drummer, but when I touch real percussions, every hit sounds lame and shallow

The main interruption to my free time is a job as a software developer, on Windows, but at home I only use Linux since Debian 2.0

My equipment as of today
Software:
Linux is ripe with audio/music production software!
Over time I've been through Jokosher, Traverso, MusE, but the ones I use the most lately are more or less the ones listed on my dare entry:

Audacity - sound processing
Virtual Keyboard - MIDI recording
Hydrogen - Drum sequencing
QTractor, LMMS - MIDI master sequencing
Ardour - mixing, mastering
ZynAddSubFX - awesome synth
QSynth - soundfont based synth
Petri-Foo - sampler
And a nice bunch of LADSPA plugins, plus a good number of Windows VST and VSTi that work reasonably well with the aforementioned software.

Hardware:
Acer laptop (Turion X2) with Aptosid (Debian Sid derivative)
Condenser mic (mono) with standard jack plug
The cheapest headset and speakers (don't kill me, I was just a gamer when I stumbled here )

Instruments:
Roland D-20 workstation, also currently working as MIDI master keyboard through a USB/MIDI cable
Yamaha TG 100 expander
A classical guitar which I tried to learn by myself, but never went too far

That's all, Freesounders!

AlienXXX wrote:
@puniho

Loved your intro.
As i always say: "men never grow up. They just get older"
If the dares have put you or anyone in touch with the little kid inside them, then i have achieved my goal.

Well, thanks for coming up with these dares and giving me something to focus on! Otherwise I'd just be pottering around aimlessly..

All right, it's my turn to hold the mic.

I am less than 18. so I'm not telling how old I am.

I love music and sound. Since I was a little girl, the bass beats in music is what I listen to. Due to this, David Guetta is one of my main heroes .

In between homework and texting my boyfriend, i like to mess around on my synthesizer. Most of the time, I have just crap. Sometimes, I hit on something cool, but that's kind of rare.

My equipment is just a synthesizer keyboard, and an iPod to record stuff on. My ways are crude, but I Will Try!

Thanks for reading, Freesounders!

FemmeGermany wrote:
All right, it's my turn to hold the mic.

I am less than 18. so I'm not telling how old I am.

I love music and sound. Since I was a little girl, the bass beats in music is what I listen to. Due to this, David Guetta is one of my main heroes .

In between homework and texting my boyfriend, i like to mess around on my synthesizer. Most of the time, I have just crap. Sometimes, I hit on something cool, but that's kind of rare.

My equipment is just a synthesizer keyboard, and an iPod to record stuff on. My ways are crude, but I Will Try!

Thanks for reading, Freesounders!

Hello and welcome FemmeGermany

I have been running a monthly dare (a friendly contest just for fun) which involves taking some sounds from Freesound and doing something with them. Not sure if you can load samples into your synthesizer (some synths allow for this, but many don't).
However, there is some software that you can use on your ipod which would allow you to do this. They are called DAWs or, some of the simpler ones are called trackers or sequencers.
If you have some of this software already great, if not ask around and I am sure people will help and recommend some programs. Many are free, so you don't need to spend any money to get a DAW or sequencer for your ipod.

In addition to the monthly dare, we are running a simpler 'dare' which I have called 'the continuum'. This is ever-running and very simple: we started with one sample, each person downloads that sample and uses effects, etc to change it. Then they uploaded it again for the next person to change. And so on.
This is very simple and good fun, so you may want to try that first.
I am currently changing the sample. Will be 'returned' soon.
Here is the link to 'the continuum':
http://www.freesound.org/forum/dare-the-community/32198/?page=1#post

Hello everyone,

my name is Oliver, i‘m 33 years old and i live in vienna, austria.
I work as a landscape architect, so i am planning parks, playgrounds and many more.
Recording and producing are my hobbies since a few years.

My equipment consists of:

Hardware:
- Zoom H2 Recorder
- Macbook
- Akai midikeyboard
- Arturia Spark

Software:
- Ableton live
- Wave Editor
- Plugins from Native Instruments, U-he and some more.

and some instruments like a guitar, didgeridoo and sansula.

Nice to meet you Freesounders!