words on...music?

The first was a $100 Casio two-octave monophonic. The second – another Casio – took one-second samples and provided four pads on which to play them. But these were toys, and therefore I could not be taken seriously.

Any attempt at “seriously” meant synthesizers, drum machines, effects processors, and lots of cables to MIDI everything together. Which meant a huge investment of time and money.

I began to shop where Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, and even Prince shopped; I listened to an interminable stream of sales pitches; I pressed the keys on just about everything.

Thus, the third was a Roland Juno-106: Rows of knobs and levers – even something called a “bender” – could be configured to produce phat analog sounds. Very acid house, although I didn’t know it at the time. An Ensoniq SQ-80, along with said drum and reverb boxes, completed the picture.

The mixer. Um, actually, no. No mixer. My strategy curiously channeled $3000 worth of equipment into a $59 Panasonic stereo. Adapter into adapter into plug and onto cassette tape for posterity.

I recorded hundreds of “songs” in my bedroom studio from 1989–1992. Here is one; here is another.

11-December 2002