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lets see if I can pick this brain....
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it's meme time
hmmm.. so we're doing this sort of thing now? I gotta admit, I haven't taken much time to thoroughly look at the new site! Although I've been a member for almost seven months, I never really introduced myself. I just sort of "appeared" and started posting. Appologies for the unstrucured nature of this post. I tend to go off on tangents.
name is Etienne, born into the world a bit over 27 years ago in Quebec City, Canada. As a small child I was found hammering away at the family piano quite often! Later on (preteens) I saw sense, and attempted to learn written music. That didn't work to well, I always had a hands-on aproach and had trouble learning stuff that wasn't tangible and intuitive. During my preteens (and early teens) I'd salvage old tape decks, speakers and microphones from the garbage and attempted to get them to work. I was into electronics at the time and could perform simple modifications, once I got past the sticking-LEDs-everywhere phase. Did some crappy stuff with tape loops.
During preteens, also got into computers quite a bit! Mother had gotten a "new" Mac LCIII so the old Mac Plus went to me! It was quite a capable 8-bit 22khz machine at the time! Fooled around with midi software and simple trackers/sequencers. I can't say I was devoting much time to music creation, though. It ground to a near halt during much of highscool, too.
Household was very much into the Beatles, jazz, classical, classic blues and rock. The electronic influence came later when I found a copy of the Hackers soundtrack. Underworld, Orbital and Prodigy all impressed me! Too bad the source is such a shameful one. 
Got my first piano keyboard at 19 (GEM DSK-8) and classical guitar at 20. Had lots of fun with those, but it wasn't untill one or two years later that I actually started recording these instruments and started using trackers and sequencers! Started with Hammerhead on an old P100, even though it was 2000, I was too poor to afford a *new* computer. Did some basic 4/4 crappy house, nothing original. Then in 2001 I discovered Fruity Loops! OMG!
I wasn't the type to use and modify demo songs. I did however use a lot of downloaded/bundled samples at the time! My first FL song was exactly 1 pattern long, played in a loop, and constantly being tweaked and modified as it played/recorded! I didn't know how to use automation so everything was "oooh lets see what this will do". My second song is where I started using DDClip to arange multiple tracks together, complete with volume and balance envilopes! "hmmm, lets see what adding some guitar will do". Unfortunatelly, although I made quite a few songs in 2001 and early 2002, the first and second (with the exception of two others) are the better ones. The rest were cheezy and overdone. I was mostly ripping other artists off for like half of them.
Oddly enough, I didn't start listening to much electronic music (aside from the previously mentioned few) untill 2002. Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin being the first, I think. In mid-2002, after my crappy first self-released "album" and a little break, I made "Lumiere Orange Dans Le Vert", a track to this day I still consider as one of my favorites. It's simple and doesn't take a genius to redo it in a sequencer, but it worked so well right off the bat! A few weeks after that one, I did Read A Book, and then Bloody Fingers. At the time (I was 23) I was wondering how in hell I managed to compose these (what I considered) lush pieces!
I outputted a lot of these self-claimed great songs up untill the end of 2003. During that year I even got the attention of Unschooled Records and released one song on their first compilation CD. This was very exciting to me! Unfortunatelly the song wasn't all it could of been, possibly because of the stress of havign to make something "on demand" in two-weeks time, whether I felt inspired or not. I did a couple other songs (not as good) at the start of 2004 and then it just halted for a while.
I got a job offer in Montreal in mid-2004. I couldn't refuse it, especially since Montreal was, in my mind, where everything was at, culturally, artistically and musically! Unfortunatelly though, up untill the end of 2005, new material was mostly in the form of little sound clips and failed experiments, few and far in-between. Near the end 2005 though, things picked up again a little, and finally in mid-2006, I release another album. Compared to my first, it's pretty... err... ok. 
Currently trying to get my creativity back. The imagination and boldness I had in 2002 and 2003 that I lack now. Newer songs of mine are far superior *technically* than those old ones, but the old ones had a certain raw lushness that I'm missing now. dunno, my new ones sound too formulatic, as if they're *trying* to be IDM or drone music. The old ones, just were what they were, nogenre songs. I need to get back at that.
Although I just released my Mood Weeds album, a number of them are from my "peak period" (without sounding too pretencious). Notably tracks 2, 3, 5, 7 and 8 (thought remastered for consistancy). The rest are much newer, from late last year.
These days, I'm working on music that can easily be played and tweaked live. I've started getting requests to play at various little gigs, but I'm needing to turn them down for now due to lack of experience in jamming and EM improvisation (though I do a lot of improvised guitar/keyboards/noise). Also, I do NOT want to be the EM musician who does nothing but sit behind his laptop at a gig. It's boring for the listeners and it'S boring for me. This year I'm concentrating on live jamming, improv and contributing to my live session more than just tweaking a knob box umbilicaled to the laptop. I'm definatelly interested in the hand-on approach, having a dozen guitar pedals, a mixer, some loopers, a guitar and a synth in a pile in front of me, with maybe the laptop in the back to supply with the few things I can't do live.
And here I am. As far as internet communities go in the electronic music production area, I first started on InternetDJ.com. It will always hold a dear place in me for that, but I can't help but feel like an outcast in the sea of remixers and dance/trance producers that harbor that place. I still visit it to chat it up with old buddies, but I think EM411 will fill the particular void IDJ can't. | |
Comments
06/23/06
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minisystem
montreal is the best.
06/23/06
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lunatinker
that's a nice bio. if you read the first ones, you'll notice that there was a "template" of sorts.
I like yours better.
06/25/06
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cloudscapes
thanks
and yeah montreal is really awesome, especially for the music scene here, whoa
07/14/06
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crazyshadow
minisystem said: "montreal is the best. "
Yea well all the best artistn specialy in the experimental field are from montreal the best artist duo i heard of are the user they made the symphony for dot matrix printer that is so cool
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