East Peoria, Illinois, USA
|
A few pointless bits about me...
Author: jkn on June 23 2006 Viewed 2887 times. 11 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
People who enjoyed reading this: jdg, Fredo, daswesen, Zanf, Unknownforce, LogicFray, bodo, astroid, yghartsyrt, datathinner, GregTArtZ
-->
Born in 1970... grew up in a midwestern US town of 1,000 people. I lived on 10th street - literally the 10th street in town, across from our house was a corn field.
My grandma was the organist at the same church in the tiny town I grew up in for 65 years. She played weddings, funerals, the yearly Santa Claus Breakfast at the firehouse, filled in for all the other churches in the area, etc... I think much of my wanting to play music initially came from her.
She started teaching me when I was 5 - I loved to just mess with the piano more than actually playing printed music though I learned how to do that with numerous teachers. I remember being fond of 'pounding' on the keys - not in the sense like a lot of little kids do where they pound on it a few times and then run off to do something else... I'd get caught up in the rhythm and the how things would sounds - and the wonderful rumbly feeling it would give. This, of course, drove everyone nuts - especially when they realized I was going to continue to do this sort of playing for years (heck - I still do!) So my practicing would range from all the 'B' guys (Bach, Beethoven, etc...) to cluster chords played loud, hard, and fast... :-)
Played trumpet in school band. Started writing piano music fairly young. Got hooked on synths before I got into high school. Met some friends, rented synths, 4-tracks, and drum machines from a music store whenever we got enough money together.
Same grandma from earlier loaned me the money for my first synth - a Siel DK-600. I joined a band at 15 and started gigging in area bars - everyone else in the band was a decade plus older than me. I learned a ton from them, both what to do and what not to do... watched a few of them spiral down the drug path - doing 4:00 am bars on school nights was a bear - especially staying awake in school the next day... I got mostly good grades so the teachers generally didn't care if I nodded off now and then - of course a few took offense to it...
After high school I started taking piano lessons from a couple of great teachers at the same time - they were totally opposite - also switched from trumpet in jazz band to piano when I got to junior college. Did a recital playing this wonderful 20th century piece that I had on 18 copied pages - a neat thing where I'm playing one piano and my teacher is playing the other, intricate, complex, beautiful ... first page turn flipped the whole stack of pages out into the first row of the audience... luckily I had memorized it, it was very humorous. Dearly wish I remembered the name of the piece - my photo copies don't have the title page. That particular teacher was a riot - she had toured for years and her and her husband were sort of the premiere piano people in town and well regarded in their day. She was in her 80's when I took from her - drove a little old VW Bug with "don't shoot - I'm just the piano player" bumper sticker on the back. Traded that in for some 2 seater sports car later on... crazy. She'd forget from week to week what she'd already taught me - but once you got her going... wow - it's like her brain was kind of going, but her music never left her. Brilliant.
Practiced piano way too much and ruined the tendons in my wrists at 19. I still have problems.
Had been playing in an all originals band for awhile - almost no gigs (but every gig infinitely more rewarding) compared to the cover band in high school I mentioned earlier. Bass player died of a heart attack (at 20... he had a wishbone chest so his heart didn't have enough room) on the day of a gig at a college a few towns away.
I switched to bass due to my wrists and partially because we just couldn't find anybody. Had a ball playing with a band for a couple more years - got burnt out, got married, got a 'real' job... put all my equipment away for 4 years. Got it back out - joined a wonderful, but stressful 3-piece band playing bass - it imploded a year or so later - got all my synths out again and decided I'd been supporting everyone else for so long it was time to work on my own stuff as the focus for once. Now it's 8 years later and I'm happily writing mostly ambient and minimal techno in my studio and plunking away on my piano. I've taken the last 2 years off from recording - a bit of a long term depression/slump that extended further once my pc died (fixed, but not completely reliable - I'll have to deal with that soon). I'm finally getting through to the other side of it and starting to enjoy turning on my synths again.
I don't have a massive amount gear - I prefer to keep what I have and really dig into it. I've regretted every thing that I traded/sold - so I have kept just about everything since the late 80's.
Synths:
Synthesizers.com 22 space
Korg DSS-1
Roland Juno 106
Sequential Prophet 600
Yamaha TG-33
Effects:
Korg SDD-1200 dual delay
Lexicon Vortex
Alesis Wedge
Boss ME-8B bass multieffects
Other:
Mackie HR824 monitors
Mackie 1604/1402 mixers
Ampeg B2r head + a couple cabinets
G&L L1000 and Gibson Grabber basses
Gretsch electric (used and severely abused from 1959)
King student trumpet
Yamaha piano
Alesis SR-16 drum machine
1999 era pc w/ Aardvark Aark24 soundcard
Sony Vegas and SoundForge are my main apps
Fruity and Rebirth at times
I work in IT - most of my career working with data/information - either writing reports, dba, ERP systems, etc... I've been programming/admining an ERP system called Dataflo for the last 7 years - however, we're migrating to SAP this year. I've worked a lot with Oracle and DB2 over the years as well.
When I started not doing music I shifted my sort of 'creative' side to taking photos (by stealing my wife's new Sony DSC-F717 digicam).
Married 14 years this summer, no kids, but two very old dogs that I take a lot of photos of.
| |
Comments
06/23/06
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
Zanf
I knew some of this story but its good have the rest filled in.
Get some of your music posted here and link some of your photos.
06/23/06
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
jkn
I'll post a few old songs up one of these days. Now that my modular cabinet is full - I'll be taking a few new shots of it. Most of my photos don't really fit a music site.
06/23/06
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
tantan
This is awesome. I look forward to hearing some of your work. I really relate to your story--I trade music for photography as well when I'm burned out on music. The DSC-F717 is a nice one!
06/23/06
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
Zanf
tanner: some of johns music: link
06/23/06
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
astroid
we have some things in common, for sure-i switched instruments because of bad tendons-had to stop playing the sax. and i lost a young brilliant bass player along the way-he was 19.
06/24/06
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
datathinner
jkn said: "Most of my photos don't really fit a music site."
yea, I take a lot of nude pictures of myself, too.
06/24/06
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
jkn
tantan - I love the 717 - wonderful for macros and amazingly easy to use since the lense pivots. Great for holding down low to take shots - easy to brace against things, etc...
astroid - sad you lost a bass player also - in our case he was the primary song writer which made it very difficult to continue on. also, the 'magic' was just gone with that band afterwards.
06/24/06
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
astroid
our guy was 19, played jazz and classical, upright and electric, with the same vigor and life. that band was a cross between "the band" and "red clay" era freddie hubbard. his upright cracked down the middle the night he died-no reason, but the same night he died in his sleep from an unknown heart flaw. that was really tough.
06/24/06
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
jkn
the fact it was a heart flaw even makes it freakier... my friend knew he had a problem though - had a 'wishbone chest'. oddly - I knew a girl with the same problem, though she was able to have surgery to make more room for her heart. he wasn't for a reason i never found out the specifics on.
for what it's worth... here's a photo of him with me from '88: link
06/24/06
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
astroid
oh man
link
there's loren. what a sweet guy he was.
06/26/06
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
GregTArtZ
funny I was at firs ta drummer at seven but i broke my thumb and i switched to bass
Kind of liek your story with your wrist. Its funny how things work out, but they do.
edited: Jun 27 2006
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
jkn
...I still play piano - not often - but I still do. What changed is I quit really 'practicing' - can't do it for long periods of time. Never really practiced bass much either - which sometimes drove a bandmate nuts who for some odd reason thought we'd all die if we didn't practice all the time (he also had a tendency to freeze up before a gig since he had almost no live experience... but that's a different story...) He was a bit of a tortured artist - so amazingly natural at just letting go and writing a song - but then he'd beat himself to death for weeks trying to make it perfect (when it was almost always "done" after the first day of jamming a tune...) anyway... A bit of a ramble.
Piano is still my first love - always will be, although I've pretty much kept it an at home no one ever hears it sort of thing (it peeks out on one of my tracks - 'marco polo' - which I might post here.) Bass on the other hand - that just feels so natural, like it's an extension of me - and I feel very at home jamming with other people when playing bass. I just don't jam that much anymore since everyone has moved away.
06/27/06
+
PM |
QUOTE |
PERMALINK |
REPORT
jkn
@astroid... that's awesome that a scholarship was created in honor of Loren.
Register / login
|
^
EM411 is Copyright 2001-2008 EM411.com
All rights reserved. | Contact | RSS
|
