FIRST POST YO

As a sort of introduction, I figured I'd try to do one of those personality quizzes that highschoolers and attention whores fill out to tell everyone about their lives, even though nobody really cares. But since I'm a musician, I decided to come up with one that addresses issues of creativity, rather than "how many times u been kissed" and "coke or pepsi". (A full transcript of those questions is available on request.)

Name (or nickname): Chris, or Rujo King.

Age: 27

Country of origin: United States

Instrument(s) of Choice: Voice and Keyboards. My vocal range is pretty wide, centered around baritone. As far as keys go, I mainly do synths, but with a tendency to just go nuts with a good old-fashioned Rhodes sound.

How would you describe your music? Wow... Some of it is down-tempo and dark bordering on ambient, while some fits rather neatly into "drum and bass." I'm split half and half between acoustic and electronic drums, and I'll use sampled instruments as often as I use synthesized ones. I do have a fetish for glitchy sounds though, as well as odd and mixed time signatures.

How much training have you had? Some classical theory, with some extra work in medieval and modern concepts. As far as technical stuff goes, I'm entirely self-taught.

Who are your primary musical influences? Let's see, for pure beats I tend to look to guys like Squarepusher and Aphex Twin, particularly when it comes to faster, more convoluted rhythms. Structurally and melodically, I take a lot of inspiration from Massive Attack, Boards of Canada and Portishead, with a mixture of Imogen Heap and Coldplay for my more accessible tracks. To round out my contemporary influences, I find myself using a lot of musical idioms from Commodore 64 and Amiga .mod files, though I don't make many "chiptunes" per se. I'm also influenced less directly by modern art music, as well as medieval melodic and harmonic structures. I've studied Harry Partch and Schoenberg, but I do prefer tonal harmony in my own works.

What other music do you listen to? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Venetian Snares, Black Eyed Peas, Mos Def, The Streets... I'm pretty eclectic.

Any favorite web sites for music? I'll find myself going to the Computer Music magazine site as well as Music Radar for news. KVR Audio's plugin list is incredible, and most of my VST plugin folder came from their freeware section. Finally, Harmony Central's been on my bookmark list since it opened, and even though their software section is a bit anemic they do have a good deal on electronic music in general.

Sites not related to music? Something Awful. I've been a "goon," or forum member, since 2007, and I've found them to be the most consistently funny site on the web. I also get a kick out of Crank.net, particulary the "illucid" links. And as someone who just sucks up useless knowledge like crazy, Wikipedia is one of the pages I go to most often.

Platform of choice: I use a MacBook, though I'm running Windows XP on it for games reasons unrelated to music production.

Applications of choice: I use Cubase most often, with Live and Reason picking up the slack. I do a lot of sound design in Reaktor, and loop editing in Sound Forge. I've got a whole slew of plugins, so many that I actually can't remember what most of them are, though QuadraSID and Lounge Lizard are two standouts.

Hardware of choice: I've got a firewire interface from Phonic that gets audio and MIDI in and out. Plugged up to that I've got my Yamaha CS1X, which is not only a capable keyboard but also awesome and blue. I just recently got an Akai MPD24 controller that I use from drums, Live clip triggering and mixing. I use an instrument mic to record everything, since my vocals rarely go unprocessed.

Describe your typical workflow: It depends on the style I'm going for. For some heavy electronic stuff, I'll start a piece in Reason and bounce each track separately to Cubase for additional sounds and mastering. If it's more acoustic in nature, I'll start off in Cubase directly and simply add in other parts as needed. I use VSTi's much more often than samples and if I use premade loops, I try to mangle or rearrange them into something different. Finally, I'll use Live to quickly build up arrangements using my own loops and clips.

Any final words?
Get down. With your bad self.