Here's a page that details what cool toys I've accumulated over the years... All of this stuff is used to create and polish off any music that happens across my path.

I am most definitely a tinkerer, and a hardcore computer hardware "hobbyist". If it can be opened up, played with, built, modified, fixed, improved or broken, you will most likely find me poking around within the innards. I build all of my own computers from scratch, and still like to rotate my own tires and change my own brakes.

In August '01, the music-making bug came back for a visit and bit me pretty hard. Now, I'm preparing for both the onslaught of creativity and expenditure... Music is always more fun when you have a lot of toys to work with, but toys need to be procured at a minimal cost (seeing as toys = money, and money =/= free).

This being said, I have a few of things in my favor: my love of minimalism, my pack-rat and hoarding nature (I have lots of bits 'n pieces), and computers. I love gear, but why bother with a drum machine when, for the time being, I can simulate as many as I would like on my computer?

Putting together a studio is going to be quite a task, as what I need and what I buy/get are two things that need to still be determined. Going slow, in my opinion, is the best. Intelligent purchases are key.

Right now, I do almost all of my music work on my computer; composing and remastering. The next step is to integrate whatever gear that my computer cannot simulate in to my setup, and slowly build upon that. Man, wav files can be huge! 900+ megs for two hours of music... Sheesh.

The following list has the tangible (the stuff you can touch and see), the virtual (software) and the intangible (stuff that I would like to own at one point).

The tangible stuff:  The Computer[tm]:   * AMD 1.33 GHz Athlon     (overclocked to 1.481GHz)   * ASUS A7M266 Motherboard   * 2x256M pc2100 Crucial Technology DDR SIMMS     (overclocked to 295.9MHz DDR, 2-2-2 latency)   * Abit GeForce4 Ti4200 128M video card     (overclocked to 302MHz core, 570MHz memory)   * 2x40G Western Digital HDs   * Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card   * Pioneer 16x DVD-ROM   * Sony CRX210E1 48x12x48x CDRW   * Dell (Sony Trinitron) 21" Monitor   * A sexy black Antec Server Case     (meow!)   * A subtly designed black keyboard   * Squishy mouse and keyboard pads   * The mouse     (used on the squishy mouse pad)  Computer Benchmarks:   * 3DMark03:     1640   * 3DMark2001 SE (system comparison):     9598   * PCMark2002 (system comparison):     CPU Score: 3894     Memory Score: 3101     HDD Score: 870   * Sandra CPU/Memory/HD benchmarks:     CPU (arithmetic): 5564/2218     CPU (multimedia): 8233/9048     memory: 983/1913     hard drive: 22205kB/sec  Other Stuff:   * Event PS5 studio monitors   * Berhinger mx802a studio mixer     (brand new acquisition)   * Korg Wavestation EX     (it's been waiting for me to play with it...)   * Gibson Epiphone Stratocaster copy     (It doesn't have a humbucker pickup, which is odd, as according to everything     I've read is something it should be there... However, to help make up for that,     it's covered with stickers, punk-rock-stylie!)   * My homemade audio break-out box     (a work in progress)   * Whatever I can find that both makes noise and can be recorded.

The virtual stuff:   * Reason 2   * ReCycle   * Sound Forge   * Mirco$oft Windoze 2k     (yeah, i know... micro$oft. but i like to play games, too) The intangible:   * The Record Deal[tm]   * Fame and Fortune[tm]   * A pet Monkey named Bubbles[tm]