What’s Next

“So,” you may be wondering, “what exactly is Bernie trying to do with this music stuff, anyway?”

Well, music and sound have been at the core of most of my studies and skills to date. I have played musical instruments for years and years, been in bands, studied music theory, written music software, written various songs and pieces, recorded some of them, studied audio signal processing, built music-synthesis circuits … I once concocted a system of music-like notation for martial arts routines (it was not a success).

But, as it turns out, I have not pursued any of these things professionally, until now.

Home studio, Oct. 2008

The first phase is to explore: there is a musical niche for me somewhere, whether as an artist writing/recording original work or as an engineer creating tools for artists, or some combination. Either way, there are a lot of new sounds waiting to be found, and I know how to find them. Despite the vast burst of creativity brought on by today’s incredible audio tools, there are still things no one (much) is doing, and some of these things are shockingly simple.

So, I have set up a home studio and am starting to record original music. As I do this, I will also be learning what is current in the field: how people are getting their work done, what tools they are lacking, which horses have been beaten to death, and which are still wild.

I don’t have an artist/band name yet, but I do have a motto:

Take anything, make anything.

Keep it simple, be resourceful. Use what is at hand efficiently by breaking habits and ignoring barriers. Take a plastic kazoo, play it like a saxophone, and mix it like an electric guitar (really, wait till you hear it!).

Take anything, make anything.