Why do I do it? It brings me joy of sorts: the time between the conception and the result is relatively short, and the result is relatively enjoyable. Besides, it’s totally different from my professional activities and this gives me somewhat unusual sense of accomplishment: whatever I do for a living has to be good, otherwise people will not pay for it and I’ll go starving. With music I do not have such a strong stimulus, but it turns out OK regardless. Are you still reading this? Here are more reasons:

• It’s easy.
• It amuses my friends.
• My kids admire my tunes, especially more danceable ones.
• My family does not have to think about birthday, or anniversary, or Christmas presents - I have an inexhaustible wish list of music making software (perpetually upgradeable) and hardware.

This is a copy from the “official” history from the “old site”, i.e., up to “Piano Goo” album. From 2008 or so, please see the blog for updates, announcements, musings, etc.

Dec ‘04

“Piano Goo” CD is out. It is as eclectic as everything else I’ve done before, but the general direction is trance. The music is influenced by several technology upgrades: new version of Sonar 3 came with the vSampler, which, it turn, came with a collection of new sounds. And I had a whole year to play with my new Waldorf Q - an amazing piece of German machinery; I feel really sorry that the company went bankrupt.

I also hired an outside help for the first time in my music “career”: Slava Balasanov of Knightly Productions did the mastering and DiskFaktory did the duplication.

For the first time my music was offered for sale to the general public at Amazon, CD Baby, and iTunes (the earlier attempt at now defunct mp3.com does not count).

Mar ‘03

“Color of Desire” CD is out. In my humble opinion it’s darker and more electronic than “Pink Lies”.

Mar ‘03

Waldorf Q synth is given as a birthday present. I did not touch it until “Color of Desire” was finished.

Jun ‘02

“Pink Lies” CD is out. It contains an eclectic collection of tunes in various styles - since I do not make a living doing music, it allows me certain artistic freedom - and they say that money can’t buy happiness!

Aug ‘02

The name “Inphal” is created (that’s a whole separate story) and registered as an Internet domain.

‘00-’02

I’ve got Cakewalk’s ProAudio sequencer (later renamed Sonar) and re-recorded all the previous material with XV-3080. It all has started to sound real.

Sep ‘00

The A-90EX keyboard is bought for kids’ music lessons. It was done against grandparents’ will who desperately wanted a real mini grand. Roland XV-3080 got somehow “attached” to the deal, I don’t remember the gory details.

1996

I’ve bought a Midisoft’s MidiStudio software sequencer from my local software shop and started arranging where the keyboard auto-arranger left off.

1995

It all started when my wife gave me a kiddy’s Yamaha keyboard as the wedding anniversary present.

It sounded kind of thin, but it had an auto-accompaniment feature, i.e., you play a melody with your right hand, chords with the left one, and the box plays like whole band in response. Amazing! So I played some tunes I remembered from my school days and one night I got bored and tried something I had not ever heard before. With the “full band” arrangement done by the keyboard it genuinely surprised me - naturally, it was a pitiful sorry kitsch, but not much worse that Yanni does (nothing personal, man) on a regular basis.

I wrote several more tunes and recorded them on a cassette player. It genuinely spooked my family and friends, but I assured them that I was not quitting my day job.

As a matter of fact, yes, indeed - there is ! I would not take it seriously though.

A lot of people ask me about the nuts and bolts of my method that seemingly allows an engineer (myself) to produce an "artistic" product (the music). I advertise it as a nice hobby and encourage everyone to try. Here is a brief description of how I do it, your mileage may vary:

1. I start with a sound. I can spend hours, days, and weeks (again, I do not do it professionally, so there is no deadline) searching for an inspirational sound, whatever it may mean. The only criterion I’ve got is it should create an "idea of a melody" for me. This is what you hear as lead instrument in most of my songs.
2. Having the sound selected, it is relatively easy to write a melody at the keyboard - the sound leads me to it. The only thing is to record it, so I can reproduce it later. I initially record the melody on piece of paper as best as I can - the rhythmic structure is crude, the tonality is usually A minor, etc.
3. While writing a melody I also try out some harmonies to match. The resulting chord sequence gets recorded on the same piece of paper. At this point, the hardest part of creative work is over - I’ve got a skeleton of a song.
4. I enter the chord sequence in a Band-in-a-Box software. It creates an arrangement for several instruments in a variety of styles based on this sequence. I listen to different styles the software produces until the sequence sounds close to what I have in mind for the song.
5. I record the melody while the Band-in-a-Box plays the arrangement. The great thing for musically impaired like myself is that the software can play in any tempo you want - it’s really important for the melodies that I cannot possibly play fast (it means almost all of them). In 90% of the cases this is the last time I touch the keyboard.
6. I instruct the Band-in-a-Box to produce a couple of choruses of improvisation - it sometimes can be used in a real song despite its totally soul-less origin. Band-in-a-Box can also harmonize the melody in several ways, which is also can be used in the final product.
7. I export all the recorded and generated material into a simple MIDI file, that is the file that contains notes’ codes.
8. I load the MIDI file into the real sequencer - Cakewalk’s Sonar. This is when the real fun starts.
9. Sonar can do many things, but first and foremost I re-map all the default instruments of Band-in-the-Box to Roland XV-3080’s. Then I try to reduce the number of voices from 4-6 to 2-3 and re-arrange their parts time-wise. Sometimes I pick a different tonality. Usually 50 to 70% of material accumulated so far is eliminated at this step.
10. I add some Acid’s loops for decoration.
11. I play with various sound effects, arpeggiators, and software synthesizers to get a more or less cohesive song out of this mess. I might compose and record a couple of new choruses on the keyboard, mostly for variety sake.
12. The final stage - recording. It’s somewhat more involving process than it should be, but this is when it all comes together. There is about a 40% chance that I will not like the result and will have to repeat the whole exercise from one of the previous steps. Or abandon the song altogether - it keeps down the amount of obvious crap.
13. I apply final effects and equalization, so it would sound good on a regular stereo.
14. The rest is a matter of arranging songs on CD and burning them.

That’s it! On the "Hardware" and "Software" pages I describe most of the components of my "studio" and what they do.