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I play the bass guitar. I started when I was a teenager and I've been in a number of local bands along the way (in various localities). I have a sample audio clip (updated 3/25/2006) that you can listen to in order to get an idea of how I write and play in various musical situations.

I have several bass guitars (pictures here) and bass guitar is my main instrument, but I also have an acoustic guitar and more recently an electric guitar (see below). I also have a couple of keyboards for practicing piano, composing, and learning about music.

You can read more about my computer music setup here.

I have a few audio clips that you can listen to here that were made on this setup (except for the last one which was recorded in somebody else's home studio).

The picture to the right was taken on 6/1/03, and shows me playing my new Ibanez SR886 6-string fretless bass (40K JPEG image). I just bought it the day before, and I got blisters from playing it all weekend. (I didn't like the tone so I sold it on eBay and replaced it with this one.)

I'm currently a music major at San Francisco State University. I took some classes in Spring 2003 at City College of San Francisco (so that I could take care of some prerequisites for transfer students).

I was in a band in 2001 and 2002 which finally chose the name "Axis of Evil". The best genre description we could come up with was "experimental punk", which means basically that it's strange, angsty stuff. I've never played anything like it before, and I'm not sure that I'd listen to it if someone introduced me to it, but I kind of like it anyway. I even wrote a song around a 7/8 beat and a gritty melodic minor chord scale (it's dissonant but there is some theory behind it.) You can hear the original here; I set up an Axis of Evil Web Site where you can hear the final version as recorded by the band in the studio.

I'm working with Leila Motaei now. We're putting a trio together and should be recording in the Fall of 2006.

In the picture to the right, I'm holding my precious(sss) '82 Alembic Spoiler bass guitar. It's one of the best basses I've ever played. It has a really "warm" tone, meaning lots of midrange response (250-2000 Hz or so) as compared to other basses I've heard. I've recorded with it on a few tracks for friends as well as on the Axis of Evil Demo.

Hey, whaddaya know, guitars are fun too.

I got a red Kramer electric guitar at a pawn shop for $200 including the case. For the price, this thing kicks ass - much better than the usual Japanese-made Fender Stratocaster student models you can get for around that price. I've played a number of ~$1000 guitars in the past and this feels almost as good, and stays in tune quite well considering the floating tremelo bridge thingy, which is usually a nightmare. Fortunately it has a locking nut to prevent the tuning problems usually associated with whammy bar wanking on a guitar like this. Of course, it doesn't *sound* as good as the better guitars out there, but that's OK for what I need it for right now.

The guitar in its case (JPEG image 40388 bytes) It's nail polish red, kinda 80's, kinda cheesy, kinda cool depending on how seriously you take it. At least it's not hot pink. You can see the texture of the paint job better in the lower right hand corner of the next photo. One of the knobs has obviously been misplaced and later replaced with a white one, which looks very out of place. My guess is, they did this at the pawn shop.

Close up of the Floyd Rose floating tremelo bridge (JPEG image 65935 bytes) IMHO this is a pretty fancy item to find on a $200 guitar. In case you've never seen one of these contraptions, the idea is to allow use of the whammy bar (which I don't use right now, so it's not attached) without taking the guitar wildly out of tune every time you do. It makes the instrument REALLY tedious to tune because the whole thing is attached to a big spring that keeps it in place - it's not bolted directly to the wood. So when you adjust one string, the tension on all the others changes, and they all go out of tune. This means you have to repeatedly tune them all from bottom to top, getting closer and closer, until you're there. There's also a locking nut (the part where the fingerboard meets the headstock, near the tuners) that lets you clamp down on the strings once they are in tune using an allen wrench. That's what the six worn-looking black knobs in this picture are for - they are fine tuning knobs to be used most of the time, when the nut is locked down.