A Different Sun is the creative efforts of a single
individual (a.k.a. "me"), and I am the sole musician in all the music you hear
above... for better or worse :) Well, with the exception of any lovely
female voices you hear in any songs above... those aren't me... they belong to
my better half. Guitar is my primary love, and my current collection looks
something like this (I'll add more details on setup and stuff later):
•
Ibanez J-Custom RG8470F-BX
Mahogany body, 5 pc. maple/walnut Neck, DiMarzio® Air Norton™/Blue Velvet™/Tone
Zone™ pickups (HSH), absolutely amazing guitar. Bought from
Ishibashi Music in
Japan.
•
Ibanez J-Custom RG8327-BBK
7 String, Alder Body, 5 pc. Maple/Walnut Neck, EMGs, Frickin METAL \m/. Bought
from Ikebe Music
in Japan.
•
Ibanez Prestige RGT230Q-RBB
Mahogany body neck-thru, beautiful quilted maple top, DiMarzio IBZ pickups,
killer sustain, amazing clarity.
•
Kramer Star (Model Unknown)
20+ years old (one of my first guitars). Wood? No
clue. Neck? Ummm... it has one. Recently revived from storage
with a new setup, drop B tuning and a Duncan Distortion in the bridge.
This axe rawks!
•
Ovation Standard Elite 6778LX Acoustic-Electric
Mid-depth bowl, grade A solid Sitka Spruce top, superb sound and tonal quality,
truly an amazing guitar.
All of the keyboard work is handled via a Roland XP-30 sequenced though
SONAR 6.
The drums also come off the XP-30 (I used to use a Roland
R-8), and like all the keyboard tracks, are written in SONAR. Everything is
mixed down in SONAR, and then brought into Soundforge for some final tweaking
and converting to mp3. I use a Line6 POD, Studio Twin effects unit, and a
couple of Boss pedals for my guitar sounds (nowadays though, with the
exception of the POD, most of the effects I use are within SONAR). A TASCAM 16 track mixer is used for pre-computer mixing (and for effects on the
keys and drums). My computer has a Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum audio
card, which has true MIDI in/out, two analog inputs and digital in/out. The
guitar stuff, going through the POD, connects to the computer through the
Line-in2. The TASCAM, with its digital-out, connects to the digital-in of
the card. This setup keeps the guitar separate from everything else, making
recording pretty easy. All I do is set the "recording" input in Windows (XP)
to Line-in2, and then record all the guitar stuff I want (and vocals when
needed). I can also use Line-in1 in the same way. Then, once I want to
create the master wave file, I just create a master track in SONAR, set
Windows to record "What you hear", and it records everything together onto
one track. From there, I can splice/edit/tweak as necessary, and export the
track in any format I want. It's really a nice setup... extremely easy and
quite versatile.
My ultimate goal for one of these days is to create an
entire CD of my music. Not to make money (God knows I won't be getting rich off
this stuff anytime soon)... just to do it.
I have wanted to for so long, and I have so many cool bits and pieces of songs
scattered to and fro.... all I have to do is set my mind to it and make it
happen. Slowly but surely, it's coming. Recently, I've gained some new inspiration in my life... that, combined with some new software for
easier and more powerful recording, as well as my new seriously awesome guitar
collection line-up, and I may be well on my way!
I've been into music for many years now... probably since about my
mid teens, when I got my first guitar. At that time, it was Aldo
Nova and other more traditional guitar type bands, but once I started
getting serious about playing, that quickly changed. Deathmetal
was the beginnings for me... this is around the "Master of Puppets"
era. It was also
around this time that "classical metal" was starting to get
popular, and the first time I heard Yngwie Malmsteen, it was all over
for me :) My tastes expanded greatly from there, but my main
inspiration for playing guitar was the classical/metal guitarists of
that time... Yngwie, Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, Paul Gilbert.
Nowadays, most of my musical interests lie in darker metal, or just
stuff that's interesting and unique, and most always somewhere off
the mainstream path. I love music packed with emotion,
atmosphere and diversity, and generally the stuff I listen to
consists of truly amazing musicians.
