And to start things off...
Artist name: Jibber (d'ohh, hehe!)
Genre: Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop (not really fixed to any kind of genre)
Experience and History: I've played all kind of instruments as a kid. Whatever was around and i could get my hands on was ok. I've played piano, violin, flute, guitar, drums, etc. I've never owned any of those however, and never took lessons. We either had the instruments at home, or i've found them at friends places.
When i was about 14 years old, i wanted to learn to play guitar, and took lessons for about one year. I stopped taking the lessons, but always kept playing a little, maybe once a week for an hour or two. This remained until i was around 20 years old, when for some reason, i've stopped playing, until i was 24-25. Since then i play on the same basis again (once a week an hour or two).
It was at this time, when i started to record myself playing. I was always easily bored from playing alone, but never really had the motivation to start a band with friends. Recording myself was an easy way to be able to play along to something.
After some time i wasn't satisfied anymore and wanted to have beats aswell. I've tried to make them with Fruity Loops, but didn't like it at all. It felt weird to not actually play the beats and create them via some software... the results were horrible...
So i kept searching drumloops on the net and used those instead. It's hard to find something good which you don't have to pay for, so i've always used the same ones more or less.
It was ok for what it was... i still mainly did the recordings because i enjoy playing along to something so much. But after some time i felt like i needed a little more. The beats were always the same. The guitar, which i've simply plugged into my little 10 year old amp and from there went into the line-in of my aswell 10 year old soundcard, didn't sound good at all. So what to do...?
I did some research and ended up buying a guitar pedal (zoom) which can be used together with a PC. And what a difference that made! I was fairly happy, but still had the same old beats to play along to.
About a year later, i've bought an MPC500. A friend of mine bought one, and i was sold the moment when i've tried it for the first time. I bought one myself the next day.
Basically the MPC was just to make beats, but since it can do way more, i also started to become interested in sampling.
After some experiments with the MPC i felt like i need more instruments to make my own samples. Therefor, i've bought a bass and a digital piano (stage piano), both within the last two months. I don't have any experience with a bass, and the last time i've played piano (read: randomly pressed keys at the age of eight or nine years old) was when i was a kid. I always was a person who wants to do everything by myself, so i'm not really planning on taking lessons for those instruments either. Needless to say i'm making relatively slow progress therefor. I enjoy both instruments a lot however.
Until now, i create, play and record on a regular basis, but don't spend a lot of time on it. It's like it was with the guitar playing... i do this about once a week for a few hours (at best). It's not something i do to ever become professional at it or create something serious and "finished" (i often get bored of something and move on to other stuff). It's really just a hobby... it's not so much about the finished recording (i still enjoy them tho), it's more about making them (as i said, i love to play along to something, lol). Nevertheless, i always enjoy the time spent very much!
Instruments: Yamaha Classic Guitar, Cort Western Guitar, Gibson E-Guitar, Ibanez E-Bass, Roland Digital Piano.
Hardware: Zoom Guitar Effects Pedal, Zoom Bass Effects Pedal, Akai MPC500, Creative X-Fi something soundcard.
Software: Cubase LE, Audacity.
And finally, here's a few of my recordings (better cover your ears... *embarassment*):
http://www.supload.com/listen?s=aoAd03
Most recent one, and not really finished. I'll work a little more on this one... take apart the speech and sample it (so far it's unedited and not really synched). I'll also try to make more parts with different piano chords and according bass changes. The bass and piano is played by me and sampled on the MPC which i've also used to make the beat. It's not mastered or anything... something i never do usually, but this one isn't even adjusted well (volume of the bass, speech, beat, etc). So excuse the strong bass...
Here's a few more, randomly uploaded:
http://www.supload.com/listen?s=bt1SSH
(notice on the right hand side, there's a box titled "related Jibber")
If you hear guitar, bass or piano, it's most likely played by me. The rest are random samples from the net or from sample archives.
I know that there are timing errors in many of those recordings, trust me, i hear them very well... the wrong notes aswell.
It's not that i wouldn't hear them, but i never really work on something... most of the time it's the 1st try at recording a line (guitar, piano, bass, whatever) which i will use (or use a part of it). As i said, it's just for fun.