www.neurozen.com    The Official Rich Rosen Website

Music

My interest in music (writing and performing as well as listening to it) goes way back. I took piano lessons for about five years as a child, from a teacher who gave me a good background in music theory and ear training. In high school, I got involved in various performances and productions and eventually joined a band called Pittsburgh (a spoof on the name of the band Chicago whose tunes we played), for whom I did most of the horn arrangements.

By the time I got to college, I had a hankering to study music theory, but never actually "majored" in music. I did take advanced theory courses and got to study electronic and computer music as well, and I was fortunate enough to attend a UNESCO Computer Music Workshop at Stanford University in the summer of 1978.

Over the years, I accumulated an ever increasing array of keyboards, sound modules, and recording equipment that grew into a pretty well-appointed home studio, which I used to record my own music. In the beginning there was a Hammond organ (which I unfortunately had to sell while still living at my parents' house), a Wurlitzer electric piano, and various synthesizer toys and chincy drum machines. Back in 1986, I contributed two tracks to Greg Taylor's first USENET music compilation, A Little net.music, both of which are included here. (Thanks to Tim Thompson for hosting the archives of those ancient compilations on his website at http://www.nosuch.com.)

At its "height", my setup included a variety of keyboards (including a Roland digital piano and a Kurzweil K-1000), an eight-channel multitrack recorder, a mixing console, and various sound modules. Most of this has either been given away or put into storage.

My wife Celia (who's an opera singer) and I used to live in a one-bedroom apartment, where there wasn't much room for my toys. Still, we managed to record stuff together for our wedding CD back in September 2002, some of which is also listed here.

Now that we live in a house, where we each get our own "office" and have room for such things, my studio is coming back to life. I'm using a TASCAM FW-1804 Firewire audio/MIDI breakout box as the cornerstone of the setup. I feed various keyboards, microphones, guitars, and other toys into it, and it is connected to my iMac where I run GarageBand and Cubase to record stuff.

To view the gory geeky technical details about how a track was produced, click on the gear icon () while listening to it.