My music instruments

The tools behind the Songs

My primary tool, the artist brush of music, is my keyboards. When I was younger, I always wanted to have my own keyboard setup. Then over the years, that toolset expanded from Keyboards to Recording equipment and finally, my own voice.

This is what I currently have, but I am planning on buying more gear as I save up.

Here are some of the instruments I use:

Yamaha P-90
This is my 88-key digital keybaord that also serves as my main composing tool. This is solely connected to my computer system. Why did I acquire this? I wanted a couple of things. One of them was the beautiful sound of a Yamaha Grand Piano. The second was the 88 keys and the third was for the expresiveness.

Alesis QS7 Keyboard

This is my 76-key synthesizer keyboard, which I use for two purposes; it’s large number of sounds and also for performances because of it’s portability. It’s got a lot of nice sounds on it and I still use it in my recordings and compositions.

Korg M1

Many musicians know that this keyboard is a classic. In fact, this was my first keyboard and I still use it today. Many reggae bands use the Korg M1. I use it mainly because it’s got some nice surreal sounds on it. It’s also portable and comes in handy if i have to go to a gig quickly.

Roland JV1080

My friend Jim Stoeber recommended this to me and it is one of my favorite modules to this day. It’s a small little unit without a keyboard, but its sounds pack a lot of quality and finesse.

Alesis Nanosynth

This was my first sound module and I bought it for the piano sounds. I later own used it’s percussion and other sounds. It’s a lot of fun to use.

Roland String Ensemble

This sound module is quite old, but it still has some nice string sounds in there. When I first heard the song “St. Elmo’s Fire”, I wanted to get the same Cello sounds as that song. I later found out that it came from a Kurzweil, ut when I cam across the Roland product line, i discovered that they had the Cello sounds that was close enough to the Kurzweil. I still use this in my compositions.

Steinberg Cubase SX

This is my bread and butter program for all my compositions, arranging and producing. In fact, all my projects were done within this program. Whenever I come up with an idea, I can quickly record it straight to Cubase and then fine-tune it afterwards. I’ve been a Cubase user since 1997 and still love it.

Cubase

This was my first Digital Audio Workstation and I still use it to compose, arrange and record all my CDs.

M-Audio 8×8 MIDI USB Interface

This unit lets me hook up all my keyboards and sound modules so that they all communicate with each other while an arrangement is being created.

TASCAM GigaStudio

I totally LOVE this software. It is not cheap, but it is the very thing that lets me compose my arrangements with high-quality Orchestral sounds. Anyone who has known me or has heard my music knows that I always put Orchestras in all my work. It’s what makes me who I am and what I do best. Yes, I still believe in improving, but in the end, it’s the heart that matters most.

Virtual Guitarist

Although it will never replace a really good guitarist, this comes in handy when I need a quick guitar track to experiment with in my songwriting.

Mackie 1402 VLZ mixer

This mixer has always been a Godsend for me, both in recording and also for live performance. It’s never let me down and the sound quality is always exceptional.

Audio-Technica 8040 Condenser Microphone

This microphone has served me well in all my past projects. Great sound, very warm and amazing. I’m hoping to purchase the Neumann and Soundelux condenser microphones in the near future

Audio-Technica Wireless Microphone

This was a great microphone. Too bad a friend of mine I lent it too returned it to me in non-working condition, if you know what I mean!

I’m hoping to expand this list in the future.