b.1956, xbruce has been in dozens of internet bands, a few rock / experimental (influenced by electronic, rock, classical, jazz, hip hop) real space bands and writes / reviews for several online and print publications. Music is a medium that anyone can do. The question is how badly the person desires doing music and what kind of effort they put into the various aspects music takes. For example, one can write music but can they play it well, arrange or produce it reasonably and get their music heard via various mediums. xbruce was one of the first computer based musicians, teaching at several schools and universities. His work evolved from multi-track recording which evolved from touring and playing locally as a hobby. His back catalog is dozens of CDs deep, ranging from pop to hard edged experimental music, a ongoing part of his computer based work. Some names xbruce can be found under include The Eventual Font Named Bruno, TEFNB, Mister Gristle. Some bands he has been part of are GrumpyMope, A Band Called Gus, X Space (with Ante Marijan), Band 20 (with Tim Danel) AES (Tom Aragon, Henry Earley and xbruce). Several of his collaborations still exist but can not be released due to the people he creates music with and the typical schenanigans that the music business world enjoys inflicting upon those that take part of it. Much of his catalog and recent work can not be played without permission. As a journalist, he has written many demo songs for reviews, out of enthusiasum or at the equipment / software's request.
His ego is so battered he no longer uses his given name.


azul
Demo song for sound/sample product for use with Big Tick Audio's Rhino 2, one of my favorite virtual synthesizers



electronica
h h



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The artist appreciates and supports the following informational sites about electronic instruments; http://www.musicfaq.net and http://www.traxmusic.org. xbruce expecially appreciates the following companies for the quality of their work and in some cases, support shown: Parker, Carvin and Line 6 guitars. Ibanez and Warwick basses. Schecter basses and guitars. Without Native Instruments, VirSyn, Synapse Audio, Big Tick Audio, EastWest, LinPlug, FXpansion, ConcreteFX, Rob Papen Audio, iZotope audio, Propellerheads and dozens of other virtual instrument and sequencing developers none of the music I make could be heard. Special thanks to M-Audio for their computer hardware, particularly their sound and midi devices, as well as some more unique items such as the Black Box (mostly) Guitar processor. Line 6 contributes a huge load of sound for bass and guitar in the form of effects as virtual amps, the most important item the virtual guitar, Variax Model 500 and Work Bench programming software....for the discriminating guitarist that wants to hear what a 12 string guitar at a bass' ""E"" string to a ""E"" string an octave above standard guitar. It can also model such fun things as putting Rickenbacker 360 pickups on a semi-hollow Telecaster body.
xbruce is a proud geek of all things electronic and binary.
Special thanks to Stephen Kay for creating the KARMA system for the same named Korg synthesizer. Beside it's epic capabilities for the first mass marketed (perhaps the only marketed) interactive algorithmic synthesizer, one of the genuine moments of greatness from a company that seems capable of putting out at least one item per decade that redefines what a synthesizer is, or can be. Line 6 has done a similar stunt by reinventing the guitar and enabling it to play and feel like a real guitar but having the capacity of many modeled guitars, electric sitars, banjo, dobros and acoustic guitars within a single instrument. They now do the same for bass and acoustic guitars.
xbruce's music takes on technological issues, from the incredible sampled instruments such as EWQLSO XL, EastWest Quantum Leap Symphony Orchestra XL, in this case, it's mid-priced orchestra which covers the largest number of articulations and instruments, instrument ensembles and their sound environments, recorded by Grammy winner Professor Keith O. Johnson and made into samples by members of EastWest and Quantum Leap founders. The ""Gold"" series I use weighs in at a hefty approx. 50 gigabyte library with the Platinum library consisting of each sample through the three actual microphones used in each recording situation. By having this mix available the producer has the ultimate capability of recording a renoun symphony orchestra and it's smaller parts through classic, Grammy winning recording techniques. In xbruce's ""Gold"" orchestra strings or string sections may have upward of 20 techniques, most pre-programmed to make most sense from a performance standard, but fully capable of creating ones own virtual instrumentalist(s) playing articulations which can be programmed using nearly any modest keyboard controller and midi. Similarly, FXpansion offers BFD and several add-on kits recorded using a drum room, modeled to suit any style of drums along with microphone models of classics that would cost the price of a house in many 1st world countries. Each microphone has the ability to be moved, changed to another type of microphone, tuned in frequency range along with the drums used, also fully modeled and capable of anything done in the real and beyond the real world. On top of this, users can use or buy midi files designed to play kits. All kits are designed to be cross-compatible and the user can create their own drum beats and save them as a midi file. Lastly, they can control how the drummer plays these files. It is possible to have the virtual drummer drag behing ever so slightly to create momentum either to slow a groove or push it. The virtual drummer can have the velocity of it's hits of drums changed. This is essential for creating realistic sounding drum tracks as milliseconds off the beat or with even so slight as a single measurement louder or softer creates how loud the drum will play and the timbre that the drum makes. These capabilities can create the most realistic drummer to the most robotic groove maker that never lived.
All these developments are important as they have been the areas that were historically known as the problems in music, especially drumming and getting realistic sounds out of programmed players. Not a single human can play every drum at it's exact amount of pressure, and if they could, the performance would be boring to the extreme.
Imperfection is as important in music as excellence is. Some see this as philosophy, and even as means of experimental composition, but for the average person, it is the mixture of imperfection and excellence at an instrument which make the performance appealing.
In the least words possible xbruce thinks listeners have been programmed by an industry more interested in making decent sounding recordings that worked on many players rather than the pursuit of accurately recording music, or in Matrix terms, we're the ones who're thinking something is wonderful when really it was based on making the cheapest cassette player to the $12,000 turntable making music that sounded good on both. That the reality stopped being the issue, and formatting music to not offend, to taste good to almost everyone's ears, changed how we made music and percieved it. xbruce feels sad that no one cares what a real band or individual artist sounds like, as their actual sound and performance would take much more time to create interest, also problematic in formats like modern radio, even of the beamed down type. Time will show that both issues are important and will change both directions as our tastes are manipulated. xbruce believes that the internet is wonderful and gives people who otherwise would not have a platform for their music to be heard, but also loathes how unwilling listeners have become, especially if music demands too much attention or does not fit a format easily recognized. It is killing the music business, which may be a good thing, but it is also creating homginized muzak. All that is missing are slogans like, ""new and improved"" or ""with added bass!""
On the other hand, xbruce has grown tired of making most traditional music, although he often uses non-Western instruments such as the Saz, Cubus Cura Saz, Oud, Ehru, Gopicand (bass and alto), Djembe, Timbale, Tambura, Conga, Dumbek, frame drums, Dizi, Pan Flute, etc, along with so-called ""industrial"" instruments such as anvils, pans & pots, welded sculpture used as sound making device, bamboo furnishings such as table drums, Anklungs that can fit on a microphone stand and look like art.
xbruce rarely plays out due to multiple sclerosis and it's degenerating effect on his body. His royalties and monies have gone to research projects that spend the money on actual work and not on lobbyists sent to governments to curry favor for the disease they are paid to represeny. People concerned with the help of still uncured illnesses should fund students who otherwise can't afford to pay back monies borrowed for a medical degree.

He believes that every so often, someone in the world of music can't bring change, not only to music, but to how people think. He thinks there hasn't been such a person for a long time and spends his prayers hoping the next change will be people, that his spirituality shows the dual nature of technology, the unexpected outcomes of good intentions sometimes gone horribly wrong, and sometimes magnificently right - even when a thing like the internet that has been pillaged by business so that Sony sponsors your thoughts on religion on a bulletin board
while the Anti-Semetic League helps pay for Fundementalist Muslims to teach the makings of holy bombs.

xbruce is a warrior poet in the body of a diseased 50 year old. His liberation cell is the chance you get what he does and why....and lives in hope that in your own way, with your own voice, will look at the world you live in and realize it is not a world you want your kids to inherit.

The world starts to change the moment you realize it's imperfections and start to use your voice if only to say, ""Hey, what the fuck happened? Why am I supporting a nation-state owned by Tobisha? Am I accidentally funding a Fundementalist crusade, one that wants me dead, and besides a couple of lines of code in my DNA I'm given privilge, or have it taken away, sometimes just because of my thoughts! Or because my skin is the wrong color in the nation my parents brought me to live in?""

Less than a strand of DNA makes me whatever some ignorant human feels is bad, or that my pursuits are wrong, or bad!"" xbruce wonders what would have happened if his grandparents didn't leave Eastern Europe because their skin was the wrong kind and their religion was despised. xbruce wonders why there are people born to sufferring and the wrong color, who see him as the oppressers of these people even though his kind did not live
in the United States when slavery was allowed, And xbruce wonders why his kind have been hated for two millenium wherever they went. How having the wrong skin tone and features can get him called ""round-eyes"" by people claiming to be friends.

What unites us?
Music, of course! But in this society of fast food, fast cars, fast thoughts - and often fast thoughts with terrible results...even music has divided some of us. Rap is too monotomus, rock is for preening white boys who pretend to be menacing. Classical music is for snobs.

I listen to your music and rejoice that you attempted to communicate with me. You don't need to like mine. Just accept the person behind it, the soul that creates, for that is not a gift but a sacred form of communication at it's most primiitive form. Strip away a few cultural overlays and all humans are family...at least, that is what xbruce belives and hopes you will too.
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x bruce