17hex

17hex is my personal musical project, which ranges from “ambient” to “noise” to “industrial”, often in the same track. My goals with this project often focus much less on any musical styles or elements, and much more on reflection of some thought, influence, or idea. I have a profound love of learning and a strong fascination with information groups and memes commonly labelled as “Occult”, and as such become something of a sponge anytime I am in a library, a bookstore, or on the Internet. I find that this voracious information acquisition is ever increasingly common in children of the “Information age”, and I make my music for them, the Otaku…

NOTE: For those interested in my other band, kether, please check the kether myspace for more info.

The Roots of Coincidence
I am working at finishing the first 17hex album, tentatively titled “The Roots of Coincidence” after the Arthur Koestler book of the same name. There is a
specific sentence that he used in his book that inspired me, about how Matter, Time, and Energy are dead, and we must give them a requiem of Electronic music.

I am currently putting the finishing touches on the first track, “A Requiem for Matter”. I will post a download link here (and it will stream from my MySpace) when it is done.

Update:[03.17.10] Wow.  Four years later and still no “Roots of Coincidence” record.  So what have I been doing for the last four years?  A lot, really.  I’ve gotten married, had a daughter, changed jobs and played in 2 different bands.  The current project for the last few years is my dark electronic band “Kether“, which is progressing nicely.  Once we get our material to a point where we’re more focused on playing shows than on production, I’ll get back to the 17hex music.  I have a BUNCH of material sitting on my hard drive that really could/should get posted here, so maybe soon I’ll put something up at least.  As for this page, my studio setup is quite a lot different now than it was in 2006, but i’ll leave the rest of this page for “posterity” until i have something to replace it with.  I will, however, also include this picture (taken yesterday) of my current studio setup:

Update: [05.03.06] I am waiting for “A Requiem For Matter” to be mastered, and have begun work on “A Requiem for Time”. Once these three tracks are done I will include 2 other tracks (because 5 is a good number) and actually work toward releasing this record (at that point it will be an EP, I think), and doing some live shows so people can hear it and grab a hard copy if they want. More here when I know it.

Equipment and Software
As a professional technology worker, I have adapted the belief that any piece of technology is really only a tool, and that the best (or at least most efficient) way to approach technology is to always strive to use the tool that works the best. As such, I have almost no standard methodology for how I make my music. I use whatever works to get the sounds I want. In some cases this involves recording an interesting noise, sampling it, running that through outboard gear, resampling it, and then using that sample through effects on the PC. Other sounds are perfect the way they come out of my rack synth. Still other sounds never sound quite right to me and I will bog down my whole PC in a vain attempt to effect them into perfection. Then again, this struggle can be a large part of the fun of my music making process.

Anyway, here is a mostly complete list of the hardware/software that has been involved in 17hex to date. Not all of it is still in my possession or functioning the way it did when I got the sound off of it, but nonetheless… Note that this list is slightly different than that found on the Genome page…

Equipment
Arp: Omni II Analogue Triphonic Synth
Behringer: MX1604A Line/Mic Mixer
E-MU: Proteus FX PCM Rack Synth+FX
Ensoniq: Mirage DSK-1 Sampler, Mirage DSK-8 Sampler, SQR PCM/Transwave Rack Synth+FX
M-Audio: Delta 44 Audio Interface
Midiman (M-Audio): Oxygen-8 USB 2-octave Midi controller
Mark Of The Unicorn: Midi Express MIDI Patch Bay
Neutrik: 48-point Audio Patch Bay
Yamaha: DX7s Programmable Algorithm (FM) Synth, CS1X Digital Synth/Midi Controller (owned by Brother Lynch of kether and used for my show at The Whole).

Software
Jeskola Buzz Digital Music Composer
Ableton Live! 5 (Used to sequence “A Requiem For Matter”)
CoolEdit Pro 2.1 (Used for sample editing on “A Requiem for Matter”)
rgc:audio Triangle Synth VSTi (Used as a sound/sample source on “A Requiem for Matter”)
The Novation Bassstation/Vstation VSTi’s (Used as a sound/sample source on “A Requiem for Matter”)
The Ohmforce Effects plugins (Used for “inline” effects processing on “A Requiem for Matter”)
AGNULA/DeMuDi Linux Audio OS
Ardour Multi-Track Recording Suite
Audacity Audio Editor
Many many SAMPLES from many many sources

And on the note of samples, you can download a rather large(!) collection of fine (public domain) soundfonts I have made, that I use in my music. Enjoy!

The music of 17hex is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.