★ Music ★

As I mentioned on my 'About' page, I've been composing and producing music ever since I was a teenager! I took music lessons for guitar and voice and figured out the rest of the typical rock band orchestra (keys, bass, drums) through trial and error. Throughout high school, I learned how to (more or less) read sheet music + tabs and gained a pretty solid understanding of how MIDI works, and once I gained access to some composition software (Noteflight, which I still use to this day) and some free soundfonts (on Solmire, a website that is tragically no longer around), I was making music for my friends and already laying the foundation for how I would typically compose music to this very day!

I specialize in making electronic music and videogame music. At the very least, those are the two umbrella terms I choose to describe my music to outsiders, even though I've played around with a lot of other genres.

I've toyed with pop, rock, RnB, jazz, funk, house, rave, ambient, drum n' bass, midwest emo, dungeon synth, IDM, and industrial rock before, but no one's reading allat so instead - due to my heavy use of synths, focus on instrumentals, heavy use of beats, grooves, and loops, and just the overall sound my music communicates - I choose to call it just "electronic music" or "videogame music" to get the point across. Trust me, I know, electronica and VGM are incredibly broad terms that can encompass a wide range of different genres, but sometimes simple descriptors like that can be helpful in communicating what you're about.

As far as gear goes, my setup is a fairly simple but elegant one:

• An ESP guitar I use largely for testing ideas and jamming (a very generous and thoughtful hand-me-down gift from the love of my life)

• A simple Yamaha keyboard I use to test out piano / synth lines and chords

• Noteflight, a music notation website I use to actually put my ideas to digital paper

• Logic Pro X, my DAW (digital audio workstation) of choice and where all the production sorcery happens

• And Audacity, for tweaking and adjusting anything from volume to length to editing samples and EQ levels

And as for my musical preferences, I listen to a lot of music, and as you can tell from the eclectic, disjointed synthesis of genres I've dabbled in, I like to keep my options open! I like far, far more music than I dislike. That said, I tend to gravitate towards artsier pop, RnB, and electronic artists, generally ranging from the mid-90's to the mid-2010's, although era doesn't really matter to me so long as I click with the sound and aesthetic.

Some of my favorites include:

Prince, Michael Jackson, Bjork, Toby Fox, Jun Senoue, Gotye, Janet Jackson, Alicia Keys, New Order, Depeche Mode, Frank Ocean, Bon Iver, Pinkpantheress, Hideki Naganuma, Yellowcard, Foo Fighters, Janelle Monae, Trent Reznor, SZA and Buckethead.

(Like I said, pretty open-minded!)

In case you're curious, here's a Topsters I threw together of 100 dope albums I like to keep in rotation. (Click, right click, or download to zoom in!)

If you have any interest in commissioning me, then please check my rates on the Home page and feel free to reach out to me at laskysam@gmail.com to iron out further details.

Thank you for taking the time to read a little about me!