I have been playing electronic and organic since age 7, my grand father was a organist, he had a room with multi deck organs, wall to wall, a single drum throne that would rotate...so when I would visit, i loved to sit in the room and play all the organs I could. All the levers, keys, buttons, pedals and glorious sounds turned me on. On top of those organs, he had various now antique analog synths, moogs, korgs...i took most of passion from playing all those instruments and experimentation.

The Four Season's....then "ABBA" also was very small I remember going to The Carpenters and also 'Johnny Cash'...since that time I have been to many concerts, being a musician now days, I have a back stage to any gig I want to see, which is pretty cool.

Have a few that I would never part with, my fave since my young adult days, I loved Depehce Mode, Vince Clark and those mid 80's synth bands, my two main fave is the Korg-MS_20, I have the real one, not that little toy I seen at guitar center haha, and my Emu Emax II - they are more novelty now because of the old school midi they are difficult to work to tracks, I still use them as bread and butter synths to sample and create sound banks for my VST creation or to run my mp3/wav recorders from sampling environmentally found sounds to make my sound banks.

Since I am now a little bit older, 46, still young, but not what the commercialism of music likes, I am now into more experimentalism. Not focusing my music to be a collaboration of songs that all seem to meld together for like a album...I am working to create my own label. I can now up other bands albums and song to all the main sales sites. when it comes to that, I will seek out band/projects that are focused on experimental sounds, like that of Aphex Twin, not be like his work of course, but the idea of breaking away from commercialism and being adventurous, taking great risks. There are a few bands i truly love, one of my favorite is Bjork, she is my all time fave, not just with her spectacular voice but since I am also a keyboardist and electronica guru, using the most unusual things to make micro beats and sound textures, this is what I love about bjorks music and this is the notion I am going in-So when I open my label doors its bands like this which I will pursue...art, abstract art infused into music, not this commercial EDM or POP influx of music that all sounds the same. I like some of it, but I am for independent music.

I would have to say, for my 14th birthday, I had received a am/fm sony walk man, well the song Abracadabra from the Steve Miller Band came on the radio, the stereo, the panning that glorious sound filled my head. it was that very song that inspired me to write really wild and cool sound design songs. I was so taken by that song, I have never perused anything that didn't have synth of some type.

I had the good fortune to have a mother who loved music and theater, ever since very small, I was always in some kind school music or drama performance, performing in musicals, concerts, symphonies. I had played the violin, trombone, my fave was the piano and i would skip out of class time and play piano in the sound room, my teacher, instead of making me go sit in class, she instead let me play on my own. I guess she figured me as a natural. I didn't need much for lessons - just the raw, playing the keys, exploring the sound..reading music scores and knowing what to do on that piano just came, She knew it, my teacher, and she taught me the way all the classical composer learned, by leaving me alone and letting me play. I have a classical performance profile www.reverbnation.com/williamlcarmanjr at this I play a number of classical pieces from many of my fave composers, I am known as the chopin of electronica. I have performed in 7 band projects. Starting with my first being a punk rock I formed in 1986, in this I was the main song writer, lead vocals and lead guitarist, we did rather well, but a few months into the band I started to add lofi percussion and machine sounds layered to the drum lines, sound effects and some synthesizer, well the other band members didn't like this, punk had to be all about guitar to other punkers. So one night after a set, from these guys jerk attitude to me, i FIRED them right in front of the audience, on stage. I told them, 'you want to see PUNK hu?" All of the instruments and gear was all mine, one had a crappy bass and another had some crappy beat up fender, but all the p/a, cabs, mics, amps and mixers were all my gear, they went home with nothing as far as I know none of them ever resumed music. I am not really a jerk, but never cross me when it comes to my music, if I am getting all the gigs, supplied all the gear, fans, songs...all that energy, these people didn't really mean anything to me if they want to conflict with my ideas. They made fun of me and my synthesizers, telling me it was all gay. There was all this homo phobia in 1980's, keyboard music was headed by bands or musicians that were gay, to me it wasnt that...it was music, I didnt see sexual preference, I just seen making cool music. And all that echoing racism about sexual preference, coming from my band who was a punk rock band, didn't make any sense to me because it was noted by the rest of society that punk was GAY, do you see the level of confusion I had from this coming from a few closed minded chaps? Anyhow, I moved on to create a all keyboard band and went into industrial. In 2000, I started playing hip hop, not because I loved the whole 'Rap', I liked the beats, by then I had become very good at programming beats, but I was at cross roads because with all the new synths and work stations, no matter what 'gem' or 'instrument' was being used, electronic beats always sounded mechanical, listening to electronic beats, I could hear the drum hits sort of just stop, not having the full ride of sound of a drum hit, or some synthesizer company had drums on their synths and again, those hit sounds were just to synthesized to actually be real...they may have sounded really good, but still infact didnt sound REAL. So I got a real drum set and started tracking from that, now I synthesize from the real instrument and I get such better results with drum and bass, again, drums in electronic music is the most challenging part. To much drum changes the focus from being a electronica band, not enough makes you sound like a bedroom loopster, you have to find a good balance somewhere.

Bjork. And why? I have before...because she is so free and unrestricted. Many artists have restrictions to themselves, this can be broken, but requires some work...listening to all music and throwing away genre break out of the rut that millions get into following one genre, this does kill down talent and closes people to all the millions of others out there playing music

I have performed for a group of 11.5 people and I have performed for a mass of 10,000, I memorize it all and never forgotten most of the faces I could see in the crowd. Its like memorizing a music piece, where you practice and practice, then you go on stage, in the wings, you panic, you breathe short,,,you are filled with a million emotions, some get sick, some freeze, some get very scared but me...I take all that energy, it is a RUSH and that is my drug of choice and why I don't need or use any other drugs or toxins in my body, wanna feel that drug more? make your music more exotic and original and creative then go on stage and play something those fans never heard.

This would be very difficult for me to choose, I would most certainly have a mp3 player with me instead of a record player, and upon my mp3 player, there are hundreds of albums, because I cant just like one.