About Me
This page is my best attempt to give you an idea of who I am, what I have done & what I am up to currently. If you would like to skip my full about me story (you won’t hurt my feelings), I’ve got popular posts, contact info & social media links as well as my rss feed at the bottom of the page. For the rest of you, I hope you enjoy my musical journey.
My name is Jason Ward & I have been making music as Jason Timothy (my real middle name) since 1987. My story covers quite a bit of ground, so I’ll try to give you some of the highlights. If you would like to skip to 1999, when I started teaching people music software, you can check out my story here.
The full story starts way before 1987, as I grew up around music. My dad was a songwriter, guitarist & vocalist in a band called The Roosters & had a couple hit songs in the late 60′s with Love Machine, One of these days & Rosebush. They had the same booking agency as The Doors & played shows with them, The Turtles & The Chambers Brothers. What I recall from all this is the studio out in the backyard where I first found a love for knobs & faders.
Although I didn’t get the bug for music until my teens, growing up around music & spending nights in studios must have rubbed off on me. In ’87 myself & school mate Glenn Thayer put together an imaginary band, with an intention of turning it into something real. We had no instruments & no musical ability at the time, but by christmas that year, I got a guitar from my dad & he got a Yamaha portasound synth (you know, the ones with built in rhythms & drum patterns). Then out of dumb luck, 2 new kids would move onto Glenn’s street & would become the beginning of a band that would eventually become Negative Image. We were a cross between The Cure, Duran Duran, Bauhaus & Depeche Mode. For 17 & 18 year olds, we had quite a bit of local success, selling out The Roxy in Los Angeles the week after David Bowie’s Tin Machine warmed up the stage. Here’s a taste of what we looked & sounded like.
This band lasted until 1991 & broke up due to typical internal issues & egos. I formed another band with the bass player of Negative Image that eventually became Mock Turtle Story. This band when through 2 female singer, both of which made for a successful chapter of music. Musician magazine named us one of the Top 50 unsigned bands in the country & we won every contest we entered. The first incarnation incorporated more electronics & I took on all the drum programming, synths as well as playing guitar (1 of 2 guitarists) Here is a sample of that. The 2nd incarnation was heavier & was my first project with a live drummer. It sounded like This. We had a great run opening for bands like The Nixons, Primitive Radio Gods, Gene Loves Jezebel & Missing Persons. We broke up in 1996, in which time I had been falling in love with electronic music.
While Mock Turtle Story was winding down, I was already working on an electronic side project called Nick Shifter (a name I later used when mixing, engineering & master bands like Kevorkian Death Cycle, God Komplex & Suzzanna Reeves). Nikk Shifter was me and a partner diving into big beat & break beat sounds. This was my first attempt at completely electronic music. Here’s a sample of what that sounded like.
Finally in 2000 innerstate was formed (with partner Frank Prosnik), taking everything I had learned form the past & developing my own stamp of Tech Trance & Progressive house music. The first innerstate track Sidewinder as well as a Sigur Ros remix got some big attention from the best DJ’s on the planet, with Hernan Cattaneo calling this tracks his biggest tracks for nearly a year!
With all this experience behind me with songwriting, mixing, mastering, engineering & programming, I felt I had something I could offer others. Something that would help people passionate about music, learn what was important much more quickly than I learned. If you want to read the business side of my transition into creating this website, you can read my story here.
I love music, and I have a passion for helping people with good ideas bring great music into the world. Feel free to get in touch with the links below. Happy music making.
Jason
Make sure to join my rss feed to stay up to date on my most current posts
Here are some of my most popular posts to get you started:
Creativity and your left and right brain Functions
Session vs Arrangement window in Ableton
Finishing tracks: Some tips to improve your songwriting productivity
Basic Synthesis and Sound Design essentials made easy
Or browse the archives.
Contact
MusicSoftwareTraining@gmail.com
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