| So
far, most of the music I've written/produced tends to be "(somewhat)
ambient, (mostly) instrumental" rock. I've been working mostly alone,
and I've been half-joking about putting together a "solo album" for the
past couple of years now. I'm mostly a guitar player, but I also hack at piano/keyboard, woodwinds, and just about anything else I can get my hands on. I've also had a measure of voice training, and I enjoy singing quite a bit. I'm mostly self-taught as a guitar player, although I spent a year and a half studying with a Royal Conservatory instructor. I also sing and play guitar for a band here in Québec City: www.intheviolethour.com.  Most of my recent solo stuff can be found at: www.soundclick.com/khoatran The last time I checked, choosing "hi-fi play" will let you get away with not having to sell your soul and signing up for any spam/etc. Enjoy!  Other Stuff October, 2006 A cover of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)" August, 2006 Veneering the Cambridge (updated Sept. 17) May, 2006 The World's Most Powerful Practice Amp ;-) October 2005 A cover of U2's "Lemon", in an unorthodox fashion. May, 2005 My friend Graham Stephenson and I decided that it'd be fun to test out our new gear/toys by recording a cover of U2's somewhat lesser-known b-side from The Unforgettable Fire, "Love Comes Tumbling." It's a brilliant song, really, and it's a shame it never made that album. Version one has Graham singing lead and playing bass, with me handling the guitars, singing harmony/backing and drum programming. Version two is the same, except that I sing both parts. Love Comes Tumbling Cover Love Comes Tumbling Cover (Version 2) Musical Instruments/Equipment Manifesto  Heavily-modified Samick Stratocaster-type
Guitar (new scratchplate paint job, EMG active pickups and other
upgraded components, including a Roland GK-2A hexaphonic pickup). This
was the very first guitar my parents bought me when I was 16 going on
17 (summer of 1996).
Custom-built electric guitar. I built this guitar out of sundry parts in September of 2004. You can read about it here. I originally started out wanting to just build a "blank" guitar to house the GK-2A hex pickup, but as work progressed, I realised very quickly that this piece of wood was too nice not to make into a fully decked-out instrument. I made a few mistakes along the way, but I'm proud to call it my guitar.  La Patrie Etude Classical Guitar. This was the very first instrument I ever bought with my "own money." I got it in London, Ontario, the summer of 1999, with my meagre earnings working as a programmer/research assistant for an engineering professor. It's very spartan, and a humble guitar, nothing fancy, but the cedar top smells great, and satin finish feels amazing, and evidently lets it project a sound that belies the fact that it's really only a $300 guitar. Unfortunately, this finish is also incredibly fragile, and it's been through a few accidents over the years (not all of them were my fault). But I still love it dearly, and it's probably the guitar I "go to" most often when just looking to fool around musically. Simon and Patrick Folk Acoustic-Electric Guitar. This guitar is made by the same company (Godin) as the La Patrie. It's got the same great cedar smell (who needs weed?), and also a nice piezo pickup/preamp system. Epiphone Les Paul Bass Guitar. Most of the world's best bass players didn't start out as guitar players, so I prefer to refer to myself as a "bass owner" as opposed to a full-fledged bass player ;-) Epiphone A-Style Mandolin. I'll be damned if I can actually play this either! The whole tuned-in-fifths thing still throws me for a loop. Yamaha DGX-300 Digital Piano/Keyboard. I quite like this keyboard, but there are some things which kind of annoy me aobut it. I'm a horrible pianist/keyboard player, and so I couldn't justify to myself spending serious cash for a fully-weighted key digital piano, so I bought the cheapest keyboard that I thought had the best piano sound. It also turns out that it's got quite a few good sounds (the flute patch is sickeningly realistic). However, it's a home keyboard at heart, so it has an unbelievable number of poorly-sampled XG-lite sounds, and silly "auto-accompaniment styles." I guess I don't need to complain about them because I never use those features, but I still think it's an unbelievable waste. WT Armstrong Concert Flute. Student model, bought used. I'm really quite a hack on the flute, but I think it's a better instrument overall than the comparable Gemeinhardt silverplated model I rented for a while. Chinese "Dizi" Flutes. These are transverse flutes made of bamboo, using the simple 6-hole fingering system. The unique thing about these is that they have an extra hole between the blowhole and the finger holes which is meant to be covered with a thin bamboo or rice paper membrane. This gives the flute a "buzzy" texture that falls somewhere in between a regular flute and a reed instrument. I have two higher-end models that I bought in China in December of 2004. One is in G, and the other is in D. Previously, I've owned some which have had... questionable intonation. Very painful, really. Shepherd Soprano Recorder. The recorder is unfortunately marginalised today by public opinion because most people learned how to play "hot crossed buns" on them in elementary school and just stopped there. This is a lower-end plastic model from my grade 3 music class, but I still love it muchly. Walton's Tin Whistle. I bought this one on a whim in the Guinness Storehouse gift shop in Dublin. Much to my relief, it's actually intonated quite well (it's in D), even for a piece of touristy kitsch! It's coloured in this dark brownish-black, with a cream coloured mouthpiece. I suppose it's made to resemble a pint of Guinness. I hate Guiness, by the way, at least on its own ;-) E-Bow. This device uses an alternating electromagnetic field to vibrate a guitar's strings without them having to be struck by a pick or a fingernail, resulting in an approximation of a "bowed" sound, like a cello's, but it's also capable of a whole lot of other effects and sounds that I'm just starting to explore. Roland VG-8EX Virtual Guitar System. This is a physical modelling synthesiser that that uses a special hexaphonic pickup to separate the sound of each individual guitar string and then applies a whole whackload of digital signal processing algorithms to simulate different pickup, guitar, amplifer and effects combinations. Roland GR-09 Guitar Synthesiser. This is a pitch-to-MIDI unit that lets me work with sequencers and allows me trigger samples from my guitar. Vox Pathfinder Mini Stack P15SMR. Small solid-state head and a matching 2x10" speaker cabinet with Celestion Bulldogs. Looks and sounds great. Vox AC1. Miniature battery-powered replica of the legendary AC30 amplifier. It's supposed to be a novelty toy, but it's also surprisingly useful: more than one person has been amazed by the sound that comes out of this little monster. Zoom 505-II Guitar Effects Processor. It gets bad reviews sometimes because it's used a lot by beginners who either don't know how to get good tone, or rely too much on the preset sounds, but I find myself still using this in combination with my amp to get some very serviceable sounds. You can think of it as a series of stompboxes, and a "less is more" approach I find is appropriate to avoid an over-processed sound. DOD Digital Delay Pedal. I don't use this much anymore, but it's got more delay flexibility (ie: infinite repeat and layer) and longer times (up to 1 second) than my Zoom pedal. |
