Bio

• Wakes to the possibilities with my emergence to life.

1982:

• I take up the trombone in 4th grade.  Funny story here: I wanted desperately to play the saxophone like my older (by two years) cousin Jeff.  By the time it was my turn to choose an instrument, the ‘band’ already had enough sax players, but they needed students with long arms to play the trombone.  A decision I do not regret as I have been playing ever since.

1986:

• Make the amazing discovery of the 3-voice magic that is the SID chip in my Commodore 64.  This began countless hours of writing/creating music one note at a time, having to manually program each minute change in timbre, length, and volume without actually hearing what the outcome would be until I saved my progress and opened the file in another program. Over the next 4-6 years I create at least a couple of hundred songs using the SID, most original, but also dozens of covers in an attempt to replicate as closely as possible the sounds of the original.
• My eventual moniker Solarno is born during some esoteric late-night middle school discussion with a good friend.  For the life of me I cannot remember what prompted the name other than I was trying to come up with something somewhat futuristic and space-y sounding.

1989:

• Two people of note enter/re-enter my life.  One is my cousin Jeff who had moved out to California to enroll in the USC music program.  Shortly after moving out he introduced me to the basic techniques of analog 4-track recording.  We produced a handful of ambient/electronic/experimental tracks together under the name Genre. We even dabbled a bit in the creation of an Atlantic Rhythm & Blues outfit (ala The Blues Brothers or Sam & Dave), and while that didn’t pan out, during the process I was exposed for the first time to MIDI programming by a bass player we had met with.
• The second was Steve Cooley, a fellow trombone player.  Our meeting through the band program at Simi High led to many years of musical exploration and collaboration as we learned the ropes in MIDI programming, mod tracking, and sample based electronic music.  Together we discovered the rave scene, and for me the wonder of techno and early trance music.
• Another funny story:  One afternoon we were rummaging through the fancy new CD racks at Tempo Records in Simi Valley looking for new and interesting music.  This was in the days of CDs being in way oversized (double height) packaging to discourage/thwart theft.  One of us finds this CD with cheesy low quality artwork of an old Tandy-esque 60’s computer with bad drawings of 4 guys on the screen.  That was enough to catch our attention, but the kicker that convinced Steve to purchase the CD was the statement on the back of the packaging that said “…if you like Depeche Mode…”.  The CD in question? Kraftwerk’s Computer World.  Yes, we were late to discover the wonder that is Kraftwerk, but we caught on real quick, especially Steve, who went on to sample seemingly darn near everything from that album.

• I Start MixiM Music as a faux music label for my oh-so-cool mix-tapes of 12” dance remixes.  The MixiM series eventually spanned 11 collections over the next 11 years.

1995:

• I put together my first EP of original music titled Reconstruct the Future.  This EP contains music created during far too many late night, or all night, music making sessions with Steve as we experimented with various bits of music making software.

1996:

• My first Mac. A Quadra 660av.  This was technically my Mom’s, but I quickly took it over for modTracking using pretty much every version of Quadmation’s PlayerPro. (I still have a working copy of the final 5.9 version on my laptop though I don’t use it much other than for nostalgia.)

1999:

• My second Mac.  A first generation blue and white G3.

• After not playing trombone for 8 years a friend asks me if I’d be interested in playing with her brass choir for an Easter cantata at a local church.  I agreed, and even though I am not a member, I have been welcomed by, and enjoyed playing with, the United Methodist Church of Thousand Oaks ever since.

2001:

• For friends and family I create Convergenge: 10 years of Solarno, a two disc collection of music created over the past ten years.  Sadly, due to errors that were most likely born of my naiveté in burning CDs, many, if not most of those CDs no longer work.

2002:

• Jeff and I work together one more time to create the single Going to Taquamenon Falls, a tribute song in honor of our grandfather who had passed away during the last year.  This was a fabulous learning collaboration, and the first time I had written music for a specific purpose.

2005:

• My third Mac. A G5 iMac. I fell in love with GarageBand, which re-ignited my joy of creating music through the use of a keyboard and multiple tracks.  This led too…

2006:

• My first copy of Logic.  I started easy with Logic 7 Express.  Then I started adding soft synths, and basically automatically upgrading to the latest full releases of Logic as Studio 8 and 9 have been released.
• I decided to expand my live brass playing by joining the Agoura/Las Virgenes Community Band, where I have play baritone for concert and trombone for jazz ever since.

2007:

• I participate for the first time in the RPM music writing challenge.  This is a personal challenge to write/create/finish 10 songs or 35 minutes worth of music in the month of February.  This results in my first official start to finish album Random Processed Memories.
• My fourth (and current) Mac. A MacBook Pro.

2008:

• I self produce and publish my first commercial album Remotely Programmed Moonshot.  This album originated as my submission for the 2008 RPM challenge.
• I do my first professional sound engineering job for Giant Bicycles USA.  This is a 17 second promo spot combining a portion of my single Hope on a Rope and a prerecorded voiceover.

2009:

• I dub my home studio Robot Junkyard and start work on my second album.
• I produce two original music pieces to be used in promotional videos for Giant Bicycles USA.  Moonshot from Remotely Programmed Moonshot is featured in a third promotional video for Giant Bicycles USA.

• Release of my second commercial album Robot Junkyard.
• The trusty Commodore 64 is brought out of mothballs to archive my SID chip work.  This leads to the first volume of my SIDtastic! collection being released online though soundsofsolarno.com.
• I join the Conejo Slides, a trombone choir, for the annual Simi Community Christmas festival.

2011:

• Volumes 2 and 3 of SIDtastic! are released.
• My first official product review and demo is posted to Youtube.  This is a series of three videos about Steve Cooley’s Beatseqr MIDI controller.
• Volumes 4 and 5 of SIDtastic! are released.
• Release of my third commercial album Robot Junkyard – Derivative on July 12th. This album is a re-imagining of many of the tracks from 2010′s Robot Junkyard. Also contains two remixes by Ventura Country based producer Echo Chaser.
• Kyanos EP, the first in a series of EPs that will explore color is released.
• Release of my first Holiday EP, Hark! The Herald Robots Sing!
• My first two remixes are released. SKatterBrain’s King Jellyfish (Solarno’s Disco Death Mix) and Moby’s Go (Solarno’s Lounge Attack Remix)