Music
Guitar
The guitar is my main instrument. And it’s the only instrument I can ‘play without thinking’. Although the learning process is never-ending, the instrument really feels as an extension for my body and mind.
While often I find myself playing the electric guitar, I really enjoy playing the accoustic as well, just because of it’s natural character: what you play is what you hear.
Vocals
I have performed as a lead vocalist as well as a backing vocalist for several musical projects.
Ableton Live
I have been a Live user for over 15 years now. I started with one of their very first releases (which had no MIDI tracks yet!) and I used it in combination wit Reason (via Rewire).
Nowadays I’m responsible for the backing tracks for Level Six (a party band where I also play guitar and do some backing vocals). I put extra effort in making sure they are light, performant and easy to use (e.g. making sure the track is well structured, automating some of the performance tasks…)
Logic
I use Logic mainly for recording and creating music. To me it feels like an easy and inspiring environment. It comes standard with tons of quality instruments, a vast amount of useful effects and some really useful and advanced features. For the price you’ll pay, you won’t find any better tool.
Reading & writing music
Although I have learned to read and write music, it is not something I would consider as one of my best talents 🙂
I use both Sibelius and Musescore to write music sheets (mostly lead sheets).
Arts & crafts
User Experience Design (UXD)
I currently work at Monkeyshot as a user experience designer/consultant. As of my graduation as an industrial designer, throughout my whole career (as a 3D artist, a designer, a programmer…) the one thing that always drives my urge to design and create is the so called ‘user’. What does a person with a specific need or task think/feel when using the tools that should help him with this task.
My job involves user and customer exploration, conceptual design, information architecture, wireframing, user interface design, user testing…
Programming
I started programming in my early teens in a language called ‘GW Basic‘ and later on QuickBasic and Visual Basic.
After graduating, I started as a 3D artist and I began studying C++ and Java out of curiosity for the code and algorithms behind all those cool 3D software packages that were available (in that time mainly 3D Studio Max, Maya, Lightwave and Softimage).
Feeling the urge to return to product design I learned programming rich digital interfaces in HTML/CSS/Javascript, but also in Flash and Flex in a language called Actionscript.
With the death of Flash, announced by the success of mobile devices, I turned full onto web development using frameworks such as AngularJS and ReactJS on the front-end and Symphony, Laravel and NodeJS on the back-end.
These days I’m working as a full time user experience designer, so I’m not a professional programmer anymore.
In my free time, however, I still do some coding stuff to create prototypes, both digital (for web) as for an occasional hardware project (Arduino).
Drawing
I like to draw from time to time, as a way to clear my head. Somehow it calms me scratching with a pencil on a paper (or a stylus on a tablet). Starting with construction lines, going more and more into detail.