My name's Claudio and I just signed up here thanks to the Open Source Musician's podcast. Great to know that there are plenty of other FLOSS musicians out there like myself. While I'm not exclusively FLOSS with my music software just yet (still working with GarageBand on my iMac G5 as well as Master Tracks Pro on my retro Mac Quadra 650), that is my goal for the future.
So about me: I'm a site-based computer tech for two elementary schools in the Miami-Dade County school district. I also have been playing piano/keyboards for about approximately 15 years total. I've taken lessons for a total of 4 years broken up throughout my life, and have been playing on my own for the remainder of my total time. While I haven't been involved in many bands, I have played for about four years in my old church's worship team and was the worship leader there for two of those four years. I have also been involved in small homebrew recording projects (like those for students or friends that are students). I try to compose music as often as possible, but having a family does kind of take time away from that. Regardless, I wouldn't have my life any other way.
I've also been a GNU/Linux user for practically 10 years, and have been using GNU/Linux exclusively on the PC since 2005. Though I still do use Mac OS X on my iMac G5, it does share hard drive space with GNU/Linux (specifically the community-supported PowerPC port of Ubuntu). I am a very strong advocate of the free and open source software community, but I am not totally averse to having it coexist with commercial software (FLOSS does take precedence for me, though).
Finally, I am a bit of a retro junkie. As I mentioned before, I do have a Mac Quadra 650 that I use often along with some other retro Mac gear. I also have an affinity towards other retro computer gear and especially retro synth gear. I had the pleasure once of tinkering around with an EML ElectroComp 101 and I long to own one in the near future. I have a Kawai K4 synth that I guess could count as a vintage synth at this point, along with a Kawai Q-80 tabletop sequencer and a Kawai R-50 drum machine (I promised, I didn't get all Kawai on purpose...the drum machine kind of fell on my lap
). Along with that, I own a Yamaha S08 88-key weighted synth purchased in 2005 to complement my K4. I look forward to discussing and sharing with many of you, some of which I've seen over on the TLLTS forums (I'm there under the same name). Until then, cheers!
