This little mom and pop music store I worked at called zZounds which was based in Old Town Chicago sent me to Nashville in 1998 for the Summer NAMM convention and that is where the story really unfolds. I stopped by a demonstration at the Sonic Foundry booth and listened to their sales rep demonstrate the latest version of Sonic Foundry's ACID Pro. We had already sold ACID version 1.0 at zZounds and I of course was amazed at what this program could do simply because there was absolutely nothing else like it and it certainly was a total dream come true. After the demonstration they announced that they were hiring and if interested they were to speak with a representative back stage. I was the first and only person to respond which almost made it seem as though it was meant to be.
I could hardly wait to return home because the meeting went well and my hopes were high. I followed through with every step immediately upon my arrival in Chicago and to no avail received a phone call from Mike Scheibinger at zZounds of all places, how nerve wracking because I was at work but hey! Mike was interested and eager to meet and interview me at the Madison Wisconsin home base.
My experience in Madison was almost dream like. Mike let me stay at his house the night before the interview, not even knowing who I was. It was Mike, his wife Deb, daughter T, and a dog all living in a humble home in Cottage Grove Wisconsin. Everyone was so friendly and generous. I awoke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and the wet nose of a dog sniffing my face. Mike drove us to Sonic Foundry and we hung out all day interviewing.
My bus ride back to Chicago was not easy to tolerate as I was completely excited about the possibility of working for such a cool company. One hour into my ride home and my mobile rings. I answer it and it's Sonic Foundry's Human Resources telling me I got the job.
I worked at Sonic Foundry for about two years editing and ACIDizing loops, making demo songs, preparing remix contests for ACIDplanet.com, and scoring advertisements. Some of my most adored accomplishments were helping to develop ACIDplanet.com, scoring and producing the Acid MTV commercial, writing the script and music for the Chicago B96 Acid radio commercial, editing the content and preparing samples for the Beck and Beastie Boys remix contests for ACIDplanet.com, and and demoing products at Peter Gabriel's WOMAD tour in Seattle. Working at Sonic Foundry was such a great experience and I learned so much but it was too good to be true. The company went public and became a huge success until the market crash winter of 2000. This is when 200 hundred employees including myself lost our jobs on Christmas weekend do to company downsizing.
Luckily Mike kept me busy with freelance work. I produced all of the loops for ACID Dj 3.0 which was developed specifically to sell at Best Buy and Computer Discount Warehouse nation wide. I am to this day extremely grateful for this.
I also produced content for the Acid Dj Expander pack. The whole project paid I think around $20,000 for about 45 days worth of work which was my first big paycheck working as a producer. I did it all from my little ass one bedroom apartment on Center Street in Madison WI with nothing but a couple hardware synths and a IBM Thinkpad Pro Pentium laptop. I did however have some decent JBL monitors from when I first bought them in 1990.
Since then I have produced 17 loop packs for Sony Creative Software. Some we never released as physical media.
