Biography of DJ

Amy McGinnis was born on March 31, 1981 and grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She attended Oak Ridge High School from 1995-1999 and was a percussionist in both concert and marching bands at Oak Ridge High School. She also attended Tennessee's prestigious Governor's School For The Arts in 1997 as a percussionist. In addition, she studied classical piano for seven years under the instruction of Ardyce Gregor Lee, a graduate of Juilliard School of Music and recipient of Tennesee's Outstanding Teacher Award. She currently owns VibeTheory Productions, a local recording studio in the Denver metro area, and teaches drum lessons. She is the sole member of the band VibeTheory, and has a side project as well with her engineer William C. Gallo III.

She was inspired to be a musician all of her life, beginning at the age of 4. She began playing the piano at the age of 7 and drums at the age of 15. Her father took her to her first concert, Elton John, at the age of 8. Her second concert was Eric Clapton. It was a combination of these events that led her to a lifelong pursuit of music. She is fluent in almost every style, ranging from classical, hip-hop, country, rock and pop. Her personal musical portfolio includes these styles, as well as a variety of others. She has worked with a variety of different musicians spanning many genres and has ambitions to write compositions for the film industry. It is her stated position that "You must be able to cater to as many listeners as possible in order to reach more people. This is why I span genres."

Some of her favorite artists include: Massive Attack, Nine Inch Nails, Thomas Newman, Elliot Goldenthal, BT, Andy McKee, Deftones, Bjork, Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, Lauryn Hill, David Gray, Porcupine Tree, Eric Satie and Henry Mancini.

For recording, Amy uses the Yamaha Motif XS8 as her workstation and owns both electronic and acoustic drum sets. Recording is a very visual experience for her as she is able to see the sounds in terms of line, shape, texture and color. This helps with realizing notational and rhythmic clutter, as well as an overabundance of space. She generally plays all parts of the arrangement. She finds this to be more convenient than using live musicians, although she uses them during live performances.

She prefers recording to playing live, as she prefers the actual creative process to the finished product. Her album, MIND OVER DON'T MATTER, is scheduled to be released in August or September of 2011. She is currently working on her second album, LAND OF THE LIVING, in addition to her side project, COLOURLESS GREEN IDEAS.

Her long term goals musically are to have something for everyone. As far as her company, VibeTheory Productions, she would like to see all walks of the music industry coming and going through her doors. She is also working on forming a band to go on tour, in addition to having film ambitions.

"I want to reach everyone I can with the variety of styles that I write and record. This is why I like to write and play so many different types of music. At the end of the day, it's not only about your music, but also your listeners."

-Amy McGinnis

Biography of William C. Gallo III

William C. Gallo III was born July 7, 1978 in Denver, Colorado. He moved to Mendham, New Jersey around the age of four and spent most of his childhood there. He moved back to Denver in 1993 and attended Denver East High School. After graduating in 1997, he attended college at the Institute of Audio Research in Manhattan, New York, where he studied sound engineering until 1998. Some of his current projects include Lost Network, and his side project with band mate Amy McGinnis, Colourless Green Ideas. He is also head engineer at VibeTheory Productions and Low and Lost, LLC.

Growing up he played the guitar, but found himself more fascinated with the nature and textures of sound itself rather than the instruments involved. One of his favorite styles to write is noise music, because it throws out melody and traditional music theory. Noise music, in his view, is focused solely on the texture of sound. Some of his personal compositions reach over an hour in length.

Some of his favorite artists include Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage and the Japanese noise music hailing from the late 1970's into the early 1980's. He cited Pierre Schaeffer because he was one of the first known artists to use every day sounds in the composition of his music and was the forefather of musical compositions not based on theory, i.e. "Musique Concrete." He appreciates the difficulties endured to produce these sounds using the magnetic tape of the late 1940's.

John Cage has been a great influence because he introduced an altogether different concept of listening. One piece, titled "4:33" was written for piano, except nothing is actually played. This defies people's expectations in that they find themselves hearing the ambient noise of the room they're in, i.e. every other sound except the one's you would percieve as intentional.

Some other bands he cited were Merzbow, CCCC, and Incapacitants based on the pure severity of their sound. Growing up he was also into Slayer, SOD, Suicidal Tendencies, and Anthrax, as well as the genres of black and death metal in general. Alternatively, he was also into jazz because of it's inherant forms of free expression. Some of his favorite jazz artists include Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, Marilyn Crispell and John Zorn.

In the studio he mainly functions as a sound engineer, although he often will create atmospheric or bleed through frequencies for some of the songs he is mixing. He is particularly fond of ProTools 9, Cubase, and Ableton Live as his recording mediums.

As a professional sound engineer, it is his goal to translate the needs and musical aspirations of the artist at hand into wave form. He believes you must be objective at all times, and just because you don't necessarily like all of the music that you record for people doesn't mean you shouldn't do the best job possible in realizing their creative endeavors.

"Every engineer is different, but it is my goal to do the best possible job in translating what the artist wants into technical terms."

-W.C. Gallo III