During a Holiday dinner just before Christmas, my friend Darek asked me to contribute a blog to the new Crossfader site.
The new site launced in sync with CES and NAMM last week while I was on vacation. From a quick glance, there are still a few bugs in the site (and typos to fix) but great to see this kick-off.
From the intro blurb there:
My name is Steve Ball. If find it challenging to write these kinds of brief bio-degrading-blurbs because I feel like I’ve already lived about four parallel lives as musician, engineer, entrepreneur, and designer. Either I'm just really old, or I’ve done a lot of stuff. Or both.
The past couple of decades are kind of a high-def blur, and I’m not sure I really fit very cleanly in one little box or paragraph. Most recently, I’ve been Group Program Manager of the WAVE (Windows Audio Video Excellence) team at Microsoft, responsible for the new sounds in Windows Vista as well as the audio and video infrastructure (drivers, APIs, control panels, user experience) in Windows and Windows Vista. Many in and around Microsoft know me as an engineer, people and program manager. Many others all over the world know me as a musician and guitarist. Some know me as a sound designer. Some know me as a graphic designer and cartoonist. Others know me as a serial entrepreneur having been on the ground floor of Adaptive Networks (early powerline networking startup out of MIT,) Guitar Craft Services (support business for the League of Crafty Guitarists), Rockslide (screen savers and websites for the music industry) and BootlegTV (media transcoding + management + distribution + monetization startup funded by Sandhill Road during Bubble 1.0) and Ximer (stillborn startup doing dynamic music for game consoles.)
I spent close to a decade the late eighties and early nineties practicing, performing, teaching, and recording with Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists and various League spin-off groups. A large part of my world-wide network of friends is still based on many of the contacts I made as part of the ongoing Guitar Craft project. I almost burned down Robert Fripp’s house while living there through one cold winter in 1988, heated only by a small coal burning stove.
Coincidentally, Tobin Buttram also stayed there the following winter and almost destroyed Robert’s car by putting water in the gas tank. In fact, Tobin and I have much history in common as you may discover if you are bored enough to keep reading our blogs on Crossfader.
I believe one of my most useful talents is in assembling unlikely teams to take on seemingly impossible projects and translating between disciplines. And I still feel like both a student and fascinated kid most of the time. Because I often act as a sort human crossfader between these disciplines, perhaps it’s appropriate for me say ‘yes’ to Darek’s request that I blog here.
I hope that I can help demystify the process and hard work associated with being an allegedly creative person who has often simply been in the right place at the right time.
Postings on the new site still appear to be handled manually, but I've given Darek a few advance posts that begin to share some of the diverse stories and histories around my work and play as a technology-driven musician.
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