My name is Matt, born August 13, 1983, and I'm from Syracuse, New York. I am a guitarist (musician), skateboarder, snowboarder, electronics technician, and a C/C++ programmer.
I am a big-time music buff. I respect music that takes true virtuosity, natural genius, and hard work to make. I've always been a punk, but my musical interest runs very deep. I think music's true purpose in life is to entertain, educate, enlighten, and provide a soundtrack to our daily lives, that we can choose to our liking. Real music can make you laugh or cry, uplift, depress, and impart any feeling or emotion it attempts to (or may by accident.) Music plays such a huge part in every person's life for a reason. It defines generations and societies, creates fads and styles, and can change a person's life forever the first and successive times a piece is heard. Writing a song is easy. Writing a song that can do the things I mentioned before takes true understanding of life in general. Music is life recorded.
I do like a lot of rap music, but at the same time realize that not much really goes into it. Anyone can make a nifty beat with a computer program or synth, and write tough-guy rhymes on a sheet of paper. However, I really respect alternative rap artists like Talib Kweli (whose Reflection Eternal album i consider one of the greatest rap albums of all time), Mos Def, The Roots, De La Soul, and generally anybody who trys to be truly poetic, original, and intuitive with their music.
Aside from that, my true love lies in rock music, especially innovative artists who are not afraid to try new things and push the envelope. My favorite artists include Pink Floyd, Primus (anything by Les Claypool in general), Maynard James Keenan (Tool and A Perfect Circle), Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, The Beatles, The Doors, Ween, The Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, Sublime (Bradley Nowell was a true genius), The White Stripes, and shitloads of others I can't think of at the moment.
I also dig a lot of the classic soul and rhythm and blues from the sixties and seventies, by people like Marvin Gaye (What's Going On), and The Temptations. Funk bands like Sly and the Family Stone and P-Funk, who were directly inspired by this kind of music, also kick serious ass.
I have made contributions on all sorts of random pages, but most of my contributions are to music, programming, and computer game-related pages. I take a specific liberty in updating anything Primus-related. I started Todd Huth's and Jay Lane's pages.
I have an ever-unrequited love for tremolo picking and octaves, ala Ler LaLonde. Excessive pinch harmonics are for people who need to mask the fact that they can't play.
Thou shalt not diss the whammy bar.