Please start by telling us your name, the name of your project (if different), and any other contributors that make up the project as a whole.
My name is Jun Heider and the name of my solo endeavors is “coderjun”. Sometimes, I have contributors, this time it was the submission of anonymous track art which I think looks most excellent.
What is the history of your particular aural endeavors? How did you get started working in this area?
I think the first time I started to dabble with music was when my father bough our family an Amiga 1000 while we were growing up. There was this really cool program called Deluxe Music Construction Set by Electronic Arts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluxe_Music_Construction_Set
To be quite frank, the sounds were shitty but it was really fun to camp out in my bedroom and play around with the program creating tracks as a grade schooler.
I got my first guitar for xmas when I was in eight grade. At the time all I wanted to do was learn U2 songs. I was really into the Joshua Tree. After that, throughout junior high and high school I played guitar, bass, and sang in tons of school time bands and also a bunch of high school bands with my buddies. The highlight was opening for Coffin Break at a Sadie Hawkins dance.
Between 92 and 95 I sang full time in the Tacoma, WA music scene. The band I was in was called Bucket. We were regionally successful, had a CD recorded by Jack Endino called Brother Fear which you can find on Spotify if you’re curious and we played over 200 shows in the Northwest… then we broke up… typical rock story…
After Bucket In 95 to 96 I played in a number of bands in both Washington state and Washington DC. After that round I found myself on a path into the tech world and haven’t looked back.
I like to keep balanced though, so since April 2009 until now I’ve played off an on with a band Machine Language (aka Compilers from EC1 and EC2), we started as an experimentation in interactive rock concert experiences, and you can read about that on codebass: http://codebass.com/2010/07/23/the-compilers-music-doesnt-just-meet-technology/
I also play solo acoustic/voice at open mics and cabarets around Denver from time to time.
Starting in 2010 or so after getting an inspirational influx of electronic music needs I started dabbling with pure electronic music and acoustic/electronic music hybrid. It’s a good geeky way to pass the time…
Tell us about your track for EC3. What is the creative process like for you?
My creative process varies. It highly depends on my mood as I’m sure it does for any creative. In regard to qapla’ I felt like composing something in my favorite iPad application, iMS-20: http://www.korg.com/us/products/software/ims_20_for_ipad/
You’ve heard of lean back experience… well that’s what iPad and iMS-20 are all about. I think I did 25% of my track on the couch in my living room and the other 75% lying in bed… haha!
What sort of technologies and creative solutions do you enjoy working with? What does your primary work involve?
I still love to work with Apache Flex…a lot. Also, over the last year and a half or so, I’ve rediscovered my roots in server-side technology, dig VMs and Vagrant, AWS, Heroku, and found a really cool balance of code vs. sysadmin in this technology called chef: http://www.getchef.com/
Usually my primary work involves some kind of video delivery and infrastructure consultancy, whether it is cross-platform video player development, delivery infrastructure design, or Adobe Media Server consulting and design. I also teach and have been teaching since 2005. Right now it’s Apache Flex or Adobe Media Server classes or training. Also in the process of getting certified to teach Varnish, a caching server technology.
Creative solutions… quite frankly I can’t design, draw, or pretty things up to save my life. That’s what the music is for. ;-)
The Emergent Collective series was established to highlight people in the community who work in creative technologies and also produce music (not that these efforts are so dissimilar). How did you get involved in this Emergent Collective compilation?
From EC1 this has been a really great idea. Luckily I am part of the ACP community and a Denver-ite so for once I had the right connections for find out about it!
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers? Projects you are working on or future appearances?
Yeah, if you’re attending 360Flex this week come say hey. Otherwise, go follow me on soundcloud (music) or twitter (tech). I’m “coderjun” anywhere you find me.
Listen to coderjun and others on Emergent Collective Three.