About me & This page

I was born in 1977 in Goettingen, Germany. I' ve been studying medicine in Marburg for four years now. Besides, I'm working on a doctoral thesis about esophageal cancer. Between the terms I live in Erftstadt, next to Cologne.

This page started off as a showcase for my Original Midi compositions. Since then it has grown and now includes additional articles and links that provide more background information on several musical topics, the main focus still being Midi composition. There are also some off-topic pages like holiday-pics and entertainment links.

I enjoy a wide range of musical styles, including most kinds of 'hand-made' music (rock, jazz, classic...) - music that is composed (and not just mixed together) and (if possible) performed by human beings on real instruments. This means that I usually can't make much of styles like techno, rap, hip-hop, etc (however - there always are exceptions...).
Among my favourite musicians are The Beatles, Radiohead, Queen and Jimi Hendrix (to name just a few). If I had to pick a favourite guitarist (apart from Hendrix....) it would probably be Brian May from Queen for his outstanding guitar-orchestrations especially on the early Queen records.
If you're interested, Queen and Radiohead album reviews and a list of my favourite albums are available in the Text area - but if I might recommend just one album, it would certainly be Radiohead's OK Computer. It takes multiple listening to fully appreciate this masterpiece, but it definately is one of the most rewarding albums available.
Besides of listening to music, I also play the guitar (accoustic & electric) and piano - unfortunately, both rather bad ;-).

I am using a keyboard as well as notation for entering my music into a midi sequencer and editing it (see Equipment for details).
I usually can't make much of synthesizer music and mostly make use of real-instrument-samples, which allow me to toy arround with instruments that I'm not capable of playing myself, as well as creating arrangements for multiple instruments.
Since my first attempts in creating midi files I have devoloped a special interest in orchestral midis. Thus the few compositions available right now all are from the pseudo-classical / cinematic category.

Well, if you continued to this point, you'll probably guess that music's my most important hobby.
Besides of that, I particularly enjoy reading. Among my all-time favourites are Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum as well as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. In SF, I found Isaac Asimov's Foundation cycle and Dan Simmon's Hyperion to be quite impressive.
Other interests include cinema (loved The Last Crusade and The Sixth Sense) and from time to time computer games - although my favourite story-telling genres (adventures and RPGs) have now been replaced by all this 3D-crap.
There's much more (but we want to keep this page at a reasonable size, do we...?).
Now - is there anything I truly hate? Well, I'm not sure ... but sports and handys will surely make it to the top ten ;)

All kinds of (constructive) suggestions, critics or questions are appreciated!
You can write in German, English, French or Spanish - in fact, I'd be quite happy to polish up my French or Spanish. But *please* keep it easy - I'm quite out of practise! However, I have to reserve the right to reply in English...;-)