I've been "messing around with music" since I was 16 (ten years). It started as joining random high school bands in the hopes of playing rhythm guitar... always ended up lead vocals for one reason or another. Gave up on making music in a band setting by 22. For the last 4 years I've been writing random guitar parts, making hip hop beats as a fun hobby, occasionally giving my beats away for friends to use/do-what-they-wish. My strong point, considering I have no formal music training what-so-ever ... are the melodies. Most of the beats I use are just regurgitated variations of the same kick-snare combos people have been hearing since ringo star, et cetera. My background in guitar helps me make really dramatic/thick hip-hop beats by replacing guitar with synth strings and pianos. I just got my first microphone and I'm ready to finally step away from my hobby of hip-hop and move towards making music on a more real, artistic level. My musical interests are primarily indie rock, but my melody styles pull from just about everything but country. Now that I'm starting to record live guitar for the purpose of releasing a solo album ---- I realize I am in DIRE need of brushing up my technical skills in Fruity Loops. As I describe it to my friends, I have "caveman-ed it" through a series of guess and check - as opposed to knowing wtf LFO stood for. I still don't use filters, use LFO's, don't know most of the keyboard short-cuts, I can't master stuff, I have trouble doing things that seem like they should be simple - but with that said - this mic is pretty great, and since I started recording I've been getting nothing but good feedback. I really hope I can step up my mastering-game through the tutorials, although at times the tutorials are hard to follow becuase they casually reference things I don't know about in a common knowledge kind of way - and then move on while I'm left totally confused. My ADD won't let me record any more tonight, so I hope to crack some beers, smoke a couple cigarettes, while I listen and learn.

Thanks for reading my verbose post. Hope that gives people a good idea of where I'm at. Thanks in advance to all the people that took the time to put up tutorials for people like me to learn from. We got the internet at our fingertips, let us use it. Also, let us eat lettuce.