Hans Anderson

I'm fairly structured once I get going. My stuff is mostly lyric-driven, the song itself is nearly always written and beaten into rough shape with voice and acoustic guitar once I start committing it to hard disk. I'm basically a singer-songwriter, though I prefer working within some sort of band framework, real or virtual. And I really enjoy arranging and producing.
Most of the time, I have a pretty clear idea where I wan't the song to go musically, but I make U-turns on a regular basis, whenever chance, circumstances and co-players happen to point it in another direction.
I finish what I begin (though some songs have spent more than a year in a half-finished coma before their time came), and when it's finished, it stays finished. I can't remember ever reopening a song file for tweaking or remix once the final mix is mastered and "released" on MySpace and to friends. I prefer moving on to the next project.

Up until recently, I've basically worked on my own, bar a few sessions with guitarist and pianist friends, as well as my daughter as background vocalist.
On "Månskugga", I collaborated remotely with MySpace friends by email. Worked like a charm. I especially enjoyed not having to come up with all the ideas myself, as well as the creative and social interaction, even by email. Hence my logging into Indaba Music.

I played in a punk/new wave/ska/ reggae band for eight years in my youth, then more or less gave up music for about 16 or 17 years. I had some sort of home recording gear for most of the time, but hardly used it. However, I stayed in contact with the music world by working as a journalist for a Swedish music tech magazine, so I never completely lost touch. In 2001, I took up songwriting and recording again, being very active ever since then.

I use a PC (a 2,4 GHz single-core Pentium, on it's sixth year but still doing ok) and Steinberg Cubase software (SL v1 up until recently, now Cubase Studio 4)

I play a 1966 Fender Telecaster thorugh a Fender Super Champ, hotrodded for silent operation, and a Hughes & Kettner Red Box speaker sim/line box. I also use an old Ibanez Gibson Dove-style acoustic.

My main recording mic is a Rode NT1000 condenser, preamped by a Soundcraft Spirit Folio micro mixer.

All other instruments are provided either by Propellerhead Reason (used exclusively as a synth rack, ReWired into Cubase) or various VSTi's, NI B4 and Crystal being among the faves.

Drums are provided mostly by drum loops from the Drum Tools librariy, sliced and extensively edited, but there are some Groove Agent noises on there as well. I recently bought EZDrummer, but I haven't recorded much with it yet.

I master using Wave Lab and various plugin effects, PSP Vintage Warmer being the one I can't live without.

On Månskugga, my co-players played a Yamaha electronic drum kit, a Steinberger electric bass, a Yamaha digital piano and a Fender Strat through a Line6 Pod (with further color added in the mix, using Cubase's amp sim). We all used some version or other of Cubase.