       Name: Phuong Ta
        Age: 26
Nationality: Vietnamese
Home State: Kansas
       Sign: Scorpio
       Gear: Access Virus TI Keyboard
             Yamaha Motif XS8

How It All Began...

For my 9th birthday, my uncle bought me a small 49-key Realistic Concertmate keyboard (Casio clone from Radio Shack). I never really had an interest for music, so all I did was jam on the keys and mess with the sounds. I would bring it over to my babysitter's house. Her eldest daughter also bought a keyboard and started learning sheet music. I could not read it so I listen to her while imitating the same notes. That's when she told me I had a talent for playing by ear.

In high school I wanted to do a project. It was to create some songs and remixes entirely from scratch using my keyboard (Yamaha PSR-530 at the time). I wanted to create a semi-professional looking CD and sell it to my school mates. So I designed the cover and CD label using Paint, and then used my savings to create a bunch of CDs, cases, labels, covers, etc. The CD was entitled: "DIGITONIUM DANCE 2000." People started associating me "DJ Tonium," but I prefered DJtonium instead because I wanted to emphasize that I was a keyboarder and not a DJ.

DIGI = digital; TON- = musical (tonal); IUM = element

In 2004 I joined HYF. It was time to get rid of the "DJ" in my name. Therefore, I permanently changed my nickname to DIGItonium.

In 2007 I quit music and eventually sold the Motif ES6 to my cousin early 2008, and I only had an SH-201 for cheap thrills. Then the urge started coming back, so mid 2008 I purchased a Virus TI and Motif XS8. My cousin will happily take possession of the SH-201.

Musical Styles

Grand and Electric Pianos are my favorite, so most of my songs are pretty mellow. It is not easy making edgy "hyper" music. My biggest influence was the 80s, so most of my songs have an 80s feel to it. As for genres, I tend to focus on trance, freestyle, and slow. I usually mix it up to make it more interesting.

I used to compose music, and I still do from time to time. Since I don't have vocals, I lose interest quick. I would very much prefer building songs from scratch using acapella samples.

Hardware and Software

I started off with a 49-key Realistic Concertmate, and then migrated to a Yamaha PSR-520. It was replaced with a PSR-530 a year later because it had more sounds. All of my songs prior to 2004 were created with the PSR-530. In 2004, I stepped up to a Yamaha Motif ES6. It was an awesome workstation with some incredible sounds. Mid 2007, I bought an SH-201 for its entry level synthesizer sounds. In the beginning of 2008, the ES6 was sold to my cousin. Mid 2008, I bought an Access Virus TI and Yamaha Motif XS8. My cousin will take possession of the SH-201. Hopefully that'll be the last...

On the software end, I use Cakewalk Sonar to generate MIDI data. I don't use it for anything else since samples are loaded on my keyboard. For audio editing I use Cool Edit 2000. It is a fantastic piece of software until Adobe bought them out. I also use FM7 to get some of the classic Yamaha DX sounds.