Tendon Levey

From the Tendon Levey website:

” I purchased an Alesis Micron in 2005 with the money that I had made from my painting job. I liked it alright, although I often wished that I would have picked up the microKORG instead, which was similarly popular and similarly priced at the time. I used the Micron mostly for my pre-Tendon Levey projects, since the main knob broke off in early 2007 while being driven around to and from band practice and that made it pretty difficult to change or customize the patches thereafter. I had to use a pair of pliers to get it to work, and even then I could only manage the organ sound as heard on Ear to the Oven and the keyboard sound (and vocoder) heard on The Gredients. In the summer of 2008 I accidentally hooked it up to the wrong adapter and it fried the synth.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

” In the month of February 2009, while rummaging through my basement, I came across my father’s old Ensoniq ESQ-1. I was totally unaware of its existence and I couldn’t understand why there had been no attempts to dig it out previously. With my previous synthesizer having died back in 2008, this ended up being a big deal to me. I was totally in love with this keyboard. It seemed endlessly customizable and I could get all sorts of weird sounds of it. I played it until it gave out on me five months later during the recording of Evil Guest List. I was devastated and spent the autumnal months attempting to make up for the lack of a keyboard with new guitar techniques and effects meant to mimic a keyboard.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”After months of mourning the loss of my ESQ-1 I was desperate for a keyboard and in the month of November 2009 I spotted an ad posted for a cheap Casio WK-1630 at the college down the street. They were only charging about $100-$150 so I decided to go for it. The sound quality was rather poor compared to what I was used to, though I really didn’t care about any of that at the time. I was just thrilled to have a keyboard again and I found ways of making it work with my music. I continued to use it regularly until I acquired my Korg MicroSampler a year later, at which point I switched to using VST instruments.”

From the Tendon Levey website:

”I had wanted a proper sampler for years and years. My hope was that I could eventually ditch my instruments altogether and rely on samples of my voice to provide the instrumentals. This seemed especially useful now that I was struggling with my voice and fearing that my days as a vocalist were counting down. Having no money of my own at the time, I had to wait until Christmas to receive it. I was so eager to add it to my music that it even ends up referenced in the lyrics of certain songs from that period. Sadly, I suffered a major vocal injury only two weeks before the holidays and wasn’t able to put the sampler to proper use until March of the following year. Even then, it didn’t take center stage until The Stomachic Chariot (and, to a lesser—but still notable—extent, Countertorch) and this would be the final time that it was used before I suffered my career-ending vocal injury just weeks thereafter and was forced to step back from music indefinitely. Apart from its sampling abilities, I used it as a MIDI controller to play VST instruments from my PC which were used for the final four albums of the Tendon Levey project (and the corresponding compilations).”