Bio


As a kid, Jeremy Bell had a hard time staying focused. He started piano lessons at six, but his father noticed that he seemed much more fascinated by their old tape recorder. He suggested that Jeremy try some real-time editing by using the pause button as he recorded. This simple suggestion turned out to be one of the most significant moments in Jeremy's life. He spent a considerable portion of his formative years with his fingers not on the piano but on the pause button, meticulously stringing sounds together, one fraction of a second at a time. By the time he started high school, he had amassed a significant body of work, as well as a pile of tape recorders with busted pause buttons.
	In college, Jeremy excelled in SFSU's music composition program, receiving several honors and scholarships. By the time he graduated, he had an impressive oeuvre of compositions, and had had his works performed by several renowned ensembles, including New York's Jubal Trio, and the Bay Area's Earplay. But as always, focusing only on music was an impossibility. After graduating, Jeremy continued to discover new creative outlets; he began self-publishing an independent magazine, learned to
write computer code, and studied audio engineering. And it was at audio engineering school that he developed an idea that was to be the culmination of all his creative aspirations. "I was watching this DJ who was performing at a party, and he was doing all this amazing stuff -- cutting and scratching," Jeremy recalls. "I've always been fascinated with turntablism -- the reappropriation of a recording medium as a musical instrument -- because it kind of brings me back to that childhood love of playing with audio tape."
	So Jeremy tried looking at this new medium from the perspective of a music student: "If you look at how much the piano has evolved over the centuries, and you think, well, the turntable is basically a musical instrument now, so what if it were to evolve as one?" It was this question that lead to a series of homemade audio devices, which in turn lead to a series of viral videos. Thanks in part to the media attention surrounding these videos, Jeremy landed some sweet positions at a few different audio software companies, doing work that's well suited to his skill set.
But Jeremy's work in software is unlikely to be his only focus. "I'm also working on a series of educational mobile games that teach music skills." And on he goes. It seems fitting that a busted pause button provided the first spark for an artist who just can't stop. written by Milo Minderbinder