I'm Allan Gardner, and I'm originally from the North-East of England, although I've been living near Oxford since 1994. My background influences have been in electronics and photography, and sometime back in the late '60s I became interested in music. Combining electronics and music I have been actively involved in music synthesis and effects design since about 1970. My earliest experiments were in 'Musique Concrète' using magnetic tape manipulation, and later some school friends were involved in building an analogue electronic synthesizer.

When computers were beginning to be available for use in the home I got my first digital synthesizer, built by Hybrid Technology, for use with the BBC microcomputer. The programming language had been specifically written, (by Chris Jordan of Hybrid Technology) to make multi-part music. To this end it was one of very few true multi-tasking operating systems for the 6502 8-bit microprocessor. The language was known as AMPLE, (Advanced Music Production Language and Environment), and was extremely powerful, allowing low-level access to the processor itself, although it was generally considered to be 'user-unfriendly'. I was active in several AMPLE user groups, mainly DCT (Dudley College of Technology) and 'Amplinex', and managed to get a program (for cataloguing discs - and making music selections from them), published by a national computing magazine, 'A&B Computing'.

More recently I have set up a 'bedroom studio', consisting of a Korg D16 (16 track digital recorder), a Korg workstation (Triton Studio), several guitars and outboard effects.

I still seem to be drawn to user groups, moderating on several boards dedicated to Korg digital recorders.

When not making music I help run Informed Imaging Limited, as Technical Director, and more information can be had on Informed Imaging by clicking on the link.

Elsewhere on this site you can find examples of my recent musical efforts and photography, along with some downloads of programs and utilities, mainly concerned with helping in the studio.