I grew up in Sacramento, California. The music scene was electric. Tons of bands playing all types of music, but mostly rock. Skip’s Music was in a run-down building back then, but it was everything. Skip’s was the Costco of music equipment stores. Guiar Center, Sweetwater, etc… none of those stores existed yet. Skip’s was also a great place to find other musicians. I joined my first and only band back then. It was fun, but my chops were sketchy. 

Shortly after my band experience ended, I bought a Tascam 4-track analog recorder (used) and started writing music. I had a decent acoustic and a POS electric, but I made it work. I wasn’t very good at deciphering cover songs (still not very good if I’m honest), but I excelled at writing original music. It just made sense, still does. I have 100’s of 4-track songs on cassette tapes in a box somewhere. Back then, it was too expensive for most musicians to create/burn a CD and order mass copies.

Then DAWs hit, and man, oh man, that was a game-changer for a lot of musicians. The VSTi selection was lame back then, but we had loops and Line 6. Every guitarist wanted the red kidney-shaped guitar sim. I got the Line 6 software. Fun Fact: the first version of Amp Farm was 23MB and took 12 hours to download, haha… Shortly after I got my hands on the Line 6 guitar software, Sony dropped a DAW named Acid, and I was hooked. I think (but not 100% sure) that Sony Acid was the first platform that provided a way for musicians to publish a song with one click, FOR FREE! The Sony music publishing platform was called Acid Planet. My profile had almost 100 songs, and a few of my songs topped the Acid Planet charts.

Sadly, Sony lost interest in Acid Planet and took it down. Shortly after, I lost interest in music and didn’t try to write anything until about 2010. VSTi instruments were gaining popularity, and for reasons I don’t fully understand, I abandoned my guitar in favor of a MIDI keyboard and started writing music again, but… if I’m honest, the music sucked. However, with products like Ozone, I learned how to mix and master songs.

After several years of creating horrible music, I picked up my guitar again, but I still wanted to incorporate the lush VSTi sounds. I experimented with the Sony/Boss MIDI guitar pickup, but it wasn’t until I found Jam Origin that everything solidified, and I began writing decent music. Today, with a combination of Superior Drummer, EZBass, Native Instruments VSTi products, and Jam Origin, I feel like I’m creating the music I’ve been hearing in my head for decades.

A lot has changed since the early 2000s. Now we have amp sims that sound just as good as a live amp in the mix. From the early 2000s until about 2015, I wrote 283 songs (that I know of, but probably more). Most of the songs were an experiment and not very listenable, but every crappy song taught me something.

In 2025, I started writing again, but this time I knew my music should start with guitar and work out from there. I’m a guitarist and not a keyboardist or bass player. Definitely not a drummer, lol… Today, I harness those amazing VSTi instruments from my guitar fretboard. With some creative routing in Reaper, I learned how to blend distorted or clean guitar with any VSTi sound I can find, or solo a VSTi instrument without any guitar sounds at all. It’s a lot of fun, and the possibilities are literally endless.

In 2026, I added AI (Suno) into my workflow. I use Suno for drum and bass tracks. Suno is a bit janky, but it’s a good starting point and can save time. I explain my full workflow and how Suno fits. You can read it (here).

My music is wildly different from most instrumental guitar music, but I hope you enjoy it because I LOVE coming up with new ideas and creating this strange music.

Thank you for listening!

-Riff (a.k.a., Dan Campbell)