DJGinsberg.com

 - College Years & Beyond:

•    After graduating from CCHS in 2001, I began college studies @ Florida International University in Miami, FL, less than an hour south of my home in Tamarac, where we moved as soon as I graduated from high school at "Creek". My tuition was fully covered by the Florida Bright Futures academic scholarship, which awarded me based on my excellent high school grades. My chosen major was Jazz Performance, w/ guitar as my principal instrument.

   My curriculum @ FIU included Music Theory/Ear Training, Class Piano, Jazz Arranging for Big Band, Jazz Improv, as well as playing guitar in various student jazz combos (small jazz groups of 4-8 members), Big Band II, & Guitar Ensemble. Each semester, every student band played @ least one concert for the entire group of jazz majors & their teachers, and we often had student/professor jam sessions @ our Friday morning Jazz Forum. I received weekly private guitar lessons 1st w/ Lindsey Blair, and then w/ Richie Zellon, who I had previously met through my parents & taken early jazz lessons w/ while finishing high school.

  Some things I gained through my jazz training @ FIU were good note-reading skills, a strong repertoire of jazz 'standards' (classic jazz songs, or 'tunes' as they are usually called), firm harmonic/rhythmic knowledge & technical skills, how to craft an interesting jazz solo, and how to create a chord-melody style arrangement (where the guitarist plays several parts @ once, including the chords, the melody/solo, & the bass line).

•   I also got some jazz gigging experience while attending FIU, playing concerts w/ student friends @ places such as Bougainvillea's Tavern of South Miami, the student chapel @ University of Miami, & a few other venues. Frequently, other jazz students & I got together for extra-curricular jam sessions in dorm rooms, practice rooms in the music building, & home studios, where we practiced the tunes we were working on, practiced our arrangements, & exchanged musical ideas.

   When I returned home to Tamarac for the weekends & holidays while going to FIU, I often got together with local musicians & made improvised recordings based on new ideas we came up w/. I worked on these recordings w/ friends including DJ Immortal, Sensei Jean LeGrande (who trained me in mixed martial arts fundamentals including Ninjutsu), DJ Trails (also a member of our martial arts team), Brett Segal (a jazz drumming major from FIU), & my friends since high school, "Jared Cole", Daniel Gardner, & Rusty Ellison.

•    In March of 2006 I noticed that I worked most nights a week as a local pizza delivery driver earning finances for gas, food, & other expenses while going to school, & I wound up w/ very little time to practice based on the commute to Miami & the delivery work. Furthermore, the school threatened to withdraw my financial aid unless I took an ungodly amount of courses for the remainder of my semesters there. Since this seemed unfeasible, I decided to w/draw from FIU, continue studying music @ home, & to begin to focus on learning advanced computer skills such as multimedia design and network management, including some training in multimedia at Florida Atlantic Vo-Tech, as well as home learning from HP, Microsoft, About.com, and other online IT courses and articles.

   I wrote a bunch of new songs since withdrawing from FIU, created a series of song demos, & created my first remixes on the computer. I recently purchased a Yamaha MO6 synthesizer workstation  and I'm working on producing lots of great new music. On the information technology side, I am currently studying criminal justice with an emphasis on computer crime at Kaplan University Online, as well as side research of SQL, cloud computing with a focus on Windows Azure, information security strategy and tactics, and so on. Also, I enjoy virtual living in Second Life, notably the City of Lost Angels as a character I made up, DavidJoshua Artful, ever since discovering CoLA on my rezz day of June 1st, 2009. He is currently a mercenary in the Collective faction there in post-apocalyptic L.A., although his story is much deeper than would meet the eye.

I like to produce music, including remastering old tracks for greater sound quality. I also like to DJ in SL, specializing in a dnb beatmix style and various other styles, as well as working security and VIP services within SL, when the clientele is of a favorable demeanor. I also like to work on comic book-style writings and illustrations for my friend Denise Alvarado, a very smart person and a favorite teacher of mine. One of my favorite styles of food to cook is Creole Cuisine, as well as of course some Japanese, Italian, and so on, and so forth. My favorite graphics program to make new art and manipulate photos in a very smart way is GIMP-- GNU Image Manipulation Program. Another thing I like to do is play single-player & multiplayer video games on Steam, including Half-Life 2, HL2 Deathmatch, Counter-Strike Source and CS:S Beta, and occasionally Day of Defeat. Starcraft and its add-ons is another favorite game I put in many hours on, since roughly age 14.

I would like a good job in Criminal Justice, IT division, which would include legal cyber-investigation, financial auditing, fraud auditing, white collar crime investigation, independent counsel prosecution, infosec, and such. Other things I am interested in doing may include: Creative Director at Disney, Accounting, Guitar Tutoring, Producing New Music and Tasteful New Remixes, Graphic Design, Restauranteur, Application Design and Development with a focus on Banking and Police IT, Housing and Urban Development, Creative Writing, Machinima, game development, video production, marketing and public relations, running my own record label Artfully Conscious Records, possibly even a job at Microsoft, perhaps working for Linden Labs, and so on, and so forth. Would I like to be on the Federal payroll? Absolutely. Whoever would call me an amateur clearly would lack in intelligence quota, as if they cheat for standardized test results.