Steev has been interested in music since he was a young child. He got his first piano at age two. At five years old he would sit at the big piano and play pleasing, melodic original tunes. He never just pounded or hammered at the keyboard; he seemed to know it was to be treated with respect and dignity. His early plunking later became more refined and he was composing meaningful songs while still in junior high. He was self taught with the help of some basic information on music theory he got from his aunt. His formal training came as a music major at Utah State University. He then went on to tour with the Blue Knights of Drum Corps International (DCI) in the front line ensemble. In his 28 years he has written many compositions which include a variety of styles ranging from New Age to Orchestral to Jazz.
Steev has a way of being almost obnoxious even overbearing when it comes to music and rhythm. (I'd know
because I'm his mother.) It's impossible to be around him for very long without having to put up with his incessant leg slapping rhythms or his talking and questioning about one facet of music or another. He gets very impatient with people who don't share his intense interest in music. He can also be sickeningly perfectionistic about the technical aspects of his music. I guess this is a price we pay to be rewarded with the compositions we enjoy.
Trissa Fonnesbeck
3 January 1998
I like using a completely organic approach to writing music. As is always the case, I start out with an idea or motif and very little direction. I try not to plan too much and let the story or theme evolve naturally. In some cases I'll randomly throw notes at the staff to get the ball rolling the way someone would improvise on an instrument. This technique is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that I can let my ideas inspire themselves into new and interesting ways but a curse in that I don't have the luxury of using a keyboard. It's not that I don't have the ability; I just don't have the equipment. The trick for me is how to write music that sounds like I'm improvising or, in other words, I want the computer to play it back and sound like I made it up on the spot. Therefore I must plan the spontaneity. I will spend so much time arranging the accompaniment and then "performing" the arrangement that many of my compositions will take anywhere from months to years to develop. Performing in my case involves tweaking hundreds or thousands of midi events and parameters by hand to simulate human nuances. As this is a rather arduous process I tend to make little progress and, unfortunately, little music.
Stephen Fonnesbeck
May 2004
Note:
The compositions on this page were all rendered to MP3 files based on the sounds generated using the old Roland SC-15 Sound Canvas wavetable sound module.
This is my first piece of music I've ever composed using a SoundCanvas and Cakewalk 6.0 combination. Before this I was using a plethora of old Roland analog synths, DX7's and Performer 3.0 on a Mac SE in a studio underneath the concert hall at my university. That was back in 1988.
![[IMAGE: Steev at age 2]](images/steev.jpg)