Get to the Point of Biography or Entertain Me

Get to the Point of Hobbies or Entertain Me

Get to the Point of Musicor Entertain Me

Get to the Point of Equipment or Entertain Me

Be sure, this page will be continuously updated and expanded , as will be the rest of my web site .

Get to the Point! Who are you Gunter Koch?

Hobbies:
I played Soccer, and Tennis until I had to quit due to an injury. Now I like watching Soccer, Motor Racing and sometimes American Football or Ice Hockey. After retiring from active sports, I had to reduce another hobby of mine to about half the extend: Eating. I also spend considerable time with watching movies and reading books (fun, action, crime and sci-fi/horror). Computers are part of my life in business and in private territory. Without the help of computers, I would probably never have been able to make the step from a rock music fan (all kinds of Rock music and related: Rock ´n´ Roll, Beat, Garage-Punk, Psychedelic-Rock, early Hard Rock, Punk, Wave, Grunge) to recording and producing my own music (my favourite hobby by now).

Equipment:
I drive a Volvo 245 Turbo. 4 computers are my own. 2 of them are permanently used. My "studio" is a large room in the cellar of my parents´ house (so much for Garage Rock). I own 4 1/2 guitars, bass, keyboards and digi drums.  Some stock stereo components with a mixer, microphones and a selection of cables/connectors complete the inventory. Oh - I almost forgot to mention about 16 meter CDs and 3.2 meter of vinyl (height of the stack as of 5-feb-99).

Entertain Me, Gunter Koch:

Biography:

I was born in Germany on the 7th of May 1965 (that means, I was born around the same time, garage punk and psychedelic rock discovered the face of the world - just an incidental comment). The place was a hospital in Roth, near Nuernberg (a fact which soon proofed to have absolutely no impact on my further life).

I grew up in a smaller village 10 km east of Roth, called Allersberg (see Contact Address).
After basic school (Allersberg), high school (Gymnasium Roth) and 15 months of duty in the army (KWK Amberg, we learned to kill - time), I studied Mechanical Engineering in Erlangen (speciality: Manufacturing). Since June 1993, I have been working for the Customer Support of PTC (CAD/CAM software) in Muenchen (Munich) and for some months in Boston, MA.

A weekend in New York, together with Guitar Wizzard Ecki (on the right)

I still live in the house of my parents, but on weekends and during vacation only. During the week days, I occupy a small room in Eching, north of Muenchen (Munich), which is very close to my office.
And I am still searching for the woman of my dreams, but I will probably stop searching, if I find a nice match.

What about the "GUK" middle name? It stands for "German Underground King" - no I am kidding. It´s very simple: When I entered the song writer´s organization GEMA, there was already one member with the name Gunter Koch. They asked me for a distinctive middle name and since I have none, I used these initials, that I had always used for computer game highscores and which also were my initials in the office.

Hobbies:

Active Sports:
I played Soccer and Tennis in teams for about 20 years, in low leagues only. I finally decided quit after repeatingly occuring problems with my left knee. It was a ripped crucial ligament and a cracked cartilage, caused by a cooperation of a tennis racket during the swing out phase of a very hard service and an unlucky twist movement in a soccer game, shortly after. So I sattled for passive sports passion only, about 7 years ago - and I havn't got an injury since then. Once in a while I devote myself to water sports (swimming, diving and sailing), but it´s nothing serious.

Passive Sports:
My favourite T.V. sports are Soccer and Motor Racing, but I also like watching Tennis, Icehockey and American Football. Is Wrestling a sport? It is at least the best soap opera in T.V. but if it counts for sport, I have to name it here. My favourite team is 'FC Bayern Muenchen', Germany's most successful Soccer team (leaving aside the German national team, which has been in the finals of the Worldchampionship more often - 6 times - than any other team in the world). In motorsports, 'Formula 1' beats them all (sorry, Champ Car Fans, but the truth is: You are a disciple of a secondary league!). For each single race, there is virtually no driver, I would grudge a win. However, I would be glad to see Michael Schumacher win next years Championship for Ferrari, exactly 20 years after Ferrari´s last Championship. It seems only fair, because Schumacher is currently the best driver in Formula 1and during both the last two seasons Schumacher/Ferrari were the only combination, who could stand up to the later champions until the last race.

Eating and Drinking:
You may think, I started this hobby after quitting active sports. On the contrary - I had to cut down on eating, because now I need only a fraction of the food, I needed before, when playing soccer. For example, when I used to have 3 slices of bread for breakfast, now one slice is enough for me in the morning. But the good thing is, in case of need, I can still eat as much as I did. And I can still drink as much as I did. No, I don´t mean alcohol, I drink only a special mixture of Tea with lemon juice and Rum. And I like weed beer - beer does not count among alcohol in Bavaria. Okay, at times I like to have a glass of wine or two - or sparling wine. And yes, sometimes it has to be liqueur - but no liquor. As I said: No alcohol.
Favourite food: Schweineschnitzel Wiener Art (breaded pork), Pizza with Ham, Mushroom and Salami, Sauerbraten mit Boehmischen Knoedeln (pickled beef with Bohemian dumplings??? - some things can not be translated properly) and all kinds of sweet (including cakes, chocolates, sweet pan cakes and icecream)

Film and TV:
I prefer Action and Comedy, Science Fiction/Horror and Crime Thriller

Favourite Movies (incomplete list of examples, no order of appreciation): Star Wars, Terminator, Slapshot, Once Upon A Time In The West, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Naked Gun, Horse Feathers, Monkey Business, North By Northwest, Back To The Future, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Charade, Grand Prix, Knocking On Heaven's Door, Matrix ...

Favourite TV Shows (dito): Startrek - Next Generation, Space 2063, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Married with Children, RTL Samstag Nacht, TV Total and Harald Schmidt Show...

Favourite Actors: Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Robert Redfort, Robert DeNiro, Cary Grant, James Steward, Mel Gibson, Bill Murray, Robin Williams, Groucho Marx, Steve McQueen, Tim Robbins...

Favourite Actrices: Wynona Ryder, Michelle Pfeifer, Meg Ryan,  Susan Sarandon, Jamie-Lee Curtis...

Books:
Same taste as in films. My favourite authors are: Steven King, Pierce Anthony, Alistair McLean, Tom Sharp...

Computers:
I confess! I am a computer fan. You don't have to be, but it definitely helps doing your job in a software company. So non computer fans, skip this section or put a cushion above your keyboard to avoid injuries, when your head falls down asleep.
My experience with computers dates back to the year 1980, when I joined the first Informatic class of our school. I got fascinated by the bits and bytes immediately. I guess, the reason is, that computers and me are complementary. They can remember an unbelievable number of things never forgetting anything and they can do simple things very fast and without mistakes - however, they have no inspiration and no own ideas. I have a bad memory for plane data and I do get bored and sloppy with repeated tasks. My strengths are more on the inventive side with the ability of memorizing and understanding complex connections. For me, a computer is a device, that covers for my weeknesses and multiplies my strengths.
In 1985 I bought my first computer, a Commodore C64. Wow! 64 KiloByte RAM! 1 MHz processor speed! And floppy disks, that contained 3 times the space of the computer memory - imagine that nowadays! At that time, it was good enough, to write letters and do even desktop publishing. You got the best video games for the C64 and it had 3 digital sound processors (6 bit resolution , maximum rate arround 10000 Hz), making a hell of sound. Yes, I even saw one with a 3D wireframe CAD program for professional architects - it had an algorithm to generate shaded plots of the 3D objects with unlimited resolution.
I started programming in BASIC and almost immediately switched to Assembler programming, gaining speed of about factor 200.
But then, I saw it! The new generation of computers: the Commodore Amiga!
Soon I replaced my C64 with that beast of a  machine. It had a 7 MHz Motorolla 68000 processor and a fine, very economic (only 256 kByte on ROM) operating system. 1 MByte RAM was enough for almost any application you could think of. Although being small, the operating system was ahead of it's time. It had an extremely well working multitasking (even years later, other so-called multitasking computers get definitely more performance loss upon running 3 or 4 applications simultaneously, than the Amiga ever did). Another strength were the special chips for superior sound and graphics - but ironic as it is, just these strength carried Commodores doom.
Unfortunately the Commodore management did not recognize, that the Amiga was the begin of a new area, where home computers are able to provide a professional work environment in every house - which means it was Bill Gates vision of the past. They had a sales strategy to sell Amigas as a 'Game Computer' and invested the profits of the Amiga sales into the production of PCs - at that time considered to be a professional solution with single tasking DOS - what a joke! And that was the end of Commodore. Not so for the Amiga! There are still thousands of Amiga users in the world - I am one of them. I have two Amigas. An old A2000 and an A4000 with a Cyberstorm Turbo Board (68060/50 processor) and a Toccata Digitizer Board, which is used for my music productions. I will probably be still using it for quite some time, because I have every software I need and there is still no other computer convincing enough to make me switch.
Recently I bought an Intel PentiumII with 350 MHz, because I am a fan of that great 3D graphics games, such as Grand Prix Legends (in fact I bought this game first, after seing a demo, then I bought the PC and a steering wheel), FIFA Soccer, Need For Speed and Tomb Raider. However, I don't believe that it can replace my Amiga in the area of 'serious working', such as in doing all my correspondence and musical production, including harddisk recording, CD master production and cover layout.

Music:
This is of course the main issue on this web site - therefore I have created some extra pages for it.

Equipment:

Update: I drive a Volvo 850 Turbo now - 6 years old, not at all rusty and even faster than the old one.
I drive a Volvo 245 Turbo - it´s 14 years old and rusty, but I like this car (my first car was also a 245).
The motor is still going berserk above 3600 RPM and it can carry all necessary equipment.
My ´recording studio´ is in the basement of my parents house. Here is a complete list of the equipment I use and used to use for my recordings:
Computer Hardware:
Amiga 2000, 8 MB RAM, 200 MB SCSII harddisk, MIDI box (since 1993 only used as a sample player)
Amiga 4000, Cyberstorm 68060/50 board, 42 MB RAM, 4 + 0.7 MB SCSII harddisks, Toccata Sound Card, Philips CDD 2600 CD recorder, HP dat recorder, Pioneer DR-466 CD-ROM, MIDI box
Intel Pentium II/350, 64 MB RAM, 10 + 4 GB harddisk, Win98 (used for homepage design only)
Software:
Sonix 2.0 Bookware (until 1993)
Dr. T´s KCS V3.5 MIDI Sequencer (1993 until 1996)
Samplitude SMPTE 2.10 (since 1996), now upgraded to SamOpus 3.5 (since 1998)
Mignon 3.0 MIDI Sequencer (since 1996)
Stereo Components:
Mustang 7055 portable radio-recorder (used before 1989)
Realistic SSM-2100 Mixer
Onkyo A-8430 Amplifier
Onkyo TA-2430 Tape Recorder (has been used for master tapes and digitizing 4-track tapes - 2 tracks backwards)
JVC XL-V311 CD Player (Audio CD testing)
Orbit Super Star II Stereo loudspeakers
Specific Recording Hardware:
Tascam Porta 03 4-track recorder (until 1996)
Profi Sound, Shure BG 1.0 and two cheap noname microphones
Instruments:
No name steel string accoustic guitar
Hoefner nylon string accoustic guitar
Fender Stratocaster E-guitar (since 1991)
Ovation semi-accoustic guitar (since 1996)
Vester E-guitar (since 1997)
Aria AG-15 guitar amplifier (since 1991)
Hughes and Kettner Attax 40 guitar amplifier (since 1995)
Zoom Player guitar effects device (since 1995)
Korg Pandora guitar effects device (since 1997)
Kramer XL-VII bass (since 1998)
Yamaha DD-11 digi drums (since 1992)
Roland E-16 keyboard (since 1993)