The handsome fellow in the picture above is me! My name is Jorge Vazquez and mrforged is the pseudonym I use to release my music under. The moniker is an alias I have been using since 1999. I also used to release music as Teknobudd or Teknobudd X. It has been a very long time since I have made any techno and I no longer smoke bud, so the name just didn’t feel right anymore and so I finally put it to rest.
I have been playing keyboards since 1988, I started relatively late at the age of 17. Within a year I had gotten good enough to joined my first band. It just kept going from there. Now, music is just something that I do. That I’ve always done. That I will continue to do until the day I die. I would not know what to do if I did not have music in my life. As a matter of fact, there was a short period of time when I thought I was done with music and it just didn’t feel right. I quickly became depressed but I knew what the root cause was and immediately addressed the problem.
Not so much a songwriter, I excel at making others’ musical ideas come to life. I have production chops that were honed through many years of experimentation and through lessons learned from many mistakes. To me, the studio is an instrument with limitless potential. I have no shame about using the studio to create sounds and performances that I would not otherwise be able to do any other way. The song is always king.
To some, a musician should always be able to perform his or her music in a live setting using traditional instruments as well as performance methods and techniques. But music is art. And art is nothing but a sonic expression of our humanity. And as humanity continues marching toward a future where man and machine are indistinguishable from one another, it is only logical to expect that our musical expression will only continue becoming more mechanized – and perhaps even mechanical. In the end, it does not matter if you use a piece of wood, a sheet of metal, a tube of plastic, a guitar, a violin, a mellotron, a synthesizer, or a computer to make music. To think that an artist has to have a demonstrated mastery of a musical instrument in the traditional sense before her music can be taken seriously is quite ridiculous. Such a mentality is nothing more than an obstacle in the path of progress and should be avoided at all costs. Artists should embrace whatever tools they have at their disposal to express themselves and pay no attention to the critics who, more often than not, don’t even play an instrument themselves. With so many tools available to make music, limiting one’s potential to the inherent capabilities and shortcomings of a traditional instrument is simply absurd.
I have recorded many tracks as a solo artist and many more as part of one of the many bands I have been in: Blade, Mind’s Creation, The Blue Room, Atlantis, The Zero Summers, and so many others I can’t really name off the top of my head. Atlantis was a very personal effort with my great friend Ken Jaquess – unfortunately, the music as recorded rarely – if ever – actually sounded as good or better than the demos. The one exception I can think of has got to be “Forest Cathedral” off of Pray For Rain. It is the very last track in the CD, and what a way to bring all those years to a close. That track is remarkable and I highly recommend you check it out. I have tried to include as much of the music I have composed over the years here in this site. I know the list is not complete but that is only because I have terrible archivist skills. My apologies for that.
Finally, I create the music that I would like to hear and if you don’t like it, that is totally fine by me. My music was never intended to please anyone else but me. I think I have done a fairly good job at that. If you would like me to make music that you would like to hear, I would need to be able to get into your head first! And well, we know that is not going to happen.