ROYVANEGAS | Bio

My love affair with music began with my father’s record collection, which spanned the gamut: Rachmaninov to Eddie Rabbit. In 1984, as hip-hop permeated the streets of NYC, I got my first pair of turntables and DJ-ed local parties in the Elmhurst section of Queens, where I was born and raised.

In 1986, I befriended someone who turned me on to AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. I was hooked. I added rock and metal to my repertoire of musical tastes.

In 1987, I accompanied local DJ Carlos Berrios to an all-night remix/edit session at Prime Cuts studio (1710 Broadway), where I spent the entire night watching him edit Corina’s Out of Control on a pair of multi-track reel-to-reel machines. I had never been in a recording studio before; I had never witnessed someone being a studio engineer. I was 15 and astounded. To say it was a life-altering moment is to downplay the moment.

This learning experience was heightened by the fact that Carlos let me borrow an old reel-to-reel he had lying around, so I could practice! I still use studio techniques in my own music that I learned that night at Prime Cuts and practiced on Carlos’s reel-to-reel. I’ve never forgotten what a kind gesture this was.

Although I had created remixes/edits of existing music, it wasn’t until 1991 when I started to play guitar that I thought I might be able to write original music. This was also a time when I switched to listening almost exclusively to rock and heavy metal. I had also stopped going to dance clubs, so rock, metal, and learning a little something about the guitar were a perfect combination.

In 1995, I began an on-again, off-again relationship with writing music, eventually playing in a few bands and starting to write music.

In 2003, I rediscovered electronic music, found a new taste for classical music, and was excited about all the avant-garde music I somehow missed in my youth. A year later, I began to study music formerly in college.

Today, my passion for post–rock, electronica, and neo–classical minimalism has never allowed me to choose the genre in which to work exclusively, so I attempt to include elements of them all into my music.

As of this writing (July 2023), I am an assistant professor in the Dept of Computing Sciences at The University of Hartford in Connecticut, where I teach courses in computer science, web design/development, and new musical instrument design/development. I’m based in Queens, New York, where I was born.