eH Factor, aka Ed Hecht, first heard the siren call of the synthesizer in 1977. The catalyst: the synth riff in Styx's "Fooling Yourself", which induced overplay of the 45 record (What's that?), ad nauseum. Equally captivating were the vocoded vocals in ELO's "Mister Blue Sky". Seeing Gary Numan perform "Cars" on “Saturday Night Live” two years later hooked him for life.
  Five years later, a friend’s small Casio (bought in a now extinct catalog showroom) was insufficient to sate his thirst for the strange and wonderful, swirly instrument. Banging out two to three chord songs about Lebanon, nuclear holocaust, and the Guardian Angels, he longed for the day he would have a tool at his disposal that matched the cool textures of Talk Talk, Men Without Hats, Eurythmics and Sparks.
  Ironically, he wouldn't own a real synthesizer for another 20 years. In the meantime, he continued to fill his electronic musical void with the likes of Soft Cell, Bill Nelson, Depeche Mode, Yaz, Ultravox, Visage, OMD, and many others. USA Network’s “Radio 1990” and MTV’s “120 Minutes” (honorable mention to IRS' "The Cutting Edge") provided a steady musical diet for years.
  In 1997, he purchased his first real synth: an Alesis QS6.1 (along with a Fostex 8-track recorder). Having only one synth and no drum machines or sequencers, it was just in time that he discovered Sonic Foundry's (now Sony's) ACID looping program. It was perhaps his smartest impulse buy ever. He was instantaneously addicted. The addition of a DAW in the form of Cakewalk's Pro Audio 8 meant saying goodbye to external recorders and graduating to hard disk recording. He didn't leave the house for weeks.
  In 2002, finally overcoming his midiphobia, he bought Propellerheads’ legendary Reason synth software. (Remember kids: MIDI is our friend!) He now prefers soft synths to hardware synths. He still uses ACID on occasion, but prefers the "from scratch" method with Reason. His music has appeared in various industrial productions, as well as on Payback, a video game for Amiga, Mac, and GameBoy Advance.