John von has been at the forefront of the digital music revolution since his first computer DJ gigs in 1999 with his Hong Kong-based group Digital Cutup Lounge, one of Asia’s first DJ acts to use computers in performance. Since then he has been involved in many different aspects of the contemporary music industry, including work as a remixer, sound designer, film composer, academic, author, and all-around music software guru. 

After attending the New School Jazz program in New York City in 1991 and studying with Reggie Workman and Gary Peacock, he began his professional career playing jazz bass in Tokyo. Moving to Hong Kong in 1995, he became one of the top session bassists in the Asian pop music industry for several years, taking part in five major world tours as well as becoming a fixture of the city's jazz club scene. John von moved to Los Angeles in 2001, where he has focused on playing jazz and performing with his own original projects.

In addition to his career as a bassist, John von has DJed techno at massive underground parties in China, remixed major Western pop artists for the Indian music market (and vice versa), trained Herbie Hancock, Dweezil Zappa and Dr Dre’s production team in new music software technologies, and presented his anthropological research on music technology at academic conferences.

He has authored two instructional books about computer music production and performance as well as the manual for Native Instruments’ popular software synthesizer Massive. 

He composed a garage-rock soundtrack for a recent documentary about Iowa’s RAGBRAI bike race, A Million Spokes, and also did sound design and effects for the Oscar-winning Pixar film Wall-E, working with composer Thomas Newman.

In 2010 John von produced and played computers on the album Extreme Measures by Simplexity, a West Coast electronic jazz group he co-leads with some of the top musicians in Hollywood, including Steve Tavaglione, John Beasley, and Gary Novak. The album can be heard through John von’s online label, Vibration Institute Music.

He also plays bass for LA downtempo electronica band The Silver Pesos.

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