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My mother played piano and so when I was five she started me on piano lessons. I was frustrated when was asked to read music but the music differed from what I heard elsewhere. I remember hearing Wagner's Bridal March on one of my mom's soap operas and when I was asked to sight-read it for my piano teacher, I told her the sheet music was wrong in one place. It was probably the soap opera that had gotten it wrong, but you should've seen the look on her face, almost as if she'd never seen an ear player before. At that age I didn't know what an ear player was, but I would soon understand.
I discovered the Canadian band Rush when I was ten years old, strangely enough, on MTV. After seeing videos for "The Big Money" and "Mystic Rhythms" from their 1985 album Power Windows, I knew I wanted to play drums. I played casually until I was in high school, and when I finally met other musicians I was excited to be able to play with others. Unfortunately, our understanding of music was different and I became frustrated quickly when I couldn't describe to them how I wanted things to sound. Eventually I was picking up guitar, and then bass to try and process the things I heard in my head. To add insult to injury, this intimidated the other musicians, most of whom bailed at that point.
I was already listening to atmospheric music - Jean Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream, Weather Channel music and the crappy "lite jazz" stuff that was in the "New Age" section at the local library - and I might have been a keyboard player had the keyboards to which I had access (Casio and Yamaha keyboards sold in department stores) had not sounded like garbage to me. At age 14 I didn't understand what the word "perfectionist" really meant, and so I was unable to get over that hump.
Grunge also had an effect on me as a musician; where I wasn't able to get over how much my Casio keyboard didn't sound like a Roland D-50 or Elka Synthex, my crappy $99 electric guitar sounded exactly like Kurt Cobain's - intonation problems on the G string and everything. It came about at exactly the right time, to "democratize" music and assauage some of the helplessness this young ear player was feeling.
I had a friend at the time who also had a crappy $99 electric guitar, and it was something he did that helped the most. One night when we were teenagers, he started doing volume swells into a delay pedal, set to "rediculous," and I was hooked on the sound. Not only did I have the capacity to do this, but it sounded better and more keyboard-ey than the keyboards I had access to! And the leap to atmospheric musician was made.
I also liked to write and play pop songs, and I was still a drummer, so it would be awhile before I started experimenting seriously with atmospheric guitar. I did the strummy, you-don't-love-me ballad thing for a long time, and acquired one or two fans. I tried to track traditional rock/pop at home; first by recording one thing on a tape deck and then "bouncing" it through a mixer to another tape deck as I played to it; then doing the same with "Hi-Fi" VHS tape; then to a 4-track; and later on, to computer.
My hometown of Binghamton, NY wasn't exactly an "art community" despite the city-sponsored banners and billboards that say it is, and it was a constant challenge to find interested, reliable, and responsible people to play with. I became a studio noodler out of necessity (hence my first production company being called "Mother of Invention Media"), so I'm mostly a producer who writes songs, not the other way around.
At some point this site will be sort of a gallery of past works. My day-to-day updates are currently on Facebook. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you find some enjoyment with what I do.