My musical journey thus far…
… Hopefully it’s not too boring
Allow me to get a little nostalgic here, hopefully someone is interested.
My love for music began when I was a young boy. In the early 90’s I had a walkman and some tapes that I loved to rock out to, some of my first musical memories are of The Eagles, Spin Doctors, Green Day, and Blues Traveler. I had a saxophone that I played in the school, but never realized that I could use it to rock out, and so I never really got very good at it.
One day, I believe we had gone to the music store to get a clarinet for my sister to play at school. I saw all the guitars there and was mesmerized. I soon got an Ibanez Stagestar starter kit. I learned on that thing for a long while, taking lessons from a teacher at my school. I was in my first band in those days too with a friend who played drums from down the street. We called ourselves ‘Mustard’. We never had any hits, but what do you expect from a couple of 9-year-olds who didn’t know how to play?
Unfortunately, Mustard had to break up because my family moved to Richmond where I still reside. When I got here, I started a band with some kids in my neighborhood that played drums and bass. We were Negative Zero and we did bad covers of Green Day and Blink 182 songs. I upgraded my guitar setup to a Fender Strat and Princeton 65 amp. Now I was rockin, although, I really could only play power chords, and I used most of my lessons to learn other people’s songs, much to my teacher’s dismay.
I kind of stopped playing in high-school, I guess I was busy with other things, but I still loved listening to music. It was during this time that I went to my first shows. In college, I ended up moving in with one of my bandmates, Ricky, from Negative Zero, but we didn’t play much. Instead, I was learning how to use Reason with a friend, Vincent. This is when my beat-making days began. I made a lot of really bad beats, and a few kind-o-cool beats, but it was a long time before anything really good came out.
Then I moved in with Jesse. At that time Ricky, Jesse, and I formed Certain Folk, which still exists today. This is also the time my love for recording began. Certain Folk wrote songs and I discovered I could record them directly to my computer with an sm57 and audacity. The recordings were pretty bad and not really mixed at all, but it was fun and a lot of people were digging it. We played a handful of open mic nights, but never went for a real show.
It was at one of these open mic nights where I met my girlfriend Amanda. We all moved into a big house together, me, Amanda, Jesse, Ricky, and a few others and that is when the jamming really began. I sold my Strat to get a resonator guitar. We set up one room as a jam/music room and made a handful of bad recordings there but we played a lot and started getting a lot better on our instruments. It was fun living in that big, crazy party house, but after a year we had to get out.
Amanda and I moved to a cave-like apartment where I began setting up a more proper studio and started making my first serious recordings. By this time my beats had started getting decent and I had acquired a decent mic and interface from Ricky. So, I found some people who wanted to rap. I got Your Boy Tom Tom to write some raps and come through and I got some guys that I worked with to do some recordings.
At this point I was actually going for quality sound and was learning about using effects, but in a way, I was over-doing it and making them worse. However, I was quickly learning, reading everything I could find online, and trying to critically listen to my mixes. I also met Joe Threat during this time and we began working heavily together.
I slowly began to get better and then Amanda and I moved to where we are now. I set up the studio in the attic, acquired some more gear, and began making even better stuff. I finished my first semi-official album, Rhythmikinesis, and laid the groundwork for Joe Threat’s next album. I also fell in love with podcasts around that time and have gathered a wealth of knowledge from those recently. Now I’m having fun spending as much time in my studio as possible, working on a ton of different projects and learning a lot. One notable project, the album I’m working on with Elemint B. Fresh. It should be outstanding. I am also beginning to get the attention of some small record labels; It’s nice to be recognized, but I’m not sure what I want to do as far as that goes. Anyway, I’m very excited for these upcoming projects; they should be my best work yet. Go back a few weeks for more info on the projects I’m talking about.
So that’s where I’m at. My ears are getting good, but I still have a long way to go. I’m working on a mix portfolio right now in hopes of getting an internship somewhere where I hope my skills will really take off and become more well-rounded. After that? Well, I hope to own my own studio one day, but I’m just going to have to see what happens.