Although I love what I do with my career in IT, music remains one of the most important parts of my life. From listening to it, to playing it on my guitar, or trying to play it on my piano, keyboard or bass guitar, it's something that's part of what makes life great for me. This page covers a pretty broad gamut of what's on my mind with music from what I like listening to, a bit of my history with music, to what I like discussing/playing about music and the kind of theoretical stuff I'm into. Hopefully an elegant organizational scheme for these subjects will occur to me in a wakeful (or not so wakeful) reverie. You'll be the first to know. That failing, here she blows.
My history with music started when I talked my parents into buying a guitar for me when I was 15 (I think it was for my 15th birthday). Although I was a big fan of guitar oriented music before then (Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, Yes, Black Sabbath), I wasn't ready to play guitar until I got that first guitar. I don't think my head could have handled it before I'd made a conscious decision to play guitar. And I guess what really helped me want to play guitar was listening to so much Jimmy Page and David Gilmour. Their playing, the feelings it gave me, was something I knew I had to be able to do for other people (or at least for myself). Anyway, that first guitar was some acoustic guitar, totally don't recall the brand. Within a very short period of time, like a couple months max, I had traded that acoustic guitar to a guy in my neighborhood for a solid-body electric guitar (strat style) and a cheezy little amp (again, I don't remember the brands of these, rest assured it was shit!). The electric guitar was definitely what I wanted to be playing, so I was stoked to get the one I had. My lessons at Iselin music were cut short because of some very stupid shit I pulled at the shop, owing to my being a total juvenile miscreant. Suffice it to say I spent a couple years being more or less self-taught.
At 17 years old I straightened out my life, which had become rather directionless and downright destructive, in a big way. What helped me was a friend of mine had given me a copy of Guitar for the Practicing Musician and I went to town trying to learn the transcriptions in that magazine -- which were a level of accuracy I'd seldom seen in any transcriptions up to that point. The two songs I remember were Iron Maiden's Two Minutes to Midnight (which I'd never heard before, but learned enough to immediately recognize it the first time I scored a copy of Powerslave). The other was Steve Howe's Mood for a Day, which I can still sort of half-assed play. After a period of time straightening out, I wondered what I should do with my life. So I decided that I would go to Hollywood and study at GIT. I thought about Berklee, but I have to admit Hollywood sounded a whole lot cooler than Boston to me at the time. I kind of wish I'd gone to Berklee instead, but there's no changing that now.
So I got another local teacher and studied as much as I could to prepare for GIT. Turns out you don't have to study a whole lot to get into GIT. If you've got the dough, you get to go. ;) So I spent a year at GIT studying guitar. It was pretty heavy, and massively intimidating if you ask me. I had a great time, and I learned a massive amount. It was a great investment. But I think I was partly unprepared to really make the best of the experience. I think someone with a few years experience playing in a band and playing in open mic jams playing all kinds of music will be in really good shape to be like a sponge while playing with all the great musicians among the faculty and students one meets there. Being very literate with reading and scales, and a bit of improv theory beyond pentatonic wanking would be a big plus. But ultimately playing as much as possible with as many people (hopefully much better than you) as possible is the key to getting better. Unfortunately I was really psyched out and didn't do this with the zeal I would if I were to go back there today.
Not much very distinguished happened with music for a bunch of years after I graduated. Eventually I got a call to go out to Amsterdam and mix sound for a friend's band. Since I was driving a taxi at the time in Malibu and watching my life waste away, I was out there in about two weeks. Eventually I wound up playing guitar for that band. It was a great experience. I had to learn their repertoir while learning all kinds of things I'd not learned at GIT, like stage presense, choreography, tone, etc. We all made a living off the gigs we were playing. We had fun partying after the gigs, picking up on the euros, visiting some cool countries, etc. We wound up imploding while recording a demo that would help us get a better publishing deal. We'd worked so hard on the demo, and had had a couple grueling tours, most of us were pretty relieved when it was over, even though it was sad to give up such a cool gig.
I put the guitar down completely for around six years when I started getting into the IT career thing. But the sucker eventually called to me from within the case and I picked it up and got back into it again. It's been about 3 years since I picked it up again and I've been loving it. In some ways my playing's better, but my chops aren't quite what they were when I was out there at Yngwie-land (GIT in 1987-88). I have a lot more fun with it though since the pressure isn't there to make a career of it. If I come home from work and want to work on 5:4 tuplets for three hours, or just mindlessly noodle, it's not a big hang.
I'm still playing guitar fairly regularly, studying on my own when I can fit it in between life stuff (working full time, school part time, married, homeowner, human being, etc.). Working on some fairly rudimentary stuff, but also trying to work up a couple of shreddy things that are fun (?) to play. I've been playing piano too since the wife and I scored a baby grand from some friends. That's been cool. Reading 2 clefs at a time is interesting, and bass cleff is still really hard to get used to after so many years of being a treble clef weeny. Hopefully I'll get my shit on the ball enough to start posting some clips of shit I'm doing. Been so lazy about recording it's ridiculous.
I also picked up a Yamaha P-120 keyboard, a QY-700 sequencer, and a Fender MIM 5-string Jazz Bass (got an SWR Workingman's 15" combo to go with it), so I have no excuse not to do some cool recording. If I could only figure out why I don't do cool recording I'd be sound as a pound.
Below are some old theory and rhythm ideas I started but are still in progress.
About the gear (guitars amps and pedals) I like to play through...
About one of my biggest musical (and beyond) inspirations.
I'm still getting my ears around some great music. I'm at over a terabyte of digital music and counting. Here's some of what's been getting into my ears lately:
Just listened...
Weekly top artists...
Overall top artists...
Overall top tracks...
