My Musical Journey So Far
Welcome to my Medium page! I compose original scores and tracks in various styles for all kinds of productions. A showreel featuring some of my short feature, television, and spec work is on YouTube. Six instrumental albums I’ve released are online at YouTube Music, Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, and many more streaming services worldwide. My Bandcamp page features tracks which are not currently part of any album and I also have produced royalty free stock music which is available via subscription or individual purchase at Pond5.
I developed an affinity for music around the age of ten. I had an inexpensive 8-track player and an odd assortment of tapes which included the Beach Boys, The Eagles first “Greatest Hits” album, and of course “The Story of Star Wars” with all that great John Williams music and effects & dialogue from the movie. I also had a clock radio which I would set to play music for thirty minutes as I drifted off to sleep, usually locked into the rock or pop station in town. I say “in town” because we moved around a LOT. From Anchorage, Alaska to Spokane, Washington to Everett WA to Tacoma to Bellevue and back to Anchorage again over a span of barely three years. Even when younger I never went to the same school for a year due to constantly moving. I found it quite difficult to make new friends when moving around so much — three times during the course of one school year alone. It’s no wonder I retreated into music!
My first fifth-grade teacher Mrs. Crosby (I had two due to, you guessed it… moving) noticed I was finishing my in-class work before other students and recommended I join the elementary school’s mass choir which met at the end of every Friday. My family moved shortly after that and in the fifth grade at a different school I was unable to learn the song being practiced in a short amount of time so I was handed a pair of bongos which I recall looking like these for the class performance of the Harry Belafonte song “Matilda, Matilda!”
That was 1978. I vividly remember practicing the song maybe twice with the group and have utterly blanked on the actual performance. I remember putting on the ugly green vest they made all the kids wear and walking to my chair to play. And nothing else about the event!
My family moved again in 1979 and I did not join any type of choir during the sixth grade, preferring instead to spend my hours listening to Wings, Billy Joel, and Pink Floyd records (among others). Oh, and Goofy Gold! And Bill Cosby & Robin Williams records. And by that time I was a fanatic for recording things on a cheap portable cassette player I owned, doing what every kid would do and setting it next to the radio to tape songs so I could listen to them when I wanted to.
I was a regular member of my junior high school’s choir from 1980–1982 (go Wendler RAMS!) and joined the Chamber Choir in the 9th grade at East Anchorage High School (CHEER for the Thunderbirds!). Although the much more advanced Swing Choir didn’t generally allow students to join it during their sophomore years, a friend and I were allowed to become a part of it due to a lack of baritone talent for our instructor Henry Hedberg (RIP) to choose from.
My mother was unsure of that choice at the time. She was concerned that having two choir classes would interfere with my studies in other subjects. Up to that point I’d been an A and B student. When I pointed out I still had to take a gym class and that would leave only three classes for me to worry about, she relaxed a bit. Then immediately expressed utter disappointment when I took a job at McDonald’s and was working five days a week, which led me to spread myself too thin and garner mostly C grades for my non-choir classes and an actual F for my junior year math class.
Mr. Hedberg had noticed my affinity for playing keyboards in the choir room during lunch hours and not only allowed me to take the school’s Rhodes Piano home for one break he also allowed me to play with a Yamaha DX-9 keyboard he had borrowed from another school. My family had moved yet again, and since I was of driving age I was able to still attend the same school with all my friends and it just so happened that the keyboard had been borrowed from my new city’s high school. My “homework” was to learn to play the bass line for Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” (I did so and practiced & performed it multiple times with the group.) The very next semester our swing choir had two shiny new Yamaha DX-7s, a Yamaha Drum Composer, and an Atari computer with MIDI software.
I plunged into the new gear, deigning myself the role of drum programmer for the group while singing, playing keyboards, and occasionally picking up a guitar. The pianist during those years was a fellow student and somewhat good friend (who I ended up marrying & divorcing but THAT story is for another time) taught me how to play basic chords and I learned a lot by listening to music then figuring out which notes went where. I also started playing with patch editing for the DX-7 and ended up creating a couple “dual-use” patches by stripping down some bass & keyboard voices to split the playback notes down the middle to get two instruments for a single performer to play at once. It was during my senior year that the school’s band instructor, Kirke Muse (also RIP) colluded with Hedberg to create an “Independent Music Study” course for me. He introduced me to his MOOG synthesizer, which was quite intimidating to me at the time, and the class syllabus was to compose a song. Any song in any style of my choosing. I did so and while I thought it had turned out quite average I was given an “A” for the work.
My mother had leaned-in a little bit more favorably toward my musical development by the beginning of my senior year in high school and purchased a very overpriced CZ-1000 synthesizer for me that fall. I used it in conjunction with the school’s equiment on a regular basis and was even allowed by Mr. Hedberg to take one of the DX-7s, the rhythm composer, and the MIDI computer home during the holiday break to just “play” with them.
There were some very talented musicians in the groups I was involved in and over the years we’d form little combos to “break off” from the Swing Choir and perform rock songs we liked for school assemblies or special events. We knocked out songs such as “Stray Cat Strut,” “White Wedding,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” even “Money for Nothing” and “Suffragette City.” I would generally sing and/or perform on keyboards and provide drum programming if a live percussionist wasn’t available or interested.
After graduating high school, altercations with my mother’s on-then off-then on again boyfriend ended up with me moving out of my home and staying with a friend. A brief stint in college lasted one semester, when I found myself on a path that wasn’t of my choosing leading me to regularly self-medicate (“binge” is the more accurate term) with vodka.
After leaving college, finding work, and moving into my first apartment in 1987 I purchased a used Roland TR-505 drum machine and began writing original songs. Most of them were quite atrocious, with overly serious titles like “Careless Mistakes” or “Why Can’t I Have You” and the occasionally humorous “I Love You But I’ll Get Over It.” My first recording rig was two cassette decks and a Radio Shack four-channel mixer.
In 1988 I moved to Maine with the same travel companion who had insisted I attend college with him previously. But that big of a move was not the intention. He had left college as well and we had agreed to move to Los Angeles, find jobs, and try to “make it.” I had musical and comedic aspirations. He was also a singer but not as practiced as I had been up to that point. Unfortunately, he felt overwhelmed at the size of L.A. and he decided within a day he wanted to take a cross-country road trip to visit his family instead. I was furious! But we were in his car, a boat from the 1950s called a Plymouth Belvedere. I was stuck and not wanting to go back to Anchorage so soon. Having never visited the east coast, I agreed to go with and ended up living in Maine for nearly two years. Less than ten months after arriving he decided to join the Coast Guard. I stayed in Maine, renting out the attic in his cousin’s house and working in alarm security, doing some retail work, and taking a gig as an inventory clerk.
I don’t remember that wallpaper under the window being mangled. At night you could hear what my flighty friend’s cousin insisted were bats living in the tippy-top of the home. I never saw one.
Before the trip to Maine that was supposed to be a move to Los Angeles I had stayed with an aunt and left my synthesizer in her care. She decided to sell it over money I owed and got a fraction of what it was worth. What makes me salty about it to this day is she was LOADED at the time but wanted me to “learn a lesson.” I later learned she’d toyed with Scientology in the 80s and I watched her became a member of MAGA through Facebook in 2016. So not always making the best choices, that one.
While living in Maine I still had an old electric guitar and the drum machine, so I began practicing with them. The spring of 1989 I bought an AKAI AX-73 synthesizer and two cassette decks and started recording again. The songs started to take more political & social stances due to influences of artists I had gotten into ranging from Skinny Puppy, Throwing Muses, and even some hip-hop.
A severe bout of depression over a multitude of things led me to move back to Anchorage again in 1990. The synthesizer was given to a former employer I owed money to for his kids to use. I worked in alarm security, always enjoying music but rarely practicing or recording. I purchased my first PC (IBM compatible) from the same uncle whose wife had sold my first synthesizer. Amusingly, he overcharged me! But I took it in stride because he allowed me to set up a payment plan. I became an avid gamer, playing everything I could get my hands on or download from what was then called BBS services (a “Bulletin Board System” which was accessed through a dial-up modem). Around 1993 I had become quite adept at upgrading & modifying computer systems and began playing with audio programs that allowed remixing (cut & paste!) and applying other effects to songs. Then in 1994 I was hired to work nights at a rock radio station, KWHL-FM. I became infatuated with the morning show team and quickly learned how to use what was an industry standard for non-Apple infused broadcasting facilities at the time, the Software Audio WorkShop or SAW.
After learning how to use the software for :30 and :60 audio commercial production, I discovered SAW was fantastic for musical editing. You could create instrumental loops with millisecond precision and later versions of the program allowed four and sixteen track layering. As indicated previously, I’d been a fan of goofy songs since I was a kid and of course I was familiar with Weird Al’s collection. I decided to take a stab at writing a parody song using a Nirvana song and my vocals then presented it to the morning show team. The station’s program director immediately started calling me their “Producer.” I was responsible for generating all audio content for their show that wasn’t live, including songs written by myself and other members of the team, as well as parody “visits” where one member or the other would invariable be blown to smithereens or some such morning-show nonsense.
After working in Rock and Hot A/C radio for a couple years I was promoted to be the facility’s Production Director, which was generally a position with no real authority responsible for overseeing recording & delivering of commercial spots. I applied my production experience to amateur music production at home and formed an experimental electronic/industrial project with my friend Tyson. Tyson and I produced two albums of material (the second featuring some from the first that had been remastered or re-recorded) and performed one live show in Anchorage. Although I stopped using drum machines in favor of live or computer-driven percussion, I did purchase a used Yamaha DX-7 which I kept and recorded with until 2006 when I sold it to help fund a move from Palm Springs to Los Angeles. Unfortunately, Tyson moved from Anchorage and although we tried to keep working together using hi-fi VHS tapes to transfer tracks back and forth, we were unable to make time to collaborate again and the project has been defunct since 2003.
After collecting samples, software, and instruments for many years I released my first instrumental album, 2005’s “Music for a Dark Film.” In 2007 I garnered my first professional commission to produce a soundalike track for a CHP recruitment commercial produced by MWP in Santa Moncia, CA. Unfortunately, my track too closely resembled the temp track (which was the main theme from 2007's “Transformers” soundtrack) and it was not chosen for use. Since then I have composed rock tracks which were used as part of the Music Department for the Discovery Channel series “Heartland Thunder,” created original scores for some short features including Danielle Dunnigan’s “The Decaying World” & “Take Care,” provided original jazz & bossa nova pieces for use in the features “No Peas for the Weary” and “Upper West Side Story,” and composed & recorded commercial stock music in many musical genres.
After years of composing part-time I took the plunge this past March and joined TAXI A&R, a fantastic company which provides leads and screens musical work for publishers all over the world. Their feedback on my submissions has been invaluable and I’ve been lucky enough to have three of my tracks forwarded for publisher consideration in less than seven months, which feels fantastic because most folk say it takes a couple years to get rolling!
When it comes to gear I’m still a bit frugal but the budgets are getting better. I keep handy an acoustic guitar and full-size conga (with one broken leg!) and am currently a huge fan of the EastWest Composer Cloud. I’ve been using their orchestral & choral instruments since purchasing them well over a decade ago. I use an M-AUDIO KeyStudio and my DAW of choice is Reaper, mainly because I started out on a pretty low budget and have gotten very used to it. Of course I integrate samples from other great companies such as Native Instruments and Spitfire but one thing I’ve stopped doing for quite a long time now is using instrument pads or sample sets from sketchy online sources. You never know if the material is stolen from other people’s recordings! But if you’re just starting out it’s a great way to practice and gain experience. Just don’t count on making a million dollars with it if someone notices you’ve lifted an instrument or loop of theirs and wants a piece of it. And no reputable publishing or production company will touch your stuff if any instrument samples are not completely legally yours to use in the first place, so there’s that.
So here I am, still on my musical journey and having a ball. Thanks for reading this far! And if you’re looking for someone to collaborate with or to provide an original score for your production, let me know. I love creating music!