HOW I GOT STARTED IN MUSIC

Like most people, when I was young I loved music. Music enriched my world. I can still remember the songs that played at high school dances, bus rides to various places in Western New York, and on my portable music player while I was running in nature. At the dances we had "mysterious ways" and "possession." On the bus rides "name" and of course many many others. At one time I had a tape recorder. I used to record the songs I liked that came over the radio and I would listen to them over and over.

When I was 12 or so I began playing the piano. I'd found a collection of Chopin's Nocturnes among my dad's tapes. At first I learned to play them by ear, matching the notes on the piano to what I heard. I discovered pretty close approximations of the songs, though I knew very little about chords. After a while I realized there must be another way to do it so I got some sheet music at the Batavia library. I believe that I memorized the music by memorizing the keys I was supposed to press at different times. It might not have been the best technique because I knew nothing about theory, but it worked decently enough to make me happy with what I was doing. I learned to play some nocturnes and some Beethoven and loved the sounds of the piano.

When I got to be about 13 I became more interested in modern music and the dominant instrument of modern music at that time was the guitar. Because I was reluctant to spend money and liked challenges, I decided that I'd build myself a guitar instead. My first attempt was a test only, a long stick with two wires fixed by screws and screweyes. My preference was to tune these to a perfect fifth. A friend and I discovered that playing this thing while it touched a gigantic plastic jug created a huge booming sound. I thought that it was pretty cool. I made several attempts at full guitars in the garage using the plywood, pine, hammer, nails, stain, and such. Over time I found that a screweye and wire wasn't good enough to hold the tension over time so I switched to actual guitar tuners and real guitar strings. There were about eight attempts and a couple were successful.

I tried writing songs at this time. Because of my classical music experience I wrote what I think were pretty good melodies and harmonies. However, I was not good with lyrics. I think that because the piano music had no lyrics, my lyrical skills had to catch up to my musical skills. I made a few home videos of myself playing my songs to see how it was going.

I took a pretty long break from music when I went to college the first time in 99. After I realized I didn't like my major and I wasn't progressing fast in tennis, and love interests hadn't worked out, I saw my first rock concert and decided to get back into music. I bought my first real guitar, a black dreadnought epiphone. I played a lot and tried to write again. It took time for songs to come together. I used to sit and try to complete songs or think of ideas for new songs for days, even weeks at times. I was very slow at writing. I bought another tape recorder, one with a microphone, and I used to play and record and listen to the tapes all the time in the car. I started assembling equipment for a studio in the summer of 2001.

My plan was to not be only a songwriter but also handle the recording of my own songs. That way I would have more ability to control how my art is conveyed. I wanted to eventually create deep and complex productions, but I thought it would also be nice to start simple and record just acoustic guitar and voice. I performed pretty regularly from the spring of 2005 until the summer of 2006. At that time I became more concerned with recording than performing. I believe now that this was a mistake. I should have continued to pursue live performing at the same time as working on recordings. After 2006 I performed sporadically and then got back into performing heavily around the spring of 2010. I've always gotten much enjoyment from performing. There were times when I thought that the audiences were not big enough, venue owners not nice enough, opportunities not visible enough. Once I let go of these ambitious and resentful feelings I was more than ever able to enjoy performing. Surprisingly, I never minded the imperfections of my own playing much. I love the excitement of going somewhere and not knowing what will happen. It is such a real experience. I also enjoy the feeling of warming up while playing. The first song is always nervous and out of tune, the second is better, the third is better, and by the fifth or sixth song you are likely in pretty good form (for you). It feels like most of the phrases you sing are so close to where you want them to be, even though recordings would reveal the performance is not perfect. It doesn't matter, the people are having fun, you're having fun. You're performing. It's a good time.