My Musical Confession

My Musical Confession

It's 2018, and I have released 30 albums, eight more if you count the number of albums withdrawn and reformed over the years. Nearly 350 songs committed to digital in one form or another, a massive body of work, both covers and originals, instrumentals and vocals. Twelve years of obsession; a good obsession, learning skills in the process. More importantly, this helped in learning self-discipline, although that might not be evident to the general public. It's a good thing to have a passion to fall back on for emotional support. Some of those years were emotionally rough.

None of this was for the general public. I never made a penny, or even tried to do so. On the contrary, it was a constant drain on my funds -  expanding my instruments, fixing and replacing computers, acquiring new software and hardware audio interfaces, and general guitar maintenance, not to mention the CD's, paper, ink and postage. All this was for a glorified hobby, only to be shared with friends. During that time, I never once performed in public, nor ever had the slightest desire to. What the hell was the matter with me?

Obviously, there was more than a little bit of a mid-life crisis involved, but it was better than a sports car or boat sitting in the driveway, a tattoo or piercing. Instead of regret, I have a body of work that I could do alone, completely under my control. Over time, I could refine my skills, develop better technique, learn audio engineering, and maybe even produce some listenable material. And the only tastes that I need to satisfy are my own. No band members to argue with, no critics to disappoint. My friends were polite, occasionally encouraging, and generally baffled. Here's a brief history of the process.

In 2005, through work, I discovered a way of cobbling together digital music. It wasn't recording just yet, but it was close. As the head of a group of video producers, I was moving us towards Adobe software. Part of the software bundle was an audio editing program called Audition. In Audition, you could bring in loops, provided by Adobe or from other parties, all sorts of instruments from string sections to drums as well as ambient noise and synth pads, then stack them up in a time line to create a custom music track. There was some control over tempo and pitch as well.

The idea was to enable a video producer to create their own music bed. I spend a couple of days figuring it out, doing the demo tracks and reverse engineering them, then starting from nothing and combined the most diverse elements together. Some of those tracks are on my first albums. I found this interesting and fun, and at one point brought in the other video producers to show them what I had learned. It was easy for me but they were completely baffled, which in turn left me completely baffled. Why was this so obvious and fun to me and not to others?

That was the start, but it wasn't the beginning. By that time I had been a musician for over thirty years. The other video producers had no obvious musical talent or interest, but at the time I didn't appreciate that simple fact. It was a natural progression for me to want to bring in real performances; in my case, a guitar. I did a few early experiments, including ‘Miles Tones'. Everything was a loop but my guitar, and I was finding it difficult getting a feed into the computer on top of the music with no lag time. There were throughput issues that I had to figure out, and in the mists of time I can't really remember how I initially got a signal into the mix.

When I wanted to start creating my own music, guitar fragments or songs that I had accumulated over decades of playing, I had to strip down everything but the drums and percussion. I owned about five guitars (three electrics, and acoustic and a Dobro) as well as a cheap Casio keyboard that could also sound like an acoustic bass. The vital ingredient missing was percussion, so I concentrated on developing and exploiting drum loops exclusively and then laying my musical themes over that.

I eventually figured it out, as usual by spending some money. But let's go back further, to the beginning, and discover the origins of my obsession with music creation. It is a curious phenomenon. I don't come from a musical family. My father boasted about being both tone deaf and color blind, and yet I am both a visual artist and musician who wound up combining both to become a video producer. My mother liked music, mostly show tunes and whatever was on the radio. My sister, ten years older than I, may have had an autoharp during the folk music boom of the early 1960s.  I seem to remember renditions of 'Wildwood Flower', but it's fuzzy.

My brother, closer to my age, did have some musical talent. He grew up in the vortex of the 60s, while I grew up in the immediate aftermath. He went to high school from 1966 to 1970, crucial years in the American discontent. I went from 1971 to 1975, during a periodic collapse of the American empire. He picked up the guitar and, like other smart guys I knew, quickly mastered a couple of party pieces then took it no further. When his personal demons took over, he had to abandon a lot of his earlier personality to recover, and music tastes might have been the first thing to go. He went from being a fan of Led Zeppelin to Gordon Lightfoot, and then not very passionately about anything.

Being born in 1957, I don't really remember the first wave of rock n roll. Growing up on Long Island, it was all Frankie Valli, stuff that I still hate to this day. Elvis was everywhere, but he meant nothing; people my age tended to hate him. Surf was around, just another trend like longue music. Beatlemania hit when I was too young to participate, watching the older kids go crazy. My poor sister had been too young for Elvis and too old for the Beatles. My brother burned out on protest music and hard rock. My journey was very different.

I was one of the millions watching the Beatles live on Ed Sullivan. They were good, but I was too young to go to either of their movies, although I remember hearing a distant crowd noise when passing Shea Stadium once. In 1967, I was ten; psychedelia did have an impact. I didn't do drugs, but I appreciated how it played with sounds in a new way. St. Pepper’s loomed large, as did the Doors, Cream and Hendrix. Before that, it had been the Animals and the Kinks, harder than the Beatles, and then in 1965 the Rolling Stones sneaking in, looser and more decadent, daring you to hate them.

New York City radio was a smorgasbord of sound, everything from Dean Martin to the Electric Flag. The British Invasion was huge, as was Motown and Stax. The best part was how radio blended it all together in a non-stop high-energy barrage, exactly like the Who did on their ‘Sells Out’ album. Screaming DJs, fast dance songs, and loud commercials were on a continual 24 hour a day cycle. Later, FM radio started to be heard out in Islip, Long Island, but I wasn’t that obsessive a listener. It was longer songs and stoned DJs.

Hard rock had been invented in 1964 by the Kinks and Yardbirds, but it didn’t explode in the mainstream until 1967 with Cream and Hendrix. Guitarists like Jeff Beck and Pete Townshend were adding sonic elements to their playing, but it was marginal, creeping into the spotlight. I didn't like Jimi Hendrix at all as a kid, but I did like the Doors and Cream. It wouldn't be until around 1974, learning to play the guitar, that my eyes were opened to the radical way Hendrix treated sound. As a youngster, I found his stuff harsh and weird, and not in a good way like the Doors. But with Led Zeppelin, Mountain, and Grand Funk in 1969, hard rock emerged, and Black Sabbath a year later sealed the deal.

Sabbath were revolutionary and invented a new style. Sure, Blue Cheer, Steppenwolf or whomever might have done it first, but it was the only thing Sabbath did. They had no redeeming social value whatsoever.  They were total and complete heaviness beyond even Jimi Hendrix, no blues or R & B, only volume, faster and faster in an impenetrably wall of sound. Every guy in my school lived on the 'Paranoid' album for about six months, playing nothing but that because nothing was as heavy as that. Eventually it got stale and the band succumbed to drugs, becoming just another methodical heavy band with diminished results, but it had been glorious for a while.

My brother tried to get a group together and even bought an electric guitar and amp around 1968. Strangely, I have no memory of him playing it. Our next-door neighbor was an older Italian gentleman, a nice fellow, and a musician because he threw out his back and was living on disability and some gigs on the side. He played single string electric guitar in a style between Les Paul and a mandolin player, the perfect style for a Mafia wedding. He was very good but couldn’t play a chord, having total mastery of melody. I credit him with subliminally injecting me with love for the guitar.

There was a guitar around the house, but six seemed like an awful lot of strings. The Woodstock movie broke big in early 1970, when I was thirteen. Clean cut kids suddenly wanted to become hippies, do a lot of drugs, join the counter culture and chase naked women. I was never a hippie; I didn't have the right personality, too big a violent streak when young. I found out later that they liked having me around, as I was sympathetic to them and I could keep trouble away by my sheer bulk.

My friends in the eighth grade wanted to get a band together and be rock stars. We were all around the same age. Everybody had an older brother with some musical equipment, and all the older brothers were either away at college or in jail. By accident - picking out the theme for Texaco oil on the bass - they made me join. My brother was in a world of trouble with the law so I didn't want to do drugs right then, but I wanted to be with my friends. We were terrible. My memory is playing a single bass note during "Inside Looking Out' for twenty minutes straight. That is not an exaggeration. We were very bad.

With only a half-dozen rehearsals under our belt, we played one time. The lead guitarist showed up in a surprisingly complete rock star outfit, right down to the leather trousers and turquoise belt. At the climactic moment, he tried playing the guitar over his head and his heavy metal pants fell, revealing his tighty whiteys. It was hilarious; we stopped playing because we were laughing so hard. As a band, we were one and done. We all wound up going to different catholic high schools and dispersing anyway.

Around the same time, I notice a separation of my musical tastes from my older siblings. Around the year I entered high school, 1971, I started listening to Jethro Tull, Yes, and Emerson Lake and Palmer. I still listened to a lot of other stuff, but this was a new ingredient. However, neither my brother and his friends nor my sister and her then husband had any use for this music, actively hating it. As they had done to my parents, I turned to this music because it was specifically mine and not shared with an older generation. I loved Progressive rock.

The electric equipment disappeared, but there was always an acoustic guitar around, even if it was a nylon string plastic model. I never really learned anything until my family moved to York, Pa, in the beginning of 1972. It was cold and I was lonely, so Mom bought me a hollow bodied Epiphone and a small amp, then arranged for lessons from a 50-plus skinny old guy who was devoted to Chet Atkins. I did take lessons for a year and learned some fundamentals such as chord triads. It went well until I joined a band and only wanted to play rock n roll.

That was accidental, a matter of circumstances. When the house was empty, I would crank the amp up and blast out a few loud chords. A kid living around the corner, a year younger and going to another high school, heard me and introduced himself. He wanted to play bass and was willing to buy one if I would teach him. Even though I could barely play myself, it seemed reasonable, so I said yes. This guy had ambition; soon, we had a drummer as well.

I remember the first song I taught him; 'Wild Thing' by the Troggs. I kept it simple and tribal. We would make a noise and pose a lot, but soon we had a drummer and a singer, then a PA, even a lead guitarist. For a brief couple of months there was an organist who didn't realize that he had paralyzing stage fright. We played a battle of the bands and won, then the same ambitious bass player booked a ton of gigs and we played and rehearsed and played some more.

That first band was a lot of fun. There was no pressure except to pay off the equipment loan co-signed by our parents. Most of the band were in it to get laid, but the lead player and I were actually more into the music. He was very good, continuing to teach me after the guitar teacher kicked me out of his classes. We did top forty material and he would show me the chords, then I would teach the bass player, and finally I would slap together a rough arrangement with the drummer as well. The lead player and singer would make a few changes and we were done. We rehearsed and did gigs all the time and were a good meat-and-potatoes band. Our repertoire was vast and always changing.

But as we aged out of high school, we couldn't keep it together. The singer went first, the lead player next, and I went third. As a trio we weren't that good. At eighteen I did not really have the chops for lead. I was a good rhythm player but improvising wasn't a strong point yet. The bass player and drummer kept it going for a decade or more, even doing a Fleetwood Mac cover band with wives and girlfriends. I moved on to art school and another circle of friends, more sophisticated. Things got esoteric and often drug-induced. Before art school I loved the Beatles and the Doors, Led Zeppelin and the Who, but my tastes were catholic and a bit all over the place. I was introduced to Larry Coryell and electric jazz guitar, then John McLaughlin. But I carried my earlier tastes with me.

The high school band was a minor success around town and it taught me a lot of things, such as the sheer joy of hitting a loud power chord or being in tight with a bass and drums. Learning on my feat was incredibly important, but there were many guys who were more instinctive players, who could quickly mimic any style. I learned the hard way, by absorption, and didn't have any fluidity as a guitarist at first. The music needed to be understood and processed internally before I could be comfortable. I was painfully aware of my faults and had no real skills on the acoustic.

When in art school, because of being in art school, my circle of friends changed. It was cool to be an artist and all the starving young people hung out together, trading ideas. I could always talk well and exchange ideas with the best of them. Weird music was shared, whether it was Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa or even King Crimson. The art school crowd was more into Dan Fogelberg and Steely Dan, not my cup of tea. I headed to the outer fringes. I played bass in a progressive rock group and then a jazz fusion group during this time.

In retrospect, I can see some strands in my personality. I was the central force in my high school band but they wouldn't let me sing. I was not a terrible singer; it was more a question of the balance of power, and I accepted it. Later, I was unsure of my guitar skills, since I was mostly a chord guy, so playing bass taught me things like walking lines and passing chords while being a support player. I let other people write the material and be the front man. I was content in the back.

This period was very frustrating; all we ever did was practice an ever-changing repertoire which never was nailed down with an ever-changing line up of musicians. If the power shifted, you were vulnerable to being booted out of the band for political reasons as people vied for position next to the leader.  My attention was split between music and art. I was surprisingly passive, convinced of my own lesser musical skills. I didn't write and I wasn't a front man because everyone told me so. And I believed them. No surprise that I was pushed out after a while.

Then poverty took over and I couldn't keep up with the cost of equipment repairs. I had to choose between art and music, so I went with art. At one point, I broke the index finger in my left hand, a crippling injury for a right-handed guitarist. Life wasn’t going where I wanted it to in Pennsylvania. I moved south, getting a job as a landscaper. I didn't even own an instrument for a couple of years. But I wasn't stagnant, because it was interesting times and I had big ears. Music kept coming in waves, mutating and sub-dividing, new trends burying the old. I wanted an old fashioned liberal education and I gave myself one out of self-determination.

It started when I switched high schools. I had schizoid tastes, playing mainstream rock in a cover band but not telling anyone in my high school what I did. There it was all progressive, Yes and Emerson Lake & Palmer, or jazz fusion, all music well above my abilities. I loved it but couldn't touch it as a player. In the band, it was power chords and dance grooves for gymnasiums full of girls. But at home I was immersing myself in older jazz and classical music.

That's why later I played bass. These were better musicians who wanted to play more complicated stuff. I could just about keep up. They all under-valued me, thinking I was the 'blues guy' because I stayed true to my early interests, but I let it happen by being the supporter and not the creator. My interest was in the visual arts, where I could be the captain of my own ship. In a band, we all can't play lead guitar. It was expensive and it was argumentative, and at a certain point I walked away. They were pushing me out anyway, even though I still hung around and did free roadie work for them.

I also read voraciously, from the lowliest pulp crap to the loftiest literature. I picked and chose what appealed to me, not what I was told that I should enjoy. If it was boring, I dropped it. Same thing with music; I tried everything once. Back then you could go to a library and take out all the jazz and classical vinyl you could carry. I listened to it all when painting and found my sweet spots, ditching the rest. Those themes also infused my tastes in rock. I liked the spaces where genres bled together.

Looking back forty years later, I can see that I was interested in all disciplines of art; writing for fanzines, going to art school, playing in bands, doing some film and video - even acting. Roadie work taught me the technical aspects behind the creativity, similar to art school. I didn’t narrow my focus to just one aspect, which may be why I wandered in the wilderness until video came along and all these different interests could be combined. There were many years where I was lonely and poor.

Art school was amazingly free of books, but I was a book guy and kept reading and devouring visuals. For me, a trip to a new city means a trip to the local museum and book stores. I met publishers, important artists and authors. I could hold a conversation well. I educated myself in the subjects that I wanted, not in the curriculum chosen by someone else. A decade later, I went back to college to get a BA. I found it ridiculously easy. I already knew more than what they were teaching. I had learned it the hard way.

I liked many different types of music. I could really enjoy the raw blues stylings of Rory Gallagher but also Kenny Burrell's polite jazz or Django Reinhardt’s gypsy music. Robert Fripp was endlessly fascinating but I wasn't down with ambient music as a whole. I still listened to psychedelic music even though it was woefully out of fashion. I invested in newer groups, from the Clash to Gang of Four to U2 and ever REM for a while. Fairport Convention, Robyn Hitchcock, and the prog bands were still interesting to me. It had to resonate for me to invest my time and money in it, same as today.

I eventually picked up a decent but inexpensive used Yamaha acoustic and had to teach myself a different way to play. I had been shocked when, in high school and having to jam acoustically, finding my style totally inadequate to the task. I was used to the amp doing all the work; now my hands had to do it. In the 1980s, married, I took my time and learned guitar from the acoustic up instead of from the electric down. Having a wife and child changes your sonic space, although there was plenty of material that I could carry over. I wasn't a complete brute, I just needed to learn to adjust, and I did.

When I got married, my wife had a very valuable mandolin under the bed. I played it a little but was more excited when we sold it and used the money to buy an upright piano. I'd never lived in a house with a piano and I wasn't one of those kids who was forced to take piano lessons. I would have loved that, and I used to sneak into a rich house where I worked at and play their baby grand over lunch hour, with permission. I also had a friend at an organ store and we would jam after the mall closed.

I was starting as a keyboardist from almost nothing, just the little bits of musical theory from guitar lessons and band arrangements. I still don't play well but I can handle a part when needed. Playing keyboard is literally playing musical theory, separating the bass from the melody from the chord shapes. The guitar does this curious inversion, as a right handed player must learn initially to do the hard stuff with his less dominant left hand. It is only after some mastery do you figure out that the right hand picking patterns are as important. With piano, it is both hands from the very first note.

Poverty is a great shaper of taste as well. I've never really starved, not for long anyway, but I've never been rich either. As a teen, I couldn't afford good instruments and went through a series of second hand gear usually in need of some repair. Not having any instruments for long periods makes you grateful when you do have something nice to play. Not having a lot of spare time makes you dedicate yourself to those moments when you can play long enough to lose yourself in the music.

And I couldn't keep up with everything. Poverty makes you pick and choose what you are going to follow. At one time I had thousands of albums that I left with a friend in Pennsylvania. I never bothered to retrieve them, especially when I heard that his dog had pissed on them. I had also moved past that and was onto new things. I remember the first CD that I purchased as well as the first DVD and Blu-Ray. Developing taste was mining a vein into the past.

My wife was a blank slate when we married. Now she was living with me and I inflicted my tastes upon her. I realized very quickly that she liked jazz, so I made sure we had the jazz that I liked, Miles and Coltrane and Monk, so we could listen together without conflict. My personal tastes could be indulged alone in the car with a tape player back in those days, or in my room with the head phones on. Don't want to wake the baby. I really like a degree of sheer noise, and I have my entire life.

I was lucky to grow up in interesting times. Rock n roll was there before I was born, and I grew up with the tremendous craftsmanship of the Beatles. Creativity was rampart even into the 70s. In fact, the early days of prog rock may have been the peak, where the musicians went over the heads of the critics and suffered a backlash, creating arena rock as a result. I became addicted to challenging, different, and sometimes downright weird art in all forms.

As I grew older, unlike many of my contemporaries I did not grow more conservative in my tastes. I keep looking for that weird spice in my art, movies, literature and especially in my music. As the 90s moved in, corporate tastes took over, safe bets to ensure a return on investments. Not much weird spice there, not much raw emotion. I found myself going backwards in time, not so much out of nostalgia but because of the freedom that had been available to the artists of the earlier decades. I would mine an artist's catalogue if I found them interesting.

The biggest moment for my future in music was when around 1988 my wife bought me a cheap Stratocaster rip-off for Xmas. She did it out of love but I saw it as an instrument of destruction. I hadn't owned an electric instrument in a decade. It was like opening Pandora's Box. Unlike some of my friends, I don't find purity in the sound of an acoustic instrument nor do I find comfort in only traditional songs. Music needs electricity to goose it up the ass and the familiar needs to be turned on its head to be made new again. I am fundamentally an electric musician.

Since the thing wouldn't stay in tune, especially the way I wacked on the whammy bar, I had to purchase a Hagstrum hollow body and an amp. I was in the noise-making business again. Just by myself nearly all the time, but I started to hear the amplified instrument in a new way, with a new array of effects that were easier to use, cheaper, and in abundance. Later I added a real Stratocaster and then a Gibson SG. Even a Dobro, which really was purchased for charity, to help a friend who owned a guitar shop and was suffering severe illness and needed money.

I became a video producer and was always in charge of picking the music. Most people hate doing it but I liked it. When I became the Car Commercial King of Catawba County, I went through so much music that I started sneaking in little thirty second backings of my own creation, faux bluegrass or whatever. It was more like a sly in-joke, not anything with artist merit. But I was accumulating the tools necessary for my foray into real music creation on the company dollar.

When I joined state government, I was doing law enforcement training. It was a particular type of audience, one where you could specify their tastes narrowly. It was blood and guts material, so you needed heavy metal and the occasional urban track. There was library and I ran through it in no time. I started devising shock pieces, stabs of noise like in a horror movie, or sad synth beds. That's how I got into Adobe Audition and loop creation.

There I was, trying to create soundtrack pieces for my videos, emotional underpinnings to support the visuals. I remember trying to record an electric guitar at work and the disruption to the rest of the people it caused, no matter how quietly I played. This was an activity that had to be a home hobby even if I used the product at work. I discovered USP analog-to-digital converter boxes, inexpensive and simple devices that allow you to directly plug in any instrument lead and record on a time line while hearing playback without any lag. I was in business.

Strangely, I was not the slightest bit interested in MIDI, although I kept telling myself I should learn it. I wanted the guitar to sound like a guitar, with real fingers sliding up and down the neck. Once I started, after that horrible two CD set that I knew was a mistake the minute I gave away a copy, I hustled together the money for a real bass, then a better keyboard, then additional guitars to round out my arsenal. Eventually I had to face the inadequacies of using looped drum tracks around 2009.

I've gone through at least five computers, four software packages and four USP analog-to-digital converters while recording, as well as two basses, two keyboards and three sets of electronic drums. Let's not mention guitars. That's an immense output of money for a hobby spiraling out of control. But the end results were worth it. I needed a focal point in my life, something beyond just strumming a guitar for my own ears. I need a physical product to prove my self-worth and talent.

Another defining moment was when I realized that the music could not have my personality if I kept using the loops found in the audio programs. I needed to become a drummer. That is truly the moment that I crossed the Rubicon. There was no coming back; if I could learn how to drum, then I could eventually turn this into music that completely reflected my personality. I knew that it would take years and be uncomfortable, with a lot of mistakes. It certainly was. But suddenly one day I was able to lay down good drum takes no matter where the music went. It merely took four years.

If I was to count all the money that I have spent to create and distribute these ultimately limited-edition music packages, well into the thousands of dollars, not to mention the vast amount of time I spend not only recording, but writing and planning, cleaning up after and, yes, even contemplating it after the fact, you would be justified in called me obsessive if not downright insane. But I must do it because, even on some of the earlier material, fumbling in the dark, I would hear those moments of surprise and weirdness that I was missing everywhere else. This was an art form that I could create entirely on my own, by myself, demonstrating my personal skills and tastes.

In the end, I do this for myself because I am filling a gap that exists in my artistic life. Work was done to the satisfaction of other people. I can't buy anything as tailored to my desires. I doubt that anyone else can ever appreciate it totally, since it is so designed for my singular audience. They can enjoy some of it, but would find other material too obtuse or primitive. Maybe someday, possibly when I am gone, this force of creation will attract some attention. I certainly don't seek it. I don't need to argue about artistic merit with anybody but myself. That way, I always win the argument.

The music is ultimately what matters. I have created it and often re-created it to meet my own exacting standards. Nobody else really matters; if they can get into it, fine, it not, tough. I puzzle my friends and family, but then I always have, even as a child. While I certainly enjoy company and companions, in the end I do what I need to do, pay for the privilege, and damn the consequences. You can write that on my tombstone some day.