A story about a musician
3 part series: Artist + Musician + Entrepreneur
My father played the accordion and played the same damn song over and over again. So naturally, I gravitated to punk rock and techno. Its basically polka.
I picked up playing the guitar in high school cause the grunge scene was hot and all you had to know was three chords. Punk rock. Made sense.
After high school I met John Warne at a bible camp in WI. We became friends and had a lot in common. He mentioned that his band Ace Troubleshooter needed a bass player. I had never played bass before. The following weekend I bought a bass and went to a festival with John and the crew.
My first show was in front a festival size crowd. I was nervous as hell. I think we made music. I remember looking out and seeing a crap load of people.
I played with Ace up to my last year in college. I enjoyed not only playing but studying music. No no, I couldn’t read notes or music but I could learn by hearing — playing by ear. I spent a lot of time playing back full albums by heart. I also learned that even though it was punk rock it was about perfection. Yeah, playing tight man. That was a sign of a great punk band. Three chords tight as hell. :)
Being a punk rock perfectionist lead me into recording. Because if you want to be a great musician play by a click track. Why not go a step further and learn about compression, dynamics, mic placement etc. I worked for the stage crew at my college for a few years learning about live events. It was awesome.
I recorded a few albums and made tons of electronic non-sense over the years. It’s crazy. That non-sense came in handy when I was asked at my first ad job to come up with a sounds for Nike Bauer’s website. No prob, I can do that. Well, I took that effort farther. I learned as much as I could about the art of sound design. I fell in love with sound all over again.
What was it about music or sound that I loved so much? Creating something from nothing? Putting all the pieces together? Nope, for me it was manipulation. Taking the existing sounds and changing them so drastically it created a whole new sound. So you could say all the above. It was using my skills as a painter.
Do I still work with sound? No, not really but every now and then I do some video editing and the sound stuff comes up. I’ve had to do some voice over work and it drives me nuts when there’s smacking or hums in the background… For the love I have to fix that. I can’t help myself if “no one else can hear that…” I can.
Here’s one of my last experiments that I recorded and played all the parts. It was an audio piece I had to get out of my head.
