I've played guitar since I was 12. I took it up by curious accident. My Mom, who is lefty, had an acoustic guitar that was left out at some point. I picked it up and played the low e, which was where a high e normally is, because I was playing her lefty guitar as a righty. I played the following frets in order simply by experimenting and played e0, e0, e1, e2. Sorry about the weird notation. It means on the low e I played the string open twice, then first fret and then second fret. These notes are the beginning of Nirvana's Come As You Are. I was a huge fan of Metallica and Nirvana and flip-flopped between which I liked more. I immediately recognized the tune and decided I MUST figure out how to play th rest of it. I spent a few days working it out and eventually got bored of playing that riff. It was time for a new song.

Starting guitar can be tricky. It's a combination of mental and physical activities, so disirregardless of how well you understand what you're trying to do, you'll need to practice before you can do it. It's really a test of patience for any intelligent person and because of this I think music generally attracts intelligent people. I don't want to digress too far, so back to me. Because guitar takes time to get good at, I found myself confronting situations where I couldn't play what I understood in my head. A conundrum. My ear wasn't particularly well trained either. I had listened to some music and knew what I heard, but I had no idea how that mapped to a guitar. A wall was in front.

In a way, I suppose I was naturally inclined to be a musician because I felt the wall in front and chose to invent new music to distract me from the wall. I was gonna do my best to break down the barriers of what I could actually play, but I wanted new things to do on the guitar while I patiently practiced.

And so I wrote a song. I wrote lots of riffs, but the first time I realized you need to arrange them was when I had the first one; Teenage Angst. I had a band with three people from school when I was in eighth grade. We didn't really have a name. I didn't like labels even back then and I also had no idea who I was. What could I possibly call a band? Something that represents this undefined me... It didn't matter because we had learned a few covers and only had one original. We even played a show. It was a dance at school called Middle Ground. It was a special dance where, the year before, I saw a band called Exhibit A play. I thought they were so awesome and I HAD to play the next Middle Ground.

For the Middle Ground show we learned For Whom The Bell Tolls, by Metallica, Smells Like Teen Spirit, by Nirvana, and we played our original, Teenage Angst. We wanted to play Rape Me, Nirvana, but the school didn't think songs with the word "rape" in the title were appropriate. We agreed. We were flipping out already about getting to play in front of our peers. Interestingly, Kurt Cobain was found dead the day we played our first show. A black omen, right?! I don't buy into that superstitious bs, but it's a neat coincidence. Anyway...

I went to high school after this and found there were kids with cooler bands than I knew about. I met a dude named Marc through Young Life and he showed me NoFX. They were the fastest band I had ever heard. They weren't evil either. I didn't really like how dark the lyrics were to Metallica and learned to tune them out. I still like NoFX. Marc showed me a song on guitar. Marc was lefty. I was back to playing a lefty guitar upside-down in some kind of strange milestone awareness moment or something... Marc and I agreed after about 15 minutes that we should start a band. Flipside was born. We changed the name to Flipside FTY later. FTY means faster than you. If you think that's funny, just be patient as I explain the long list of crap band names I took part in.

Flipside did well. We put out a tape called Jocks Are Cool to protest the way skateboarders were treated by the jocks. A few jocks were complete dicks and would beat up some of the skaters. No one seemed to care so we wrote a bunch of angry songs about it and got the schools attention in the process. Then everyone became chill. This led the way for us to get a singer from the jock crowd in our next band. This band was called Last Laff. Last Laugh was taken. We had a song about aliens eating the world and a song called bob dole about the sheeple in america who had no clue how things *really* worked. We were 15 and definitely knew how the whole world worked and thought adults were such losers for not getting it.

Bret, singer of Last Laff, was the son of Sugar Ray's manager. Yep, this Sugar Ray. Bret got his Dad to check us out and his Dad was impressed (perhaps just fatherly?) enough to take us to SIR studios in NYC to cut a demo. It turned out well but we prefered recording with Morgan. It kinda became a little personal but what can you do.

Marc had a neighbor, Morgan, who lent us stuff to record. Marc's brother flew out from SD and we got an 8-track. We were gonna do a demo ourselves. We didn't have a record label backing us for any of this, but we found recording to be really cheap if you took most of the responsibility yourself. Rent some mics and cables. Make sure the parents aren't home. Mic the drums. Test the recording sound. Adjust. Test again. Record drums. Hopefully the drummer gets it fast. It's a huge bummer when you can't get it. Drums and one guitar. Only drums recorded. Then we mic record bass. Then guitar. Then guitar.

Now the singing. Drums and singing are easily the hardest to get right. With drums, simply moving around can result in bad orientations. If you lose your orientation behind the kit, it's over. Singing is like this. If you move a little bit, it might stretch your lack of breath just too far. Or perhaps your vocal chords are stretched and the note is harder to hit.

After Last Laff came Counterfit. Leave off the last e for emo, cuz that's what it was. It was pop punk mixed with emo. We had a ska song. We had really fast drumming and really weird guitar chords. Marc and I would jam after school all the time and write songs. We used the 8-track to record demos. Recording whenever we wanted was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. There was so much equipment to buy though... Amps... Mics... Mixers... KEE RIST.

Counterfit established a serious potential for music in my life. We played with Hot Rod Circuit, The Ataris and were starting to get lots of people at our shows. Alas, I went to college to study computer science. I got the music urge quickly though and joined a new band First Aid Kit, completely negating the responsibility of my choice to leave Counterfit. We wrote a bunch of songs and recorded them with some fancy amps. I played out of an Orange OR-80. It sounded amazing. We recorded a few more times and did some touring. We recorded live shows along the way and they never really sounded good. The cd's sounded awesome and were getting better with each recording session. First Aid Kit toured fairly frequently and was a great time. Alas, I made a "responsible" decision again and left First Aid Kit to start a career in San Francisco.

Turns out I didn't like SF enough to stay long and I also couldn't find any musicians I liked creating new songs with. I played drums in a cover band for a bit which was fun. But, then I moved to NYC for work and rejoined with some ex-first aid kit people. We jammed music for a while and started recording songs.

The difference in how songs are written between what I knew before moving to SF and then having come back is staggering. The difference is that I have a bass and garageband. Writing music is something I've done for every band I'm in. Writing music for this latest band often times comes from each member as an almost complete song with all instruments covered. JJ tends to favor whatever is fastest and JP is very meticulous. I think PJ and I are somewhere in between.

Getting the hang of garageband is a pretty trivial matter. It's basically a bunch of tracks that play simultaneously. So for two guitars to play together, you record one and then the other. Layer them on top so they play at the same time and you've got your two guitars. Add a folder of drum samples (thanks Marc) and a bass guitar and now the whole musical picture for a band is complete.

The huge amounts of loud equipment is easily replaced with something like a guitarport from Line 6. This is what I use. I hook the thing up via USB and then plug the guitar straight into it. No more amp necessary. I just use my laptop speakers and they can get just as loud as any amp.

So that's that. I put a kick drum here, a snare hit there, play some bass and some guitar and I can do it in an hour or two.

Here is the last song I wrote entirely. I expect it to sound different when PJ, JJ, JP and I put it out, but this is where it started.

My song 12 - revisited

This is the first version. Kinda boring and dark.