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 My wife Marcee & I (aren't we cute?) Well, I guess I should start at the beginning (don't worry, this won't take too long). In the early 70's I was born in Sacramento, CA where I grew up like any normal child. I played Soccer and Baseball with all of my friends, hated school, and loved cartoons (a love I will never grow out of <g>). When I turned 10, I got a guitar for my birthday and my love for music began. Hearing Eddie Van Halen for the first time and finding out he was married to Valerie Bertinelli (I had a huge crush on her) just made that love for music stronger. I tried taking lessons for a while but got tired of learning "Mary Had a Little Lamb" when I wanted to learn Scorpions' "Rock You Like A Hurricane" and all of the other great rock songs that drove my parents crazy. After that, I started listening to the records and trying to figure out the music on my own, which became easier and easier every time until I could listen to a song twice and have the guitar part down. The bad part was, I still could not read music, but hey, I'm gonna be a rock star, I don't need to right? Finally in High School, a friend of mine in a band I was in turned me on to Rush. Also at that time, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai came into the picture and I was inspired by all of this wonderful technical music. I decided to get into the Jazz Band to learn to read music, which helped a little, but at least it got me into another form of incredibly technical music. All of this inspiration around me made me want to write music, and to learn much more about music than I could from just listening to the records. Upon graduating from High School, I decided that I wanted to go to Sac State University to study music, but first I wanted to go to community college. That way I could get my core classes out of they way while still taking music classes. I had been at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento studying Music History, Theory, Piano , anything they had to offer me, and I was taking Classical guitar lessons for about a year when I had met the most beautiful and friendly girl I had ever seen. She was in a voice class with me, so I asked her to audition for my band that was looking for a singer (great pick-up line, eh?). We went out for dinner before the audition, which she just spent listening to us play, but I wasn't really interested in her as a singer anyway. Needless to say we fell in love and wanted to go on to a university together, but she had already been to Sac State for a year and didn't like it. After a tedious process of finding the right place for both of us, we found University of Oregon. U of O was the best experience that both of us have ever had. Their Music department is exceptional, and Marcee found an area of study, which was Psychology with a minor in Anthropology. As for me, I wanted to try my hand at the art of Composition. Being a little naive, I thought that it would be easy. I had written plenty of rock songs, which I was good at, so this should be a piece of cake! My first attempt at a "real" composition was a complete failure, but like anything else, all it took was practice, and many, many classes. I was once again inspired my wonderful and technical music, but this time it was from the minds of the early 20th century composers. Stravinsky, Bartok, Ives and Schoenberg gave birth to my love for atonal music, and my goal to intertwine their musical styles with the Rock and Jazz genres. Out of college, and my need to be able to notate my music in a more quick and easy way, I became interested in computers and MIDI music. Sequencing in MIDI became a second language to me and I wanted others to be able to hear my music, so I started learning web page design. The first few incarnations of this page were pretty basic, but the ongoing pursuit of learning HTML and graphics programs such as Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro have led me to the point that I'm at today. Currently, I'm waiting for Marcee to finish her Master's degree in Experimental Psychology. No, she doesn't stick electrical probes into anything, she's working with some chimpanzees that have acquired sign language. After she is done, we plan on moving so I can find work more suitable to my knowledge. Anyone hiring? ;-) Take care,
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