I’m a lefty- it sucks. I picked up the guitar the wrong way when I was a kid and here we. I’m “regular” with all other things I do.
I’ve been into music and audio for 30 years. I started recording on a Tascam 424 in the 80’s and migrated up to bigger gear when working at studios. I went to school for music and got into music production and engineering during that period. I started learning how to mix and record at a more professional level while in school. I started playing drums in the 90’s and really really fell in love with the instrument as well as hand drums while living in Berkeley (drum circles).
I got heavily into acoustics, microphones, and sound in general at some point. That was a rabbit hole I was in for a very long time. I spent a bunch of time recording ambient sounds of cities, modeling drums and rooms using software, and in general experimenting. Over the years I’ve built a few studios for myself including building out the acoustics, floating floors, and etc.
Over the last five years or so I’ve been spending lot more time playing drums and just working on improving my independence and technicality. I really like the technical aspect of drums and the complexity of patterns and multi-rhythms, odd meters, etc.
I decided not to make music my career, mainly because I don’t think I was good enough and I didn’t really feel like being poor for my whole life. Luckily I had computers to fall back on and that has kept me gainfully employed since the 90’s.
Sometime soon I’m planning on building a standalone studio when time permits.
Although in school I spent a lot of time absorbing jazz, I started out listening to punk, ska, hardcore, etc. Once I discovered jazz fusion I pretty much took a hiatus from all music that wasn’t mostly instrumental or technically complex. Weather Report was the first record I remember checking out from a library when I was a kid and being blown away by Jaco.
I got into Mahavishnu Orchestra in a weird way. I was messing with a halloween themed tape one day as a kid and there was this background groove that was absolutely amazing. A friend heard this and told me it sounded exactly like Mahavishnu. I said, who? And that started my practical obsession with instrumental music.
