Bad experiences in elementary school music classes and getting bullied during a private school class for learning the recorder made me want nothing to do with music.

Then I stumbled across a computer game called “Sim Tunes”. 

Since I knew nothing about music, I just placed random colored dots across the screen (each representing different notes) and then watched as my instrument playing “bugs” made a horrible cacophony. I’m not sure how I was even able to tolerate the dissonance. 

But then one day, I heard something that sounded…well not “good”, but harmonious. I had actually made music. Original music. On a computer in the basement. That blew my young mind, but it was still years before I did anything serious with music. 

It wasn’t until my father began recording music with Digital Orchestrator Pro, and he showed me how you could play tuned “gun shot” noises on a midi keyboard that I got the crazy idea to start writing music. 

“Hey, it’s just like Sim Tunes,” I reasoned, “Only with more sounds and an actual keyboard.” However, it was still a few years later before I actually started creating songs for real.

I got a midi keyboard and Cubase Elements for my 18th birthday in 2011 and I started recording music in earnest.

It was awful. Like, I didn’t learn about quantization for a year or more and so none of my tracks were actually in time with each other. Yeah.

Then, in 2014, I recorded an album and had it mastered by my friend Levi Laubenthal (the artist behind the Ethereal Cinematic project NIGHT). I then published the album just as something to check off my “bucket list”.

However, that week of all day, non-stop writing, recording, and mixing in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio infected me bad with the music bug, and I never recovered.

I dropped out of school at The Ohio State University where I was currently pursuing a BA in marketing at the Fisher College of Business, and decided to move half-way across the country to southwest Florida and join the family business. 

When I arrived, I discovered a school an hour away that taught audio engineering and music production. I enrolled immediately, and graduated a couple years later.

I’ve helped record music for more than a dozen bands, and have worked as an Arranger on multiple projects as well. 

Long story short, I’m the last person in the world who should be writing, recording, and producing music. I still don’t know music theory or even how to play an instrument!

I’ve made every mistake in the book, and learned a lot over the years, and now I want to share with you what I’ve learned.