ABOUT ME

I have been a lover of music as long as I can remember and my house was full of different music. My father collected everything from dixieland jazz to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. My older sister brought home Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Neil Diamonds Hot August Night and the Saturday Night Fever movie soundtrack. My first album was something from the Strawberry Alarm clock. (I have to believe my mom asked somebody at a record store what was popular at the time). I listened to Styx’s Grand Illusion until the grooves wore out. When I got my first job and first weekly paycheck, I would buy a record every week from the local record store called Licorice Pizza and that continued for the next twenty years. Strangely, that love of music did not make me pick up an instrument until many years later. I purchased a cheap acoustic guitar with insanely high action that gave me blisters while learning tunes from the Mel Bay series. I practiced and practiced and learned the opening riffs from a lot of tunes but never could quite learn to play any song from beginning to end.

I studied with several guitar instructors and attended several guitar seminars over the years. I dug into musical theory and the structure of songs but the fast fingers never followed. It was when I went to a seminar with the fantastic Robben Ford that I realized that maybe I shouldn’t try to be the next Jimi Hendrix and maybe I should just focus on being the best original Frank Bekker. The purchase of a new Mac computer was transformative because that is when I discovered GarageBand. Wow! I just purchased a recording studio. First, it was just crazy how many guitar sounds that were available. Then I discovered how much more music was ready to be played with a MIDI keyboard. I then realized a needed a good rhythm section because those drum loops just were not what I was looking for so then came the drum set.

Now, I’m my own band. I am having a great time composing instrumental rock, jazz and blues tunes but I am still not creating the music that moves me like the music I love. Through Facebook, I happen upon a great songwriting teacher, Mark Bacino, who convinced me to start writing and singing lyrics and that further aided in the development of my songs. I feel like I’m getting closer. My musical tastes are evolving also; I’m listening to more progressive rock and rock that melds the hard edge of metal with the grandeur of orchestral music. Once again through Facebook, I find an opportunity to enroll in classes that introduces me to the world of symphonic instruments; how they are used and the many, many classical pieces of music where they are used so brilliantly.

Along the path of this journey, I meet some fellow students and we would often share our work with each other. Over and over, they would say, “wow”, this sounds like something from an action movie”. I would try to write something in the style of a classic but it usually sounded like a movie trailer. So I thought, maybe I should pursue this as well. I found a terrific film score teacher/coach, Arend Erasmus, and with his help, I found a new passion and perhaps a bit of a knack for putting music to film. While I still enjoy banging out rock and roll chords to create an upbeat rock song, I also enjoy the puzzle of analyzing a movie scene to determine what is needed to further bring life from what is on the screen; to help the director make the audience gasp, or cry or to jump out of their seats. All those years of listening to music; every song, every album, they are all being put to use today.

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