Artists & Community

I began playing guitar, my first musical instrument, at the ripe old age of thirteen. I begged my grandparents to buy me a two-VHS (remember those?) guitar course for Christmas. They did and I immediately began absorbing all I could from the courses, which was mainly chords. I didn’t have the patience for learning to read music, but I had a natural sense of rhythm, so I just learned what chords and songs I could from the course and took off from there.

My main reason for wanting to play was so that I could participate in church music. My dad was a pastor at the time, and I desperately wanted to contribute to the services. In no time I was doing just that.

Fast forward to today, over 20 years later, and I’m still playing guitar and have even added a few new instruments to my repertoire—piano, ukulele, and bass. I teach private guitar and ukulele students, as well as a Bluegrass Band class and a novel writing class, throughout the school year and take summer off to work on my own projects. Some of the projects I’ve created include three professional quality guitar instructional courses, “Texas Blues Guitar,” “Bluegrass Guitar Essentials,” and, my latest course, “Bluegrass Guitarpeggios.”

I also dabble in writing and have written two Amazon bestsellers in their categories on how to set and achieve goals from a three-part series entitled “SMART FOCUS.” I’m currently at work on my first novel.

When I have the time, I produce content on my YouTube channel — currently with 700+ videos, 14,000+ subscribers, and 45,000+ monthly views and growing — on the topics of guitar instruction, entrepreneurship, writing and publishing, and more.

Most of all, I’d have to say that great music inspires me to play and produce great music. My many and diverse musical inspirations include Tony Rice, Bryan Sutton, Tommy Emmanuel, David Grier, Kenny Smith, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Steve Vai, Paul Gilbert, Joe Satriani, and the artist I discovered recently whom I can’t seem to get enough of—Marco Sfogli.

The best way I fill my creative well and keep my creative spark alive is to allow myself time off from creating to absorb the creative work of others. Be it a good novel, a favorite album, or other means of creativity, these all keep me in check as I continue to find my own means of creativity. Another great way to do this is to switch up my creative flow. If I’ve spent a week working on a musical project, I might take a day or two off and go to a coffee shop (my favorite hangout spot) to write or sort through my goals for the upcoming quarter.

I started using Tracktion back in 2017 when T5 was the latest version just before T6 was released. I was quickly hooked into the flow and GUI of the DAW, which was different than anything I’d ever seen at the time. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of it was that it was a fully functional DAW that was completely and totally free!

I’d dabbled in other DAWs before over the years, but nothing as extensive as Tracktion. It was when I found Tracktion that I found a new vigor for creating my own music. As a direct result, I gained additional interest in learning to engineer my own work, so I owe my knowledge of how to mix my music to Tracktion software.

I currently use the latest installment of Tracktion Waveform 9 as my DAW. I haven’t upgraded to version 10 because there’s still so much I haven’t discovered in version 9!

That’s a hard one since Tracktion does just about everything I’d ever want it to. If I had to pick one, for now, I’d have to say Warp Time. I’ve never seen an easier way to deal with slight mishaps in my own timing. Though, I don’t use it in the Loops window; I prefer to add it as an FX to each clip and work from there. It’s easier to visualize this way.

Some of my other favorite features include Melodyne Essentials — for those rare occasions when either my voice or my instruments hit an off-pitch note — and Clip Comping. Comping is a great way to compile the “greatest hits” from your solo and splice them all together seamlessly. I’ve also found it a great tool for recording multiple “dubbed” rhythm guitars for the classic stereo widening effect — just record several bars of your rhythm in a loop, then select different areas of the comped clip than you selected for your main guitar part. Since the selected audio is totally different, you now have multiple rhythm guitars!

Back in October 2017, when I first found Tracktion, I recorded an entire album’s worth of original Bluegrass Gospel music using T5 and T6. Since then — after multiple other projects took priority — I’ve been able to mix two singles from that album. I still have a few more tracks to mix and release. But lately, I’ve been working on a new single in an entirely different genre — Shred Guitar. The track is inspired by some of my own favorite Shred players, Paul Gilbert and Marco Sfogli being among the top of my list.

I’ve recently hired a drummer on Fiverr to track drums, and I’m currently in the mixing stage of the drums. From there, I’ll move on to mixing the rest of the track. I tend to work slower than I’d like, but I love the learning process along the way.

My main hub for connecting with people online is my website / blog. From there, you can check out my various instructional courses, read some of the books and stories I’ve written, and, of course, listen to some of my own music.

I currently play with an acoustic Gospel group out of Sparta, TN called the Gilbert Family. I’ve been playing guitar and singing with them since around 2013 and love every minute of the challenge of coming up with new guitar parts. To date, I’ve recorded one album with them entitled “The Promise,” which was released in March 2017. We’re looking to record our next album on our own, and I’ve put in a good word for Tracktion to our bass player, John, so I hope we can work together in Tracktion very soon.

Thanks to the awesome team at Tracktion for making my music dreams a reality and offering me this amazing opportunity to be featured as a part of the Tracktion community.