A very infromal autobiography.....
Even though I have been writing music since I was about 9? 10? It truly began when I got my first guitar of the electric variety. My first guitar was an Ibanez Gio, which is a freaking amazing guitar btw. One of the absolute best you can get for the money. I stand by that. After my Gio, I went on to own a Epiphone sg (That was my ACDC phase), and an Ibanez RG. The 200 dollar Gio was still the best one. The Gio didnt get passed up until the Fender Stratocaster purchase. Either way, the guitar really helped structure my songwriting, as I actually had consistent melodies and chord progressions I could remember and reproduce.
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I was largely self taught on the guitar. After a few months, I finally convinced my folks to cough up some dough for the lessons. The lessons though were largely unsatisfying to me. Even though I did get a better understanding of the guitar through learning the scales, it was changing the way I viewed the instrument for the worse. I had a unique way I viewed the instrument, and the way it should be played, and as my lessons continued, that vision stared to become someone else's. To anyone reading this, I whole heartedly believe that if you want to learn guitar, that you should teach yourself. The guitar is so specific, it can be totally unique to the player, and that characteristic is invaluable. Play your favorite songs with the tabs, and learn the notes of the frets, chords, as well as learn the scales. After that, its all practice and application. There are so many resources available today on the internet and YouTube for you. Its not that hard, and brilliantly fun, and it can be done! So do it. You can be very good at the instrument after only a couple months of some daily practice. Lets get back on track.
I continued writing songs for the next several years. Mostly hard rock songs. My father had an amazing taste in music, and it has permanently influenced the music I love and the music I write to this day. Around the time I was 15, I was searching through some storage in the pantry, and came across a brown leather suitcase. Curious as to what could be inside, I opened up that bad boy like john Travolta opened the suite case in Pulp Fiction. You wouldn't believe what was inside of it. Inside was nothing but cassette tapes belonging to only three bands. Those three bands were.... Kiss, The Ramones, and The Doors. Specifically in that order. Not just cassettes though. It was literally every album that each band had ever released up until that point. Psycho Circus by Kiss, for an example, was not in the collection. Into the Void, isn't a bad song either, btw. |
Either way, while other kids were listening to Fallout boy and Green Day, I was listening to Judas Priest, Metallica, Krokus, and Alice Cooper with my dad. Come high school, I started joining my first bands. Naturally there was conflict, as all of my band mates wanted to play modern pop punk rock tracks, I was stuck in the 80s. Bands didn't last long for me, and gave up on it, and went to college.
In college, I fell in love with my new favorite genre, Grunge. Still my favorite rock genre to this day. I whole heartedly believe that grunge music is the perfection of rock. Not the best. Not the most popular. Not the most important, but the perfection of it. I Believe the manifest destiny of rock music was always grunge and 90s alternative as it is the most evolved rock music. |
My first grunge album wasn't even really a grunge album, and that was Pearl jam's self titled album of 2006. Incredible album. Highly recommend it to anyone searching for an amazing rock album. That lead me to Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Alice in Chains, STP, Gruntruck, Swervedriver, Nirvana, School of Fish, Rage Against the Machine, Third Eye Blind, and The Smashing Pumpkins. I realize many of those are not technically grunge. Correction: 90s rock minus Third Eye Blind. Got it.
During college, I dropped writing music entirely. I was just a listener. In college, I focused on my education which was media production, btw, at the University of North Texas. Go mean green. I wouldn't start writing again until I graduated. |
Pretty soon after graduating and getting a full time job as a photographer in Dallas, I became bored. My dissatisfaction grew every day. Nights became longer and more restless, and music became better, more inspiring, and a dream. Over the course of about a year, my passion for music returned on a fiery horse brilliantly in the night like a Santa's sleigh on fire. I was listening again. I was buying again. I was dancing again. And then miraculously, I started writing again. My day job was killing me, and my creativity was dying to burst out of me like the aliens heads in Mars Attacks! After a couple songs, I went into the recording studio, put them in a tangible and digital format and started playing open mics in Denton, TX.
Playing shows was amazing. It was my first time ever playing live, and the rush from it is unparalleled. Its the ultimate form of expression, and there for vulnerable. There is a lot you can learn about people by the music they wright and the music they listen to. I made a ton of friends and became a known name amongst my performing musician friends and peers, and was even added to the Denton website. Those nights at Killers Tacos and LSA Burger are some of the best memories I have. After almost 2 years of doing that, finally, I was booked at the Denton Arts and Jazz festival, on a Friday, on the center stage (there were 5 stages in total) at 8:pm, which was also my birthday. Denton Arts and Jazz festival is massive. Its a 3 day long festival and there are tens of thousands of people that pass through during its duration. I was possibly the best time and spot you could get, and I was hoping it would be the break I needed for exposure. It broke alright. Enter the coronavirus of 2020, the Denton Arts and Jazz festival was cancelled, and with it went my great opportunity. |
The coronavirus hit in full force, and I was quarantined inside with my best friends in a beautiful little house in Carrollton Texas. With the coronavirus, live shows, open mics, and anything related to it, Died. It affected me pretty hard. I had spent the last two years doing this, and it was really tough writing it out of my life. My hours at work went way down. Money went way down, and I became irritable. I had all this time that I never had before and couldn't do what I wanted to do with it. Didn't have the money to record either.
The void the coronavirus pandemic had left in me put me in a dangerous state. A state that created a demand for something unknow to fill the void. Oh and did I fill the void. I got really bored one day and went to Best Buy to purchase a virtual reality headset for gaming. It was the most impulsive thing I have ever done. I didn't even plan on doing that before I went to work that day. Not to be anticlimactic, but the headset made me sick and I wanted to return it. But something kept pulling me back into the world of virtually reality. |
That Friday, before I would leave to return the headset, I decided to put it on one last time. I joined in one of the free social application on VR, vrchat, and began hopping around worlds. I stumbled upon a world called "Open Mic Night." My interest was on full alert as I loaded into the world. Soon enough I found myself in a room. Before me was a hallway with what appeared to be a stage at the other end of it. I could see someone on the stage and I could see someone standing in the hallway. I didn't walk. It was like someone grabbed me and was slowly pulling me inside like Wayne Campbell floating towards Cassandra in Wayne's World. The person in the hallway appeared to be a young women who told me to keep my volume low as I entered the auditorium as to not distract the performers. I enter the room, my eyes wide as could be, and I see a stage, with someone on it singing to a track.
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Maybe 20 or 30 people watching. Once the performer finished their song, a man went onto the stage and inspired another round of applause before someone else took the stage. I ... was blown.... away. Here I could perform again. Without the fear of getting or transmitting the virus. Here I could perform as often as I wanted. Here I found a new audience and a new community with a demand for artists inside of it. "This is why I bought the headset" I thought. "It was meant to be" I thought. One problem. I didn't have the money to record. I would solve that problem the DIY style.
I never ever wanted to learn how to produce music before. Too big of a time investment, and I wanted to spend my time writing and performing, not recording. I had heard that music production takes years to get good at. I was 29. I didnt have years. But, I knew I had to do it. If I wanted to continue to make music during the pandemic, I knew I had to make a change as I didn't know how long my finances would be in the toilet due to the damage the economy took. I told myself I would get good at music production in one year. So, I spent 200 bucks of my stimulus money on FL studios producer edition and another 200 on the focusrite audio interface bundle and no lifed audio production. No lifed? Yea, let me tell you what that is. No lifeing is coming home every day from work and spending at least 6 hours a day on week days, and spending 14 hours a day during the weekends for about 4 months straight watching youtube tutorials on music production as well as posting questions in the music production sub reddit. Thanks for all the help, guys. I was so wrong about music production. It was a blast. It was amazingly fun. I had the time of my life learning it. Its also so much more creative than I thought it would be. Its insanely powerful, music production is. Combining a creative individual with an outlet like music production. My god, the possibilities are endless. |
I still have a lot to learn in terms of music production skills. I have only been doing it 7 months now at the time of writing this, but I am incredibly proud of what I have accomplished with it this far. As a result of learning music production, my sound changed. Now I can make any music and any genre whenever I want. My sound is less singer songwritery, and more modern and futuristic. I'm combining pop, synthwave, and grunge to make the music I am making now. To reflect the new musician that I am, I changed my artist name to ChanceTurbo. ChanceTurbo in the album art sports the virtual reality headset. It signifies the community that I found during a dark period in my life and a community that I belong to now. The headset represents my belief in the future of virtual entertainment. The headset is a permanent scar from something that once made me weak and forced me to make a change, to deconstruct and reconstruct myself. The headset represents, change, weakness, and strength. And that change, weakness and strength is ChanceTurbo.