GARY'S BIO
Our family moved to Montserrat (a tiny island in the Caribbean) from Manhattan Beach, California. I was 17yrs old. My brother and I were the only two surfers on Montserrat, and at the time we focused on doing just that.
Montserrat inspired both my brother and I discover our talents. Carrll was really getting into photography and writing, I began creating music on a tiny Casio keyboard with micro-button type keys. When I was 20 years old (in 1983), my parents brought home a piano, I was determined to learn it by myself. I played 2 hours a day making up music by ear.
Year by year my music improved, and in 1988 I recorded my first piano compositions at Air Studios. Air Studios Montserrat was a famous but secret recording studio where top artists went to record. I had the pleasure of meeting Sir George Martin. It was a great experience, I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to record there. The Bosendorfer piano was very beautiful…the room was super cool, wood toned with some great stone work. The grand piano was halfway placed into the stone wall, a type of sound-isolating recording technique. You will enjoy watching the documentary, Under The Volcano, produced by Cody Greenwood of Rush Films.
A few days after recording, Sir George Martin wrote me a very nice letter regarding my music which made a huge impact and inspired me very much.
After Hurricane Hugo hit Montserrat in 1989, we moved to Maui. In 1991 my parents bought me a Yamaha SY77 Synthesizer workstation. I discovered I can arrange music...I was totally blown away by its capabilities. I could record on 16 tracks using any sound I wished, and could save my music on the incredible floppy-disc, wow!
Missing Montserrat, we moved back in 1994, then on August of 1995 the first volcanic ash cloud flew over the town of Plymouth, followed by more activity daily. We decided to leave and returned to Maui. That was the last time our entire family would live on Montserrat. Unfortunately Montserrat's volcano exploded violently off and on from 1997 to 2010. In my attempt to help the island and the people, I recorded a benefit album in 1997 titled "Project: Montserrat". It did ok at Virgin Megastores, and locally in Hawaii, but nothing huge. After I was married, my wife Irina and I released a benefit CD titled Star of Wonder, which would benefit St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.
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My inspiration I suppose comes from many things...I wasn't the type of person that would throw a record on and listen, but I would hear music from my brother's massive vinyl collection of course. During the late 70's and early 80's Carrll played some great music which most likely inspired me in some ways. I payed attention to the music, hardly ever the lyrics.
Some of that music was/is: The Police (which to this day is my favorite band) Sting, The Cars, Supertramp, Kansas, Boston, The Eagles, Van Halen, Foreigner, Styx, Steely Dan, Journey, Heart, U2, Abba, and of course other cool stuff from early 70's, such as The Carpenters. Prior to that I listened to my dad's 8 tracks in the car...all the 60's stuff.
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How I record:
I don't use a computer, I use stand alone components. I never learned to read music so I just make it up. Mainly I just sit and mess around until I play something I like. For the most part I compose on a Korg Workstation keyboard which includes many sound banks and a 16 track recorder. The tracks with guitar, I spent many hours on recording those parts. I don't consider myself a guitarist, I play simple chords, and leads with a finger or three. It takes me a very long time to make it sound fluid. I use a Boss digital recorder with a Rode mic to record acoustic guitar over other tracks.
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Until I get my songs out to popular digital platforms, my music is only available here for downloads. There are 15 albums for now, some tracks are repeated in certain albums. My albums are a collection of work from the last 36 years, I thought it would be time to release them. Chronologically they are a mess, I didn't bother to release them in any particular order. The album covers took a while to design, I used my art and photography (with the exception of the album "Pirati", not my art).
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Of course being on Maui has been a great location for writing music, but I must thank Montserrat for the years spent there discovering my musical abilities. You'll notice some island based titles and album covers.
I hope you'll enjoy some of my tracks. I can't figure out what genre to call my music, but I'll be adding a lot of it here, so please check back from time to time. Feel free to email me with any questions, let me know what you think, I would appreciate that.
Thank you for visiting!
Cheers, Gary
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