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Hi everyone, Thanks for checking out my music page. I'm 38 years old, I live in a small town in California near the tip of the Monterey Peninsula. I was born and raised in the area until I was ten years old, then moved to Germany in 1981 where I would live for the next five years. Aside from the initial "culture shock" of being a "stranger in a strange land" and feeling as though I had no friends, I was now on a mission to find something to do. My brother Kelly (a brilliant songwriter) and I had taken a real interest in music, specifically Hard Rock and Heavy Metal as it was huge in Europe at the time. Shortly after I turned 11 Kelly took me to my first rock concert where Billy Squire would open for Whitesnake. That night changed my life. After watching Ian Paice play, I knew I wanted to be a drummer. So, that is what I did, only without the drums at first. In the basement of our house I set up a bunch of buckets to practice on. I had propped them up as to resemble a real drumset and even tuned them by various methods of creative manipulation. Daily after school beatings went on religiously for almost a year. Then one foggy Christmas Eve my parents gave to me a toy drumset called a "Sterling Beat." I was thrilled and immediately set it up for daily beatings. Unfortunately ol' "Sterling" was "Beat" to death in just a few months. However, turning 13 was a milestone. My parents blessed me with a real drumset, lessons with a pro, and themselves with some earplugs and the more serious life as a drummer began. I studied with Andy Ahlman twice a week for a little more than a year and had taken music classes in school, but for the most part I am self taught. Oh yeah! There was this one time at band camp, actually four times that I attended Monterey Jazz & Classical Camps with a full scholarship from the American Federation of Musicians. So that's basically how I got started playing the drums. As for piano and music composition, I have no formal training. I just play by ear and listen closely. Having played the drums for nearly 25yrs, I've played a lot of music with many bands, in a variety of styles and situations, yet all with one commonality in that, the music had been written by someone else in the band (usually the guitar player). Meanwhile, a lot of music that I'd hear in my head, never materialized. Frustrated to the point of being depressed, I quit nearly all of my working gigs as a drummer, invested in some basic home recording gear, and immediatley started writing. This has been such a great outlet for me on a personal level. I'm not trying to write hit songs or make a gold record here, I'm just doing what I do, the best that I can. Those of you who like it, that's great, leave a comment. For those of you who hate it, that's O.K. That's what makes the world rotate. But to ALL of you...Thanks for stoppin' by :D Nix..
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