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I am here for Friends and Networking

About Me

I'm an LA/OC guy who through a strange turn of events ended up living in Helsinki Finland. I've been playing guitar professionally since I was 17 do the math If you want to but it's getting pretty scary! I've taken a lot of chances and done a lot of crazy things along the way, and the only regret I have is that I didn't try profesional bicycle racing. Oh well. I did manage to run a lot. 1 marathone and lots of 5 and 10k's. When I was 15, running my first cross country race on a misserable, cold, rainy day my coach said to us runners; "today is a day that will change your life. You'll always be a runner after this." He was right. I still run for fun now. No more racing, although I do toy with the idea....Anyway, on the professional side I played with lots of music legends as a young guitar player, like Little Richard, Don and Dewey (sighted by Zappa in his autobiography as one of his two major influences), The Champs (won the 1st R&B Grammy for Tequila), the Platters, the Drifters...and a whole bunch of other "oldie but goody" types. I was also the house guitarist for the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena for a while (great job, sight reading Broadway musicals!!!!). At one point I took a few lessons from the famous voice coach Ron Anderson www.ultimatevoicecoach.com/ron-anderson.htm, since a singing guitarist is much more marketable than one who doesn't. Later, I met another great voice coach, Bob Rose http://bobrosevocal.com/. I took from Bob for two years, trading guitar work for voice lessons. I really learned a lot about singing from these two, especially from Bob. During this time I was doing a lot of touring and playing out. I did the whole OC beach club thing with various bands, and also did a couple of US tours. Fun stuff. Then one day my phone rang. A promoter asked my; "would you like to go to Finland?" I had never been there, so why not? It changed my life. I met a Finish girl, and we started the whole long distance thing. As time went by I ended up hooking up with musicians there and when a chance to tour for the summer came I took it. Once I was here, I just couldn't leave. I was asked by a friend if I could write lyrics. I hadn't really done that, but why not? So I wrote a lyric for a Universal band, named Tik Tak here in Finland and Tik n' Tak everywhere else. Universal took the lyric and offered me a publishing deal. !!!!!! A few weeks later they asked me if I could teach the lead singer to sing without an accent. I had never taught voice, but why not? I knew the singing technique Bob had taught me was good, and I found out just how great the singing technique I use is. The girl learned. Her producer freaked and then I was teaching the whole band. This turned into lots of other students. Meanwhile, I was writing a lot. The whole LA workaholic vibe came in really handy then, cause I was WAY busy. I changed publishers to EMI, and wrote a song that went into the Eurovision contest representing Finland. It was a big deal. Since then I've continued along the same path, writing, teaching, playing. Changed publishers (again) to a Finnish publisher who's affiliated with BMG. It's really great.Look me up at www.tracylipp.comHere's a record I worked on recently. It's on the American I-tunes site. Check it out and let me know what you think of it in my comments.TracyBUY ALBUM NOW

My Blog

My trip to Moscow.

Sorry, the pictures didn't upload and I'm too tired to deal with it. If anyone wants to see them send me an e-mail and I'll mail them back to you!TracySo this is Russia? I'm in Moscow! Hard to b...
Posted by on Thu, 28 Dec 2006 13:52:00 GMT

This week in the studio....

Hump day!!!!! Monday and Tuesday were busy. We had a Russian band here called Utopia. There sort of punk, singing in English. I was worried about their pronunciation, but I think we ended up getti...
Posted by on Wed, 15 Nov 2006 07:25:00 GMT

My friend shouldn't have to be a pirate

I'm a songwriter. Currently I'm signed with BMG music publishing, but I've also had deals with EMI and Universal. I guess you could call me successful. I'm the envy of many of my friends, doctors, l...
Posted by on Thu, 18 May 2006 11:32:00 GMT

just another day

Here it is, another Monday. This week.... The Russian's are coming. Running. Some guitar playing. maybe a song lyric or two.Sasha will be here again, hopefully to finnish his record. He's a nice...
Posted by on Mon, 15 May 2006 04:28:00 GMT