Playing the guitar articulates emotional expression, individuality, creativity and aesthetics. Writing songs echo ideas and give the writer a means to explore and push the limits of their own creative potential. When I first started playing the guitar, not unlike a lot of kids who were just learning to play, I had hopeful ambitions about becoming a famous rock star on MTV. There were times I'd think what it would be like if I were the guitarist for Motley Crue instead of Mick Mars. Fantasies about rude, crude and nude Motley Crue road parties aside, by the time I was twenty-one, playing the guitar became more of an extension of who I was, and I began pulling away from any hope of fame. For me, the guitar became a way that I could reinvent myself. Thats about the same time that I began taking up a versatile approach to both playing style and songwriting.  

A great way to write a song means finding inspiration. For me, that usually comes from feelings of nostalgia, introspect or even regret. From these feelings and thoughts, I'll hear a melody that translates into a chord progression. In that sequence of chords, you want a construct of tight, but delicate release to provide structure and resolve to the story you're trying to tell. If a song comes from your heart, each note will be fretted with perfect pitch by a clean heart felt picking hand.

When you play a sonit's done with steady pulse of heart, a smooth and clean strumming hand and versatile fingers that weave the tones of melody and chords into an arrangement that expresses the story you're tellinunspoken desire, passion, retrospect and unfulfilled dreams. 

For me, the reward is in the moment when you know you've played an incredible solo or when you know the song is perfect and you see the guitar as more than just an instrument. It becomes a rite of passage. A bridge to a place your fingers and heart carry the weight of all your experience and history. It's truly amazing when you realize your own promise of creativity and greatness. And when you listen to the last playback with the final note fading into silence, the soul is left humbled but charged, forever enigmatic from the perfect elocution you've created.