I grew up in a musical household in Staten Island, NY. My step-father was the music director of our church and in a Beatles cover band called 'The Blue Meanies.' He would hold band practices in our basement, and I would go down there to play the drums. My mom sings and plays the piano, and my sister started singing around the time she could speak. Perhaps because I was surrounded by music all the time, and was always a somewhat inward kid, I chose a different space to retreat to, which proved to be computers and visual art.
As a kid, the experience of making anything was very exciting. I gravitated most towards the forms of creativity that were accessible to me: drawing and computers. I loved to draw elaborate sports scenes of ice hockey and football players, mid-action, jumping, diving, and scoring.
I started messing around with computers pretty early on. My mom was a graphic designer and we had a Macintosh at home. And whenever we'd go visit anyone's house, I'd duck out to check out their computer. I spent a lot of time playing games, but I also distinctly remember hours spent drawing in Kid Pix, and making fake neighborhood newsletters in Quark Xpress. I would devise fictional companies, just so I had an excuse to draw logos and flesh out Microsoft Word templates of certificates, timesheets and invoices for the 'Vreeland Business Branch' and other made up entities.
While drawing and tinkering stoked my creativity, games piqued my curiosity and sense of possibility. what I remember most about video games in my childhood is that I was a console tourist. My parents split when I was very young, and so I would visit my Dad. At home I had a Sega Genesis, and at my Dad's house, a Super Nintendo. My grandmother held onto the NES, and she and my aunt also had PCs. And so for quite a while whenever we'd go to different family member's homes, I'd be playing games on different platforms.
Despite showing early preferences for sports, computers and art, I did still find ways to express myself musically. When I was little, I used to love using my hands as percussion, slapping tables at school, driving my classmates crazy. I'd find the perfect kick and snare sounds on my stomach, while clacking out rhythms on my teeth. Occasionally, my sister and I would make up songs together. We had a fake band called 'The Milk Duds' and there was just a single, long lost cassette tape recording. On an early birthday I received a Casio SA-26 keyboard, which I would fondly use to blast out rhythms. Despite my behavior it hadn't really occurred to me to delve too deep into music.
The music of my early youth was varied but influenced by a religious upbringing. I really liked the Christian band dcTalk, the music from the Peanuts (Vince Guaraldi), as well as the Beatles, grunge, rap, and a little later on Nü Metal. My mom's love for Joni Mitchell also rubbed off on me.
As a teenager, I went through a pretty serious wrestling phase and stumbled into a new hobby, fantasy wrestling (or eWrestling). I had dabbled in fantasy basketball and football, but eWrestling isn't like other fantasy sports. It's not about statistics or roster management, but about writing. It gave me an impetus to get into creative writing. It's essentially a form fan-fiction, where you create a wrestler. Being interested in graphic design, I ended up making graphics for a lot of people. They would seek me out to make artwork for their wrestlers or logos for events. I also did a lot of websites at this time. eWrestling was where I got my first real taste of what it's like to be a freelancer. The money was minimal, usually 20 - 50 dollars per job, but it was a start.
I started playing guitar and writing music around the age of 17 or 18. I flirted with the instrument growing up but didn't take it up officially until high school, and started writing music shortly thereafter. As a budding guitar player, I was big into bands like Tool, Led Zeppelin, and Rage Against the Machine. I took ownership of my grandfather's 1960's Fender Vibrolux Reverb. I loved playing pentatonic, odd-metered power chord riffs and I found the sound of a distorted guitar mesmerizing. It was a great sounding amplifier, and regretfully I decided to sell it years later during an inactive period in my playing. I spent a few years making guitar recordings before getting more into computer music. Those experiences were the foundation of my pre-academic music education.
After high school, I attended but eventually dropped out of a design program in order to go to music college, and started working on games through a blend of internships, and a bit of luck with having some carryover familiarity from my chipmusic work as Disasterpeace. When I started writing music for games, I was just using my regular name, but at some point decided it made sense to consolidate my two names for simplicity’s sake.
I stumbled into my first soundtrack gig by responding to a wanted ad on a message board, but I never thought that scoring was a possibility until I found myself doing it.
Dropped out of a design program to go to music college, and started working on games through a blend of internships, and a bit of luck with having some carryover familiarity from my chipmusic work as Disasterpeace.