Guestbook

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<td width="435" align="left" valign="top" style="word-wrap: break-word; font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif, helvetica; font-size: 8pt; color: #000000; font-weight: normal;" bgcolor="ffffff">I've been playing music for as long as I could remember. Started just banging around on keyboards that my parents gave to me as a young kid. It wasn't until the 4th grade where I received "music training". Was taught in school the basics of music theory and continued to learn playing the clarinet and saxophone all the way through high school. It wasn't until 1994 where at a school "SING" competition I was introduced to playing electric guitar. As a young kid, I always messed around with my father's acoustic, but it was till 1994 where my parents gave me my first electric guitar. Self taught, I started playing classic rock/blues type material. In my late junior.senior year of high school, I was exposed to heavier music such as Ozzy/Black Sabbath/Pantera/Nirvana/Metallica etc. As much as I loved the heavier darker sounds, I was still very much influenced by Hendrix and Clapton's style of playing....Looking to bridge together these sounds I started to focus on the guitarist themselves. That's where I really started to appreciate the playing of the real front-men in these bands. Whether it be Randy Rhoads, Jimi, Jake E Lee and so on, I tried to now dissect the guitarist and emulate them. Over time, I started to get bored with commercial music and the run of the mill radio music. That's where college came in. Meeting up with some new friends in college opened up some different musical paths. Progressive rock was music I always heard (whether it be on my fathers vinyl records or just by chance) but didn't really know how to classify it. Older bands like ELP, GENESIS, GENTLE GIANT, YES just to name a few had made a tremendous impact on how I looked at music and eventually how to play it. Modern progressive bands like Porcupine Tree, TOOL, DREAM THEATER, SYMPHONY X, PALLAS, TRANSATLANTIC and others was the real musical direction I wanted to go and continue to explore. These artist are essentially the best of the best, and trying to learn from them is a great challenge and never ending. As far as Apothecary is concerned...It's essentially a home studio project for fun and creativity. The only thing I hope to come out of this is personal satisfaction and creativity, and to share and converse with other musicians.<br /><br /></td>
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