Shotty On The Beat

MY STORY: 
With humility - thank you for taking the time to learn about my story.  Usually, people's bio's are told from a 3rd person POV, but I pride myself on being REAL & personable. ​ 
My story...where do I start?  I truly tell you that it's been a very long, & difficult road, filled with lots of heartbreak, loss & teachable moments.  And its a more difficult task to summarize into a few paragraphs.  My talents are multi-faceted.  I'm a Musician first, but I'm also a Music Producer, a Post Production Engineer and a Professional Saxophonist.   ​

EXPERIENCE
- MUSICIAN: 34 years
- MUSIC PRODUCTION: 26 years
- MIXING: 20 years
- MASTERING: 6 years
- EDUCATION: Berklee College of Music | Graduated: Dec. 2022 | Professionally Certified in Advanced Music Production
- LIVE: Keys/Sax/Background Vocals for Cota the Barber (Trejo's Music) and Johnny David (Industry Music Group)
- COFOUNDER: Unfadeable/UX8 Music (CFO, Producer, Engineer)
- PRODUCTION/SESSION MUSICIAN CREDITS: Basketball Wives, Love & Hip-Hop, Love & Hip-Hop Atlanta, Braxton Family Values, Ru-Paul's Drag Race, MTV True Life, Unfadeable E.R.G., Unfadeable, Young Invent, Johnny David, Cota the Barber, Miriah Avila, Pepe Marquez.  

MUSICIAN
Being the grandson of a respected musician/multi-instrumentalist from where I grew up, it was natural for my parents to see if the gene was passed down to me.  I was in the 5th grade when my school offered the music program, my parents learned that kids who had a music background went on to succeed in college & earn professional jobs.  Indeed the gene was passed down to me & I advanced much quicker the rest of the students.  A couple of years later in junior high, I found myself playing semi-professionally as a sax player.  I learned at that time that music was going to be my identity and destiny in some way or fashion.  By the time high school came around, I found myself learning several more instruments, including Piano, Bass, Drums, and a few others.  Throughout junior & high school, I earned many Top Honors Soloist awards in school jazz competitions. 

My opportunity to go on to college after high school was put on hold due to having to help support my family financially after my parents divorce, & a myriad of other difficult circumstances.  Instead, I was finding real-life opportunities in my young-adult years playing sax & keys professionally, session gigs, and wherever I can find ways to lend my talents.  In 2012, I found myself coming back to Christ and eventually becoming a Worship Leader in my church, singing & playing keys.  2015, I joined a band called The Sunshine Experience (now called Weekend Dance Explosion) & became the horn section leader & Tenor Sax player.  In 2019, my pastor's son presented me an opportunity to help him form a band for his cousin who was a recording artist for a small, emerging recording label.  It just so happened to be for Souldies artist, Cota the Barber.  My pastor's son, who was also getting notoriety as a Souldies recording artist, signed a recording contract in 2021 with Industry Music Group under Johnny David.  

MUSIC PRODUCER & ENGINEER
Having a 9-piece band in my junior year of high school birthed the foundation of my music production journey.  Being that I was the only person in my school who was musically capable of crafting beats, my 2 best friends (who were in my band) encouraged me to create compositions they can sing or rap to.  I was gifted a consumer-grade Yamaha keyboard for my birthday that had a sequencer.  With a little bit of curiosity & ingenuity, my boy E.R.G. and I figured out to record to cassette tape with a normal tape deck.  E.R.G, myself along with our boy Lino started making our own mixtapes with original beats from my keyboard.  Being young, naive & full of ambition - we formed the blueprint for our own independent record label: Unfadeable Music.

My equipment & skillset improved the next couple of years.  We discovered our core set of friends all happened to possess a talent to lend to our cause.  Being in the workforce after high school posed a lot of issues for me to be available for my friends in creating music.  I went on to teach E.R.G. and our friend Geldez on how to produce music - even though I wasn't formally trained either.  In those days, Youtube and MySpace didn't exist, so all of our education came from books & trial-n-error.  But we figured out our sound.  We put our money together to purchase recording equipment and eventually obtained our own recording studio/office space.

With lots of research & education, we learned to set ourselves up as a business & operate as a legitimate record company.  I wore many hats, due to my background as a gigging musician.  I started doing Artist Development, Audio Engineering, Vocal Production, and Mixing.  As we evolved, so did our label name.  We went from Unfadeable Music to UX8 Music, and designated the name Unfadeable to the entire roster as 1 artist.  By this time, we had a roster of 9 artists, and a production team of 3 producers.  

UX8/Unfadeable Music went on to have good little run of about 9 years.  In that time, we released a number of albums/mixtapes of different genres, collaborated with my local artists, performed many shows throughout the Ventura/LA county areas, earned a little bit of radio-play, and developed a buzz in our area.  As things were beginning to peak, so were everyone's lives.  Some were starting to have families, some going to school, buying homes, starting careers.  Life was taking over.   We decided to dismantle the group to focus on our own individual priorities.

I continued my production journey, maintaining clients, freelance work, and got into making background music for TV shows.  Several networks became clients - such as MTV, VH1, FX, Discovery Channel, just to name a few.  I was blessed to have my music featured on shows such as Basketball Wives, Love & Hip-Hop, The Braxtons, MTV True Life, RuPaul's Drag Race, plus several others.    In 2020 when the COVID pandemic happened, I took the time to go back to school to close some knowledge gaps & pick up additional skills.  I graduated Berklee College of Music in 2022 with a 3.9 GPA and became certified in Advanced Music Production.  Every aspect of my craft leveled-up from business prowess, audio-fidelity of music projects, efficiency, and applying new skills to projects that were stuck in limbo.  As a "Perfectionist", it used to be rare for me to share my production with the public until something was finished.  I've shared more music than I ever have and its gratifying to see the reactions from complete strangers on social media.  It has garnered more clients, interviews and a growing buzz.  The fire is burning and it will be bright.