My background has been various flavors of metal. I got started in the metal scene in the 90's in the Allentown, PA area. At that time, I laid the foundation for my future endeavors, associating with other musicians of varied talents from death metal, NY hardcore, and punk influences. Once I left the north east, I lived in Alaska where I received influence in the folk and blues styles. From there, I proceeded to California where I used my metal background in the bands Malachai and Mordgeld. I also did a project with the other guitarist from Malachai.

Before Lucia, I was in an indie project that was a blend of not so mainstream styles, kind of a departure for me. I had been brought in to add some more edge to the music. In my personal studies, I had made great progress with modal guitar theory. The light turned on, as it were. I wanted to do some stuff in natural, melodic, and harmonic minor as well as leveraging the 7 tone scale on a 7 string guitar. I don't think I was able to fully connect with the author of the indie project and we parted ways.

So there I was, at a loss for what my second project should be. I considered joining a metal band that was ready to go. But I wanted to be an all-around musician, not just a metal guitarist. I heard Veronica sing before, so I floated the idea of collaborating on a song to see what would happen. I was tired of jamming with people who didn't have their shit together in one way or another. But here was a singer with real talent. So I put together some test snippets of original songs. It didn't work. Swing and a miss each time. No fault to it, just no understanding of how to bridge a vast gap between our styles. We had about given up when I heard a song on the radio that struck me as something Veronica could just kill. It was the Lacuna Coil song "Heaven's a Lie." I put together the backing music (learned how to properly license a streaming cover) and waited for Veronica to drop me a track of vocals. When she did, I was blown away. That's when I knew our collaboration had a chance of success.

Then it dawned on me what I needed to do to accommodate Veronica's singing style. So I buckled down and eventually produced the music for Inner Voice. My vision (every song has a vision or mission) was to take the Spanish flavored Phrygian mode and make it more exotic as harmonic minor. I wanted to create a song that touched the heart of Spanish speakers. But it needed to be dynamic to convey the right level of passion. After I combined it with a half-time salsa beat, I seemed to have the magic captured. I had lyrics for the song but Veronica insisted that she author the lyrics. A singer writing lyrical melody sounds great. What could go wrong?

The track she created was a real surprise. At first, I didn't know what to make of it. She had played off the salsa beat by actually using salsa syncopation for the lyrical melody. I was not very familiar with that vocal style. I eventually came up with a word to describe the result. Genius! But something had gone wrong in the chorus. The sharp 7th in the E harmonic minor was clashing with vocals. Veronica had actually followed the overlaid melody track but used natural minor. She was unhappy that it didn't work and wanted to redo the vocals there. I said, "Whoa, full stop. Give me some time to play with the guitar line. I do like what you did and natural minor is not technically out of key." It was just a little glitch. I reworked the rhythm to be a little jumpier and changed the melody guitar to more of a sweep that skipped the sharp 7th and went over root straight to 3rd in the next octave. Bingo! Veronica now had a solid base to work with and re-record the final vocal track for the song.

We had a great recording but it just didn't sound mastered. I test-drove some mastering software and we had to have it. Inner Voice was our first mastered original song. It did not spring full blown from our imaginations. It had to be painstakingly grown until it reached maturity and we could see if it was beautiful. We knew then what we wanted to do and anything was possible.