For one year I went to a private high school with a private beach near Monterey Bay in California.

There I became friends with a guy named Jacob Gemmell, one of the best, down to earth, and most creative people you’ll ever meet. The guy will inspire you, I am proud to call him a friend to this day – even though we live on opposite sides of the country.

He introduced me to all sorts of audio recording and it was majorly this guy’s influence that got me into audio & recording. He set me up with FrootyLoops and Cakewalk in early 2003, and got me started laying tracks; he also helped me through all the kinks.

Snap forward to 2014, my wife was in Japan for a year, me in need of a hobby.

Say Hello to Podcasting!

As a sort of overzealous hobby, I started a podcast and blog called BlaqkBox with a friend, Ryan Earnst of ZipTrigger as a consultant.

Ryan is a digital marketing guru I met a few years back. He gave me tons of ideas, instructions on gaining exposure, and clear objectives for creating and marketing BlaqkBox.

I am thoroughly convinced that had I followed his advice more explicitly and had not burnt out,

BlaqkBox could have become a powerhouse of a site.

I was reintroduced to podcasts through a few creators on youTube, Mully and his Mully’s Place Podcast and Kevin on the Just Japan podcast. You may enjoy a listen if you are a Japanophile.

I am quite proud of what was accomplished on BlaqkBox regardless, and I invite you to pay BlaqkBox a visit, take a listen to the podcast, and let me know what you think.

The original concept was to cover subcultures in the Los Angeles area, but after the 8-bit/chiptunes segments, I totally dropped the ball. I haven’t given up on it, but it is on an indefinite hiatus. I severely underestimated the amount of work I would be compelled to put into it. As someone with ADD, I am not able to work on something that I have such a passion and vision for unless I know I can put at least an 150% effort into it.

After working on BlaqkBox, I have a better understanding of how essential high quality audio is and feel that it should always play a major role in any media production.

I plan to use a platform called Spoken to create audio accompaniments for articles and perhaps as standalone pieces as well. If you haven’t heard of it, check out Spoken here.