Who? What? Where?

How? Why?

I originally posted this on my personal Substack (Jake's Substack) but I thought it was just as pertinent here as a permanent post. So, enjoy.

I imagine the majority of you would know some or all of these things. But just in case, I’ll give you a quick rundown of "What’s all this then?”

I’m Jake Skylyr. I am a musician of sorts. I started playing guitar when I was 5, bass guitar just after that (my Father was a bassist), we got a piano when I was 9, I started playing alto and tenor sax when I was 11, and then just continued from there. I discovered pretty early on that I had perfect pitch, which helped explain why it was easy for me to learn new instruments, and namely learn new music nearly instantaneously. I started playing shows in a cover band with my dad around 11-12 years old. While I never had any money for formal lessons, I learned how to learn early on, and I would sponge any and all knowledge I could obtain. I also became my own worst critic, but that’s another story for another time.

For the past 20 or so years, I’ve also been a private guitar/bass/general music instructor.

I initially got my start in Central NJ, but we moved to Tucson, AZ when I was 15. I was back in NJ for a short stint in 1996, and moved back permanently in 2004. As of the past 10 years or so, I have been a resident of the bay/North Jersey Shore.

I have done a decent share of work with Angel Vivaldi as his bass player over the past 15 years. I’ve played on 4(?) albums and have joined him on a few tours.

Over the past 25 years I have done a bunch of “behind the scenes” work as a solo artist, and also as part of my “band” Reinvision. Currently my focus has been on Reinvision, which is fundamentally a progressive metal project, but will ultimately include a bunch of other stuff that I’ll be working on. It started as a progressive metal band, but after a few years, I kinda got left with the torch. A lot of my music based stuff has kind of been sitting in the shadows collecting “Digital Dust” (thank you Rick Beato!), and I’ve more recently been taking strides to prevent that from continuing.

There are some things I have in the works to help make more of my music, public and available. This is not for financial gain, as I know enough to know that money shouldn’t be a prime motivator for art, not to mention, there’s not much money in the industry anyway, unless you want to be a merchandise salesman. I’m doing this strictly for myself, and if anyone wants to tag along, I’ll gladly accept the support. And if not, no harm no foul.

So I think that covers the who (me), what (music), where (NJ), how (weedily - deedily for many years), and why (ingrained from a young age). Maybe that sentence is more effective than all of these paragraphs leading up to it… But if you made it this far, you get the bonus of both! It’s like buying a vinyl LP and getting the downloads for free 😊