About Me

I’m not sure how blog posts open because I’m new to this. Anyway, Hey, what’s up! I’m Jordan (A.KA. CJ or CJ Arc). This is my first blog post, and this blog will serve as a Journal for many things I’ve learned in my musical journey. A little bit about me, I’m a nerd, I love doing logic puzzles, playing chess (although I’m not very good yet), I love to learn, I love watching TV, Movies, and Anime, and I love working out and watching combat sports. Musically, I’m a musician, composer, arranger, producer, and musical director.

I’m all of those things, just in training. I am a pianist, bassist, and drummer, and I have been playing, learning, and performing music since I was 3 years old in church, watching my Uncle play the drums. I started playing at that age, and then at 5 when I started Kindergarten, my parents started my piano lessons through my school. I always joke that my parents did that because they were sick of hearing me play crazy loud on the drums. I took lessons all of my life up until a couple of years in college.

At 10 years old, I started playing bass guitar because I had a group of friends who were into music and decided to form a rock band together, and they needed a bass player, so I told them I would learn. So, I did. And because we were 10 and knew nothing about starting a band and playing music together, the rock band never happened, but I learned how to play bass and took lessons for several years.

I got into Middle school, joined the worship band at my Christian school, and did that through high school. I’ve played in multiple churches with multiple styles, mostly playing bass guitar and drums in those settings. My piano performance was more classical in my beginner and intermediate stages, and when I made it into college, I slowly began to change to jazz and gospel styles of music, because that’s what I grew up listening to, and have played a lot of bass with.

At 17, I found out about composing, arranging, and producing music, and I started making the beginnings of my CJ Arc musical identity. I fell in love with it, and ever since then, I’ve been working to incorporate every new style of music and piece of information into my creations.

I began my undergrad in 2017 at Auburn University, and I struggled with the transition a bit because I ended up doing both, I took classical lessons but also joined jazz ensembles. I hit a lot of snags and did a lot of asking my piano professor, Dr. Jeremy Samolesky, to perform some jazz pieces and projects, and while he let me it was a bit of a struggle to learn all of the required pieces and topics and historically, while being pulled in so many directions. Eventually, I finished my piano requirements and began learning to arrange and compose my music by joining the Composition studio. Eventually, I got to culminate all of this learning, completing a large form recital made up of live arrangements of my favorite pop songs and my original music called 50/50.

After I graduated, I worked to build my career for a few years through teaching and producing music, until last year I decided I would go back to school and get my Master’s Degree in Jazz Studies from Georgia State University, where I’m currently studying with Kevin Bales. I plan to use this study to continue to build my lifelong love of learning and discovery, and add all of the new knowledge.

This is a big overview of who I am musically and some of my journey as a musician. I can give more details about other stories and things I have specifically learned so far, and I look forward to discovering and learning more.