The talented songwriter/producer/multi-instrumentalist sings and performs on Guitar, Bass, Piano/Keyboards and Drums.

Pete draws influence from a wide variety of music: The Beatles, Chemical Brothers, Garbage, Nelly, SRV, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Sting/The Police, Marvin Gaye, Stax Mowtown, Steely Dan, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, John Williams, Johan Sebastian Bach, Mussorgsky, Mendellson, Holst, Metallica, Slayer, Jeff Buckley, The Doors, Jamiroquai, Rob Zombie, Sublime, Joe Satriani, Marty Freidman, Al Dimeola, Fatboy Slim, Beastie Boys, Dr Dre.

Pete was a featured local artist on 103.7 “The Mountain" while in Seattle.  He was a semifinalist in the Shure National Songwriting Contest and a featured artist in a VH1-sponsored promotion, to name a few credits to his name.

Pete's goal is to make a great living doing what he loves: continuingly challenge himself to explore his heart, the hearts of others, and express this through his music, and in the process sell tons of records and go on world tours.

What does he want people to feel or enjoy about his music? In his words, “Music has made such a tremendous impact on my life. Its powers of healing, awakening, and emotional evocation are true magic. It has allowed me to express so many things about what I feel about our world, our society, my heart, and the emotional needs we all share. I would say... feel whatever you want about it, but feel it for real."

“My mom’s side of the family is very musical and I have been surrounded by it since birth. I’ve got some rather embarrassing tapes of me singing songs when I was 2 years old, so I’ve been singing all my life. My grandparents had a piano in their house and I would spend a lot of time playing around on it. I picked up a guitar when I was in junior high and I haven’t put it down since.

“I took a couple of years of private instruction with Greg Wright at the Academy of Music. We studied various styles with an emphasis on Metal and, specifically, Metallica, because I totally worshipped them. He was a great teacher and showed me some very clever ways to demystify the fretboard. I would literally play all day and all night.

“I had already begun to write my own material after about six months of playing, and I formed a band with some friends in school. We were called ‘Devil’s Advocate’, and anyone who heard us would probably say, ‘They sound kinda like Metallica.  Ha!!  We basically sucked, but that didn’t matter. We were still cool cause we had a band. :)

“I got heavy into guitar slingers.. Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Kirk Hammett became my new professors. The faster, the better! I was on a quest to crush ’em all one day. I also studied players with more exotic phrasing such as Marty Freidman, Al Dimeola, and yes, there was a time when I thought Yngwie Malmsteen was the man. All the while I would continue to write songs. I wrote a lot of instrumental music. 
I recorded four full-length records in my house

“I began writing songs with lyrics and hooky singable melodies over unique jazzy changes. I was getting more and more into jazz!. I was falling in love with harmony and the way melodies could weave in and out of a rich musical palette.  My metal power-chording days were coming to an end.  I was also getting totally hooked on anything with syncopation: Funk, Hip Hop, Trip Hop.

“I began to conceptualize a sound that had the melodic sensibilities of Pop, the rich background of Soul, the energy of Rock and the elastic groove of Funk and Hip Hop.

“I also took years of professional voice lessons and this greatly enhanced my impact as an artist and as a performer. Singing was so deep for me it was like therapy.

“I performed my music all over the Northwest as anything from a solo act to an eight piece band.

TheAv.com
Pete Hopkins is a talented singer-songwriter, recently arrived in LA from Seattle.
His EP disk features Pete on vocals and performing a variety of instruments, all tracked into cuts that sound like a cohesive band. Stylistically, there’s some Stevie Wonder and Carlos Santana in there, with a trace of the Seattle grunge. It’s pop, but there’s fine originality, not the sound-alike clone stuff that clutters the radio. Pete is at home in acoustic and electric genres, so he should quickly find fans and supporters in Southern California.
-Larry Wines, The AV.com, Los Angeles