jeff is sacred blade'z founding member, forming the band in 1978 while still attending high school. seeing his early attraction for music, his parentz introduced him to his earliest musical instrument, the violin, which was far from his natural element (he hated it). he wrote his first song at age 6 while exercising another of his passionz, drawing picturez of the band he was to be in (at this stage he was to be the drummer). several years of piano followed, however this too was uninspirational to the young ulmer, who was more interested in other instrumentz, as evidenced by his fashioning drumz out of plastic ice cream pailz or his early guitar construction at age 8. his parentz bought him a toy 3 piece drum kit, but after playing drumz for a year, he took up the guitar.

jeff had been designing album coverz since 1978 for several of his early bandz, including the cover for his first album'z worth of material under the band'z original moniker battleaxe. drafts of the second album'z cover also were ceated at this time. by 1979 work was already underway on some of the compositionz which would eventually end up on sacred blade'z debut "of the sun and moon", as well as early demoz of the second album'z epic seven moonz of xercez.

the need to listen to the songz he was writing in a tangible form led to jeff'z early engineering and producing role with the band. interested in the practical application of his research in these areaz, jeff began recording rehearsalz and making home demoz by dubbing back and forth between two cassette deckz in his bedroom/rehearsal space in 1978. this eventually led to his first professional experience on the 24 track machine residing at ocean sound, using studio time earned helping to build the studio. here, jeff produced sacred blade'z first official demo in 1982.

knowing what he expected to hear, but without any real idea as to how to achieve that sound, led to further yearz of experimentation with his home made electronic devicez (in questionable working order) and any piece of recording equipment he could get his handz on (in the tradition of sacred blade'z "do-it-yourself" policy, jeff would attempt to build needed piecez of gear himself, since he couldn't afford to buy them). his interest in electronicz led him to construct several piecez of equipment during high school including 7 guitarz, a 16 channel mixing console, several effect pedalz and piecez of rack gear (some of which were used on the first album). a few piecez remain in his equipment setup to this day.

jeff is still the driving force behind the band, as principle songwriter, lyricist, arranger, producer and engineer. he handles all artwork and album design (and now web page building), merchandise production coordination, and is the creator of the moonwatch commandscript. he is also responsible for the major business decisionz, as well as performing in the vocal, guitar and keyboard realmz. jeff planz to enter the world of video/film scoring and production, and more intense work in computer graphicz and animation in the future (he launched othyr world design, a computer graphicz company, in early 1992 to get away from the traditional day job routine). ironically computer science was his weakest subject (he passed the course only by building the teacher a computer in electronicz class); these dayz it is hard to pry him away from the machine at timez.

despite all his technical aspirationz though, jeff is primarily inspired by nature, and has alwayz enjoyed spending time in the forest (mountain bike riding is one of his only leisure activities), on the water, or in the wildz away from civilization. his parentz instilled in him a deep respect of the environment and an appreciation of all life formz. "i look forward to a time when there is equal concern for all the inhabitantz of this planet. only then will we have a truly human race."

in the mean time, jeff will continue to work on the creation of music, a lifelong passion and still his favorite passtime.