I was born in an underwater Florida circa five-billion years in your future!
I started playing instruments and performing at around four years of age and beat the crap out of about five poor victimized drum sets in a few years time. I then turned to beating the shit out the piano. At age nine I started writing my own music. In fact, pack rat that I am, the other day I was cleaning out old boxes and found a bunch of awards for acting and music I don't even remember along with an early novel I wrote for Doctor Who at age twelve. It's so weird to find that stuff!
At about age eleven I wrote my first structured piece of music using my brother’s keyboard, the same year I wrote my first pop tune called “Protest,” deviating from my usual instrumental music. I still remember the chorus and melody. Inspired by Starlight Express by Andrew Lloyd Webber I also wrote an instrumental piece called Time Savior. I'd already gone through several keyboards of my own at that point. Somewhere among all the dust sleeps those early recordings. In high school I started getting rather serious about music as my life’s work and ambition. I began skipping class on a regular basis to sneak into the auditorium and play the grand piano and the other instruments laying about, till school was over.
Thank you to the janitors for being supportive and leaving that one door unlocked that only I knew about! Fortunately, no one ever thought to look for me in there. That was when I started writing tons of pop music. I blew all the money given to me by my great-aunt for university on a professional keyboard and sequencer. I literally have 15 disks worth of material from those four years and the three following high school. When I finally decided to go to University I quickly became the outcast in the music building for being unconventional, experimental and for not reading music. When I was in Jazz Band I was the first person ever to get up and stand on the piano stool while doing a rather outrageous solo. To this day my formal knowledge of understanding what I do as a musician is limited. I can’t read music without taking a fortnight to get through one page. Thus music for me has always been something I feel, not something I need to understand in order to write or play! Generally, the time it takes me to write a piece of music is the time it takes to play it. I don't write music in sections or stop to consider anything... I just play it! I don't even understand it myself! If I had to put a time frame on each piece, I'd say no more than 10 to 15 minutes to write a song, one hour to record and finish it. If, however, I get carried away with too many ideas or random subjects to play around with, it can take a few hours as I have to go back and decide what elements to keep and which ones to discard. Hence, the longest it has taken me to write a piece of music is about a day or two which has happened a handful of times.
Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, I decided to write all the music, play all the instruments, arrange it, and record it in a very short amount of time. It was the influence of Mike Oldfield and Elton John’s writing style that set that goal for speed and ability. When I write, it just sort of happens. Sometimes by accident. I play a single note or chord and hear the rest in my head and play it out, then and there. The style of music is usually a mystery until it's coming out of me. For example, I once wrote four songs in one hour, switching back-and-forth in the sequencer, while writing the next piece and switching back to finish the previous track. Each song was entirely different! At the end of that hour I had written a classical piece, a salsa, a techno/ambient, and a pop tune. Looking back, that was a really bizarre hour! There was another time I wrote four songs in 10 minutes. This was the rare time I didn't have a piano and so sung them into a portable-tape-recorder. Because I don't like to sit on a piece of music I write quickly... just get it done, finished, and move onto the next. It's not something I can really control, it just happens this way! The same applies when writing film score music, although I tend to be more elaborate about the arrangement, since there are a lot more parts to play. For instance, the film score excerpt called "Graveyard Chase/Beauty Within," was finished in a few hours. The organ was the last part to be played, along with some minor percussion additives. Deciding the instrument for the main melody of the Graveyard portion took the most time. When a piece of music is finished and I'm listening to it, I don't sit there fanatically enjoying it because I wrote it... that doesn't enter my mind! I sit there fanatically enjoying it because it's the kind of music that I like listening too! NEVER have I sat there and thought, "Wow this is fantastic and I wrote it!" Even when I'm presenting the music to others I don't think about the fact that I wrote the music they're enjoying!
All in all I think I've written approximately 500 or more pieces of music in my life.
To sum up my feelings about music... "MUSIC IS THE MOST POWERFUL LANGUAGE ON THIS PLANET AND THE ONE THING WE "ALL" HAVE IN COMMON! WRITE IT, LISTEN TO IT, LOVE IT, HATE IT, BE PASSIONATE ABOUT IT, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY KEEP AN OPEN MIND ABOUT IT!!!"
I started playing instruments and performing at around four years of age and beat the crap out of about five poor victimized drum sets in a few years time. I then turned to beating the shit out the piano. At age nine I started writing my own music. In fact, pack rat that I am, the other day I was cleaning out old boxes and found a bunch of awards for acting and music I don't even remember along with an early novel I wrote for Doctor Who at age twelve. It's so weird to find that stuff!
At about age eleven I wrote my first structured piece of music using my brother’s keyboard, the same year I wrote my first pop tune called “Protest,” deviating from my usual instrumental music. I still remember the chorus and melody. Inspired by Starlight Express by Andrew Lloyd Webber I also wrote an instrumental piece called Time Savior. I'd already gone through several keyboards of my own at that point. Somewhere among all the dust sleeps those early recordings. In high school I started getting rather serious about music as my life’s work and ambition. I began skipping class on a regular basis to sneak into the auditorium and play the grand piano and the other instruments laying about, till school was over.
Thank you to the janitors for being supportive and leaving that one door unlocked that only I knew about! Fortunately, no one ever thought to look for me in there. That was when I started writing tons of pop music. I blew all the money given to me by my great-aunt for university on a professional keyboard and sequencer. I literally have 15 disks worth of material from those four years and the three following high school. When I finally decided to go to University I quickly became the outcast in the music building for being unconventional, experimental and for not reading music. When I was in Jazz Band I was the first person ever to get up and stand on the piano stool while doing a rather outrageous solo. To this day my formal knowledge of understanding what I do as a musician is limited. I can’t read music without taking a fortnight to get through one page. Thus music for me has always been something I feel, not something I need to understand in order to write or play! Generally, the time it takes me to write a piece of music is the time it takes to play it. I don't write music in sections or stop to consider anything... I just play it! I don't even understand it myself! If I had to put a time frame on each piece, I'd say no more than 10 to 15 minutes to write a song, one hour to record and finish it. If, however, I get carried away with too many ideas or random subjects to play around with, it can take a few hours as I have to go back and decide what elements to keep and which ones to discard. Hence, the longest it has taken me to write a piece of music is about a day or two which has happened a handful of times.
Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, I decided to write all the music, play all the instruments, arrange it, and record it in a very short amount of time. It was the influence of Mike Oldfield and Elton John’s writing style that set that goal for speed and ability. When I write, it just sort of happens. Sometimes by accident. I play a single note or chord and hear the rest in my head and play it out, then and there. The style of music is usually a mystery until it's coming out of me. For example, I once wrote four songs in one hour, switching back-and-forth in the sequencer, while writing the next piece and switching back to finish the previous track. Each song was entirely different! At the end of that hour I had written a classical piece, a salsa, a techno/ambient, and a pop tune. Looking back, that was a really bizarre hour! There was another time I wrote four songs in 10 minutes. This was the rare time I didn't have a piano and so sung them into a portable-tape-recorder. Because I don't like to sit on a piece of music I write quickly... just get it done, finished, and move onto the next. It's not something I can really control, it just happens this way! The same applies when writing film score music, although I tend to be more elaborate about the arrangement, since there are a lot more parts to play. For instance, the film score excerpt called "Graveyard Chase/Beauty Within," was finished in a few hours. The organ was the last part to be played, along with some minor percussion additives. Deciding the instrument for the main melody of the Graveyard portion took the most time. When a piece of music is finished and I'm listening to it, I don't sit there fanatically enjoying it because I wrote it... that doesn't enter my mind! I sit there fanatically enjoying it because it's the kind of music that I like listening too! NEVER have I sat there and thought, "Wow this is fantastic and I wrote it!" Even when I'm presenting the music to others I don't think about the fact that I wrote the music they're enjoying!
All in all I think I've written approximately 500 or more pieces of music in my life.
To sum up my feelings about music... "MUSIC IS THE MOST POWERFUL LANGUAGE ON THIS PLANET AND THE ONE THING WE "ALL" HAVE IN COMMON! WRITE IT, LISTEN TO IT, LOVE IT, HATE IT, BE PASSIONATE ABOUT IT, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY KEEP AN OPEN MIND ABOUT IT!!!"
