Tuesday, January 27, 2009

About My Musical History

I am an independent musician with a deep found affinity and love for new age music and all forms that it is varied from or that vary from it including melodic trance, Celtic, light jazz, dance, good techno, and so much more.

It all started in 1986 when I was visiting my father. We were driving up the rough and rugged logging roads of the British Columbia coastal mountains in his old beat up Isuzu. He pulled an audio cassette out of the console and popped it into the tape deck. The music that started to play was some of the most beautiful music I had ever heard in my life. I was enthralled. There I was, in the mountains surrounded by some of the most majestic scenery in the world with this fantastic music washing over me. This was it, this was the moment dreams were made of. As it turns out the music I was listening to was my first introduction to Ray Lynch.

I was spellbound by that album. I couldn't get it out of my mind. As a kid it was so far fetch from what all my peers listened to. My father sent me a duplicate of the tape and I played it until my cassette player got sick of it and ate it. I was sad. Soon after I got a CD player and picked up that album, Deep Breakfast, and all the rest of his CDs. That summer I took the little money I had earned working at a summer camp and bought my first synthesizers. A Roland D-20 and a Roland Sound Canvas 55. I managed to pick up an institutional copy of Cakewalk 3 from my high school and an internal MIDI card from a downtown music store.

My sequencing days had begun. I started by recording music I was listening to by ear, but soon enough I was off on my own composing rifts, chord sequences, and eventually melodies. My high school music teacher and department heads were so impressed with my progress they requested that I submit a piece of music to be judged as my grade 12 music exam rather than taking the written theory exam other students had to take. They listened to it over the winter break and when school resumed in January they passed me with flying colors. The piece I submitted was called "High Albedo" and was my first independent musical piece.

Since those days I have spent time on and off playing with my music. I've never really considered it as a source of income. I have the marketing skills of an orangutan. But that doesn't discourage me. People tell me they enjoy my music and that alone is enough to keep me motivated to keep composing and recording. With each new piece I learn more and expand on my style, if even ever so slightly.

So here I am today, 3 albums out, another 20 or so songs I haven't released, and I'm still going strong. I write what I like to hear. My wife asked me once, "Don't you feel strange listening to your own music?" to which I replied, "No, if I didn't like to listen to it I wouldn't write it."