Specifically, what's yours? Do you have a degree in music? Did you just get an instrument and start bashing it? Ever been in a band? Ever done music stuff proffessionally? How did you get into music?
For me I've always listened to music, a year and a bit ago I got into the guitar properly(after many failed attempts), and have slowly taught myself how to play by looking at tabs of songs I know online and then figuring out the chords. Up until a few months back I couldn't even do bar chords, now my chords are more interesting than G-C-D-Em. I've never had any formal education in music (Except for 8th grade with this idiot music teacher that taught us how to play 'Louie Louie'. He yelled at me for doing fun strumming instead of down-down-down-down and I yelled at him and there was lots of yelling before I threw the pick at him and stormed out the classroom to go rock out in the hallway.)
I got one of the leads in a musical a few years back (the Queen of Hearts in a musical version of Alice, it was pretty crappy ) and found out that apparently I was kinda good at singing, so I joined the school choir. And... that's about it.
You guys probably have more interesting music pasts. Teeeeeell.
I have a degree in Vocal Performance (read: opera) that's gone totally unused. I'm currently getting a master's in Music and Audio for Interactive Media. Started on percussion in fifth grade, got moved to tuba in high school, because the band had 35 percussionists. I've always been into music. Can't think of a time I wasn't. I'm back to playing percussion, mostly tympani, in the local community band. I've been in my share of musicals and operas, but never professionally.
So, all told, I've got 6 yrs voice lessons, 6 yrs playing tuba (wish I owned one), 8 yrs piano lessons (wish I had a keyboard), 10 years off and on playing percussion (okay, I wish I owned any instruments at all). I need to buy a guitar, and learn how to play it. Pity I'm dirt poor.
The strange thing about my music background is that until my junior year of college, I didn't listen to anything that wasn't at least forty years old. Then I discovered that rock was actually pretty cool, and now, four years later, I'm really into IDM/modern jazz/abstract hip-hop/other things my dad hates. Funny how that happens.
Lots of choirs. Started piano lessons in the 1st (?) grade, quit around the time I started guitar lessons in the 5th grade. Started piano againnnn a couple years ago, focusing more on jazz (very good stuff). Um, have done everything from being in a post-punk band to singing the part of the Wolf in Into the Woods basically.
I'm getting real deja vu on this thread but here goes ...
musical training: None whatsoever. My dad had a guitar which I started playing. Bought a £15 bass after seeing my first gig and realising it is the coolest instrument. Started band 'The Hideously Bloated Capitalists', which mutated into jazz-punk trio (yes, tremble at the concept) 'Weirdness Magnet'. Played some gigs round hometown and area. Made decision to stop playing music altogether.
[wavy lines here to indicate passage of time]
Got a computer, started fucking around with home music, formed loose idea of band with mates called 'Sherlock Homo'. Found songfight. Killed 'Sherlock Homo' (I still have a box full of our only single if anyone's interested in a collector's item). Played some more.
in fifth grade i learned "mary had a little lamb" on a recorder. i can still play it.
i played trumpet in the my middle school's band from 6th-8th grade. i quit before high school because the teacher was a dick and i didn't want to be in his marching band. i no longer remember how to play. sadly, my mom sold the trumpet, otherwise my songs would feature badly played trumpet.
my high school offered guitar and piano classes. i took two years of guitar and one of piano. i was better at both back then. i hated learning about theory, as it was boring. i mostly like fucking around with the instruments when the teacher went around to work with people. i have no idea how to play piano anymore. when i use a keyboard, it's one note at a time. my skills on the guitar could use improvement, but i'm not motivated enough to do so.
I found out about a program called Fruity Loops from a friend and I began messing around with it just for fun. I did several songs (mostly instrumentals) and I submitted them to the old mp3.com
One day I got a letter from this guy. He said he was a director and he did a commerical for a local jewelry store in South Hampton, New York (I live in Kansas). He said he used one of my songs as background music in his commerical and included with the letter was a check for $300. And that made me get even more into making music so I continued off and on to make more songs.
And of course once I heard about this place on Attack of the Show, I knew I had to join. It gives me a reason to pump out song after song without ever becoming lazy about it and quitting for months at a time.
I don't play any insturments and I can't sing. But I can make music on the computer and rap to it.
From spoken word to actual singing, I can screw up any style with style.
I know this may come as a surprise - but I have no formal training.
My Degree in Music comes from the University of Life. My PhD was done at the School of Hard Knocks. And I am currently halfway through a Graduate Diploma at the Adult Community College of Keeping It Real.
fodroy wrote:doesn't a graduate diploma usually come before or at the same time as a phd, dr. ray?
No, not if your GradDip is in a different discipline to your PhD. But what do I know - I spend so much time sitting alone in a darkened room matriculating that it may be affecting my brain.
i had a little recorder stuff which i don't remember at all.
plinked on the piano and a banjo we used to have at home.
i played trumpet for one year in 8th grade (er, cornet actually).
then picked up synths and computer stuff and whatnot and have been largely self-taught. songfight has been instrumental in getting me to learn more theory stuff, as i do gom and hxaro and coverfight and all that. yay songfight! ...but i'm more or less just doing it on my own. so no formal training. still.
-bill
HeuristicsInc wrote:i had a little recorder stuff which i don't remember at all.
plinked on the piano and a banjo we used to have at home.
i played trumpet for one year in 8th grade (er, cornet actually).
then picked up synths and computer stuff and whatnot and have been largely self-taught. songfight has been instrumental in getting me to learn more theory stuff, as i do gom and hxaro and coverfight and all that. yay songfight! ...but i'm more or less just doing it on my own. so no formal training. still.
-bill
Replace "trumpet" with "clarinet" and "bill" with "Puce" and you have my history, too. I also somehow managed to accumulate a whole bunch of stringed instruments, which I use to make sounds.
Last edited by Adam! on Mon Nov 14, 2005 4:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Its scary even thinking back to the blurry days of my musical beginning.
It starts in high School. I got enlisted to write some lyrics for a couple of bands, because all they could write was strange pop-angst songs. Which just means that in every song there was a 'dead - head' rhyme. So I wrote some lyrics for some people, then one bunch of guys made the big mistake to get me to sing in their band.
That was the first band I was in, Quantative Experimental, which broke up without ever performing and then reformed with most members some months later as Coathanger. Coathanger went for about a year, until everyone finished High School and kinda moved on a bit. Except for three of us, which stuck together, and kicked around as the infamous Jonny Juice and the Good Time Boys.
During this time, I learnt about recording stuff on my computer, about singing a little better and about playing horribly on another persons bass guitar. JJ&tGTB was around for about three years. We recorded two albums (I think I still have a small stash somewhere. Wanna do a 'failed band album swap' J$?) and a clutch of Songfight songs. After about three years of this, we didn't officially break up or anything but it looks like JJ&tGTB is on indefinate hiatus, I started entering Songfights all on my lonesome.
I took piano lessons from 5 to 15. I sang in the choir in grade school, and played French horn in concert band from 4th grade to 12th grade. Around 14 I picked up the guitar, which brought about the end of my piano lessons. I started out learning the guitar by learning Metallica songs by ear, and I started learning how to solo by learning Metallica solos by tablature. I started recording music with a friend in high school on a 4-track, sequencing drums with my old Mac and a crappy drum machine. I picked up the bass for those recordings and so I could be in a band with my friends in 12th grade (they already had 3 guitar players!). In college I had a band for 2.5 years that played a few small gigs around the giant city of ... Cleveland. Whee! Anyway, I'd been listening to SongFight! for years, when two years ago I decided to start trying to sing and write whole songs, instead of just guitar parts, and since then I've had the most musically fruitful two years of my life so far. Thanks SongFight!
Huh. I wasn't going to post but I got this deja vu thing reading Sam's entry.
Piano lessons from 10 to 17. French horn from 4th grade to 12th. Various choral groups from late in high school through college. Self-taught guitar out of a book at 16 or 17. Drum major. 2 summers fifing in a fife & drum corps. Sang bass in a barbershop quartet. Lots of jazz combos. Many years in a crappy rock band that never played out. Last six years in a pretty kick-ass R&B band (keyboards, trombone, trumpet) that plays out all the time. Bass guitar for the past few years in a comtemporary church band. Not sure if I should say "kick-ass" and "church" in the same paragraph.
Basically, I never met an instrument I wouldn't try to make noise with. About a year ago, I was asked to play a one-off performance with a flute sextet. Never played one before. Borrowed one the night before the first practice, did the performance nine days after that. Whee!!
As for Songfight, I hardly ever participate, but it got me back to using my recording gear which had been gathering dust for a couple years.
I had all kinds of interest and exposure to various bands and musicians growing up. My father, who always tried unsuccesfully to shy me away from music, used to sing on the radio in the '30's and early 40's before WWII, also did choir work in church, and performed in the church drama club. One of my sisters married a jazz pianist who became one of the most supportive people behind my musical endeavors before I met my wife.
I remember going over to a friends house (the guy is still the best guitarist I know) as a kid in 4th grade and hearing him, his older brother and a couple of other guys all in or below the 6th grade absolutely nailing Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion". (I'm 42 so back then it was current and cool) I thought they had the stereo cranked or something. I came into the house to find them set up in the living room playing it live. I was hooked. I kept hanging around those guys (the brothers that is, the rest of the band changed a lot over the years) picking up tips and encouragement along the way.
Unfortunately, being the second to last in a family with 10 kids, my parents were hooked as well; to bill's. No money to waste on a 10 year old with guitar playing aspirations when they had already been down the road of buying various instruments that their children played for a short time and gave up on. I honestly thank them for that because it made me more determined to play. I borrowed various guitars from 15 to 18 along with one being a Kay acoustic my girlfirend at the time let me have to knock around on until she took it back when we split up. Unlike my parents, I can't thank her for that. I knew bar chords mostly and never really took it as seriously as I should have. I finally purchased my first guitar at age 21 for $25 and later got an old Silvertone Amp for another $18. Along with an MXR Distortion+ I was able to make enough crappy bar chorded crap to land myself in a long line of not going anywhere garage bands. Along the way I always seemed to hook up with guys who were slightly better than I was and who taught me various things resembling theory. I also kept getting progressively better equipment to further fuel the fire.
I finally found my nitch when I stumbled acrossed an open stage that featured blues. When I first started going it was just a few musicians and their girlfriends in the audience and you could get up and play for hours if you were talented enough or didn't try to show off too much. (I was in the latter category) Today you probably couldn't beg your way on stage for fifteen minutes unless you knew somebody, and it's arguably the most popular club in town. Thoughout that metamorphsis I gleened everything I could from anyone who would bother and I've played with, run sound for, or just have been blessed to have hung around some of the best musicians in the country, as well as playing in various bands. One of the highlights for me was getting to play with Steven Stills, and having him play my gear, but that's a story in and of itself. The last six years I've been in a pretty kick-ass R&B band that plays out all the time. Did someone say that already?
I found SongFight through a friend and the premise appealed to me a lot. It seems like I hardly ever really engage in the actual fight part, but I have managed to write a lot more songs that never made the deadline for various reasons, and 2 that did. My goal for next year is to double that output which means I should have entered 4 fights in 2006, an admittedly low goal but I've always had low expectations of myself anyway when it comes to music. I've surpassed all of them thus far.
Time will tell.
My apologies for being so verbose. At my advanced age, there's a bit of history to tell compared to the youngster that asked the question.
My mom had one of those Bontempi or whatever organ things which I would play around on at about age 5 or 6. I taught myself 'Mary Had A Little Lamb'. Played french horn in grade 5 band. Decided at about that time that I wanted to play guitar, mainly because of Black Sabbath and Cheap Trick and AC/DC. Asked my dad about a million times to get me a guitar, he never did. I found an old guitar in someone's garbage can when I was 13, it was a hollow-body electric with all the electronics missing, along with one of the tuning pegs. I got strings for it, and started trying to figure out how to play it. Fast forward a few years, my sister-in-law gave me a nylon-string classical guitar which I loved dearly. While I has aspirations of playing electric guitar, I taught myself some harmonic theory from guitar magazines and music books, and got deeply interested in classical music in general. If you listen to my music, you'll probably hear a lot of clasical influences. Formed a band with a highschool friend who played bass and a guy I was introduced to by another friend, on drums. We basically refused to do covers, unless they were Slayer, and I think this put the drummer off, because we didn't last long. I got a 4-track Fostex tape machine and a drum machine (BOSS Dr. Rhythm) and fucked around with that for a few years. Ran into another highschool friend in a bar, got to talking, and he played drums, wanted to jam, etc. This band incarnation gelled pretty well (still the same bass player) and we bashed it out for about 6 years. Once again, we refused to play covers for the most part. Had a rotating cast of people who came in and jammed with us, the first thing we'd point out as someone new came in to play with us was the big, hand lettered posterboard on the wall, which read "NO METALLICA ALLOWED"
But I digress. Never had a formal lesson in my life, and I think the only cover song I actually learned from start to finish, note for note, is 'Free Will' by Rush. Oh, wait, I learned 'Buddy Holly' by Weezer, too. So that's two.
3rd grade - cello career begins
4th grade - percussion career begins
middle and high school - orchestra, marching and concert band, drumline
college - marching band, percussion ensemble, choir, orchestra, jazz band
college - cello, bass, marimba, vibraphone, tuba, piano instruction
Millersville University of Pennsylvania, bachelors of science in Music Education
post-college - one summer of vocal instruction, one winter of guitar instruction, lots of cello gigs, a few bass gigs, some group choral directing, lots of cello teaching, a little snare drum teaching, a little community band percussion, lots of songfighting
) and found out that apparently I was kinda good at singing, so I joined the school choir. And... that's about it. 
)
