The Man The Music

Whilst being a classically trained musician who can play a few instruments like a virtuoso, I also play many many other instruments. My go-to choice at the minute is guitars, due to not needing other musicians to achieve something. Yes over the years I’ve spent thousands if not hundreds of thousands of hours playing, writing and composing. Most of the really useful things I’ve learned have not come from formal teaching, but from fiddling about. Long before the days of Youtube and kids copying their favorite musicians tones we used to have to do it by trial and error. That is what makes for better music. Yes I can play Paganini at 200bpm, But why? It has been done, and is just blowing your own ego.

The first instrument I learned was Cello, I wasn’t very good! For only one reason! I am dyspraxic, and I was still only seven and hadn’t sussed the complexity of the instrument yet. However I did get a Grade 8 in Cello some years later. I then picked up Percussion in Grammar school, everything from bells to timpani and the standard drum kit, including xylophones and glockenspiel. Then Catastrophe struck. Our school music department burned down, and I had to shift schools. This to me at the time was heartbreaking, as I had to leave my few friends behind.

On to a new school, an old rival. In my hometown, there was a tradition of Brass Bands, two school bands, (up to 18 years old), and then four senior bands. Beanfield (now demolished) was the best of the School Brass Bands, and won every single Youth competition for many many years, I remember my first music lesson at the school. The Music teacher wasn’t having any of the fact that I was a percussionist, he wanted me to play Tuba, not what Americans call a tuba which is actually a Sousaphone, but a proper BBb tuba, 64′ of tubing. I learned how to play it the way it was taught, then spent my lunchtimes, relearning the instrument as I thought it should be played. This meant I could get a lot more range and dexterity out of an instrument that most would say was too big for anything but lumbering bass lines. In fact on many occasions over the years I’ve been one of the few tuba soloists invited to events.

Guitar for me has a more interesting story, I would have been about fifteen and I was already listening to a lot of rock and metal, when I found a documentary on Van Halen’s 1984 tour. I recorded it to our old betamax vcr and watched the tape to death. My brother had a basic strat clone, which I borrowed when he was out (He’d have never let me borrow it) and I learned every single track and the solo’s from that tour. I applied all my music theory and knowledge to getting better and better. Until recently I thought I’d gone as far as I could. Now I know better. There is always more to learn. Music theory will change, it always has although not in the ways it needs to.

So my next goal is to learn Sitar, for no other reason than it’s cool. After that who knows.

But please if you have a deep love of Music, No matter what anyone says, Never give up!