Your stories please!?!

[linziellen]

Hello again.If any of you have a few minutes to spare I'd love to hear some of your stories...When or how did you get into writing - did it get into you? What or who attracted you to writing lyrics/music? Lindsey.

[ibanez468]

Linzie,I come from a musical family. Dad played sax in the army, mom was forced to take piano lessons as a young girl, and so I guess it was something that was inherited. My older brother and I began drum lessons at a fairly early age, but between all of us, I was the only one that kept up with the pursuit of music. Music was always playing throughout the house. My dad was an old skool jazz lover (Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitz, Sarah Vaughn, etc...), and my mom liked alot of R&B at the time (Spinners, Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, Gladys Knight & the Pips, etc...), and my brother listened to alot of rock (Jimi Hendrix, Blue Oyster Cult, Aerosmith, Black Oak Arkansas, Led Zep, etc...). So with all this different kind of music goin' on, my little brain & ears, somehow just began to start absorbing all of this stuff. Melodies remained in my head, dynamics of instruments, chord structures, drumming techniques, etc...I assure you I had no idea what I was doin' or what was goin' on, but this is how I learned. Then I would constantly try and emulate everything I heard, on drums, guitar, bass, and later on keyboards. I even played trumpet for 3 years in my high school band. So I did alot of emulating on my trumpet, listening to the brass sections of R&B groups. My family got tired of hearing me play, but they never discouraged me. I discovered the bouncing of tracks using 2 tape recorders by accident, and completely on my own. Then I got my first 4 track porta studio, and that was it. I've been hooked ever since! ibanez468

[mewman]

Bon jour, Lindsay ....ca va?My father was a consulting engineer/pianist and opera lover who would sit down every evening after dinner and play for an hour or two. I remember dancing around the piano with my brothers and sisters when he played "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" by Grieg. I began piano lessons at around age seven but only lasted a few years as the teacher was a strict German woman who would slap my wrists with a ruler when I didn't do things correctly. I tried again in high school with another teacher but she was overtly religious and only showed me staid pieces. Then my brother got a guitar for Christmas. I started taking it from his room when he wasn't around and improvising along with records. That led me back to the piano, where I started making up my own stuff. Fast forward a few years past a college degree as an environmentalist, a two year stint as a ski instructor in Colorado, and my first gig (with a country western/fifties rock band at a Buffalo barbecue) to music school at the Cornish Institute in Seattle and piano lessons with Art Lande and jazz theory with Gary Peacock. I eventually moved back east to The Adirondacks in northern New York, purchased some land, and lived with no running water or electricity for the next ten years, practicing my piano, writing and playing in local restaurants and in a variety of groups and theatre productions as a bassist or drummer as well. My first writing project was with a local theatre company in Saranac Lake, N.Y. called the Pendragon Theatre Company. A friend told me they were looking for some music for a production of Jane Martin's "Talking With", a collection of eleven monologues by women. When I showed up at the theatre, they told me they didn't have a big budget and were just looking for a musician to pick some recorded tracks. I proposed that I write a piano prelude for each piece and play it live as there was a piano in the theatre. I remember the excitement of sitting in on the first rehearsals with my notebook and jotting down whatever came into my head as the women ran through their monologues. The play ran for twenty two nights and did really well. I got the bug then and haven't stopped...

[hummingbird]

Quote:Hello again.If any of you have a few minutes to spare I'd love to hear some of your stories...When or how did you get into writing - did it get into you? What or who attracted you to writing lyrics/music? Lindsey.- I started writing songs when I was a teenager, and then stopped, although I continued to journal & write poetry & dabble with prose. I wrote one song with a girlfriend back in, like 1998. Then in 2003 one of my students (I teach singing) lost his voice due to a chronic condition but said he wanted to continue coming to lessons and work on songwriting. I said, okay. He started bringing me little bits of poetry & lyric and scraps of melody, and soon we began to work together & became songwriting partners. I had a computer and I got Band in a Box and I started playing with music. Then I got recording software and downloaded free plug-ins and played with composing stuff. I started to get my stuff demod, which is a whole other story, but suffice it to say that, while being a member of Taxi taught me the songs weren't good enough to be demod (a costly lesson), I wasn’t satisfied with the arrangement/sonic quality of the demos. I decided that I needed to learn more about producing. So I began my journey of growing into someone who could write & produce their own demos. After going to the Road Rally a couple of times, I realized a couple of crucial things. First, I really didn't want to write songs for other artists - I wanted to write them for me. Secondly, that there was something called film & tv music that had requirements that I might be able to fulfil. I decided I needed to get the tools & learn the skills to do that.A lifetime of listening to a great variety of music, including classical & opera, and participating by playing in school bands, singing in choirs & opera chorus… and being a fan of film composers such as John Williams and Howard Shore.... seem to be part of the creative instincts I explore when I create music.I'm beginning the second year of my 5-to-7-year plan to grow my composing/producing skills and develop a cataloque of 200 pitchable pieces. Hummin'bird

[edteja]

I believe the chain of events was something like...I was born and started rewriting songs I heard, then branched out to writing my own. Can't recall not doing it in some form or other. I used to think everyone did it, like breathing. It was much later I figured out that this was the way some people made money and that the people on the radio didn't just do it cause it was fun. I sang on the radio for the first time in Berlin, Germany when I was in grade school, so the idea of it being a job just didn't come to me. Now the guy behind the glass was another story. He was working.True story.

[arkjack]

Linzi....You should know the answer to that, at least for most guys.Its not for the glory, the money or the free beer.....its forThe BadonkadonkWithout a doubt, I know the thing that attracted me most to music and writing was attractive girls attracted to guitar players and songwriters.ArkJack

[lopc]

First, place the camera on the table and step away. Stepppp away. Okay, good. Now:Music came to me in an old Doris Day 78LP of my mothers back before color television. I sat and listened to Que Sera, Sera over and over. Something about the way it flowed soothed me, much to the delight of my mother I would guess. Got my first guitar at 13 for Christmas, and it was the best gift I ever got. Old flattop, hell to fret, and I didn't have a clue how to play it, but I learned on it. Me and a coupla neighbors got together and decided to start a "band". Back in the day, that is how it started. Those were good times, Linzi. Garage bands morphed into greatness or obscurity. Either way, it was dedication to the art that kept music alive, and I loved it to no end. It wasn't the money, the girls, the coolness of it all-it was the release of the music that wrapped you up and made you think, "I am good at this and it makes me feel great!" The icing was the tightness of the group, the automatic anticipation and the complete trust that the other guy was doing what he was supposed to be doing. Houston in the '60's was a true garage band industry, got together with local talent and through several member changes after numerous gigs , "Reality's Children" was born. Orignally the groups second lead guitar and lead vocalist, I switched to Bass (Hofner) and found a new niche. Contrary to popular belief, playing Bass felt so comfortable and natural I couldn't imagine ever playing any stringed instrument with more than four strings again.. The emergence of Market Square in downtown Houston as "the place where true music flowed" is where RC found themselves. Clubs such as Allen's Landing, Mother Blues, and the Cellar Club became regular haunts for RC and the group's music morphed from the top 40 approach to a new edge. Trips to a true and legendary Houston hotspot, THE CATACOMBS left enough of an impact that RC opened their own club in northeast Houston, The Neon Life, and it became one of the hot spots for the teenage mainstream looking for new sounds. Truth be told, I loved the performing side of the biz, but found that it actually distracted me from writing. Too much noise and interruption to think most of the time. Now, I miss the performing more than I can say. Sad part is, those days are probably gone and I can never get them back. The memories remain, however. God bless for this thread. Thanks, Linzi.Barney currently is employed with the DOW Chemical Company at the Clear Lake Operations site in Texas. His current role at DOW is the Electrical Representative of the Clear Lake Site and is a member of the Maintenance Technical Services group. Barney was born in Houston, Texas in 1951. Barney has a wife of 18 years, Penny (born in Denver in 1963), and two daughters, Jessica (15) and Tori (13). Barney and his family have resided in Dayton, Texas since 1996.

[stevev]

Although it may not be on display here, I've sort of always had a knack for the written word. I loved essay questions on tests in school. That knack sort of evolved into writing songs, probably about the same time I learned enough chords on the guitar to write song. I'm one of those guys that has a knack for writing but no 'knack' whatsoever for math or spatial things. Somewhere along the line, I also started to realize a desire and need to write songs and be involved in music. There's a feeling inside that propels me to do it. I've quit several times and that desire always brings me back. It has nothing to do with accomplishing anything with my music - that desire is always there for me to write and play. Steve V

[squids]

I showed up, it showed up with me. I spent most of my youth trying to scrape it off my boots. Now we've settled into a pattern with some occasional spats and crankiness. Good thing it's so patient.

[Mark Kaufman]

I was born in 1961, and my earliest memories involve listening to those early-mid Beatles records. I was hypnotized. The 45 of "Eight Days a Week"/"I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" especially stirred me up. My obsessive sister would BE Ringo (she pretended she was Ringo for years...then Joe Cocker and others...these days she's Elvis) and she told me I was John. I have a 1st grade coloring assignment, What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up, a drawing of me fronting a Beatlesy group. I loved that their songs sounded more different as time went on...complete change from one to another. I started making things up to sing, started writing stories and poems, acting in plays, making them up...CREATION was FUN. It was beautiful and gratifying. Like ibanez468, I noticed I could record my voice on one tape player, and sing along with it while I recorded another tape. I sang "Hey Jude" with the harmony and freaked out my parents. And I figured out how to play "Let It Be" on the piano and freaked out the neighbor.But when I was 15 and my mom bought me a five dollar classical guitar I was thrilled, immediately found a chord book and started learning all my favorite songs, and I started writing my own right away. I just love the process...the random strumming, the snatches of melody that drift by, catching them, molding them into patterns, the way the end of a pathway leads back to the beginning again. It's magical, spiritual, it's positive. Creation is the opposite of destruction. It's good, not bad. It's positive, not negative. It's life, not death. It represents the best side of every opposite.I never stopped writing. There was a fallow period once my first daughter was born, and I chased the money to get us a house...but the loudness in my mind never went away, and when I started writing in earnest again, it came out in torrents. I don't want to be famous. I don't feel a deep need to see them generate income. I don't especially care to hear a star sing my songs. But I could never stop writing them.That said, sure I do intend to pursue some sales...but that's not what drives me to do it, it's just a cool way to channel the activity. But I write because it has become a deeply spiritual pleasure, like prayer, like love.