I think everything started off with the Sega Master System. As so0n as my parents bought it, I immediately started falling in love with chip music, and music in general for that matter. Me and my younger brother would drive my parents nuts during car rides because we would mimmick all the music from every game we played with our mouths. We already knew then that music was gonna be part of our life. Pretty much after that we both started analizing music from everything! Movies, Commercials, Radio, Dad playing old vinyl records and so on and just sing them out loud everywhere we went.
Then came High school where music was my favorite subject hehe. I took Trombone and was suppose to learn to read and write Bass Clef. I actually cheated the whole time and just memorized all the songs from practicing them in class with the teacher, I had an amazing memory for music, but that meant I never actually learnt to read or write music.
Then during the N64 era, when Zelda 64 came out, I was at a friends house and he pulled out this old ass Accoustic guitar with a warped neck, and only one string on it. (The low E) And I started doodling on it playing songs with my thumb with the guitar sitting on my lap. We called that guitar the 'Deku Stick' Guitar lol. He owned these 2 little bongos and he used pencils to tap on them and create beats. We recorded ourselves playing all sorts of crap on cassettes. I guess this is when I actually started creating basic musical patterns.
After that experience I decided to bug my parents to buy me a guitar, which they did and I still own it, a Yamaha accoustic guitar. I couldn't take my hands off of it. I would play 6-8 hours a day just figuring out new chords and writing riffs. Then my uncle bought himself a Yamaha electric with a Beckemer amp, but quit really fast and made my parents a deal and sold it to them. This is when I really became in love with guitar. That guitar played amazing and was built for my little hands. I quickly became a very good rhythm guitarist. I pretty much learnt everything by ear, with the occasional peak at online tabs.
I decided I was ready to be in a band and started one with my friends at the time. We were a cover band playing Iron Maiden, Metallica, Slayer and other various metal bands.
Many bands later, I had become a much more solid player and started contributing a lot of riffs I had written in the past. I could never write a full song for some reason, just a lot of riff's. They called me the riff machine. Luckily I had met someone who I still think to this day, was my musical soulmate, I dunno if that sounds weird, but together we could write songs like there was no tomorrow. We started playing a lot of shows and just as success was immenent, I chickened out and left the band. I still don't understand today, why I did this, but I felt I didn't want to make it big with some of the band members, example the singer was a coke addict and was a little too fucked up for me to be around him so much. I got into a depression and slowly stopped playing guitar.
Now that I wasn't playing guitar anymore, I still on the other hand had a desire to write music, and slowly started listening to electronic music. I heard about Fruity Loops from a friend and I copied it from him. I started writing a bunch of songs and eventually wrote a full album. It's very basic and ambient, and the mixing is horrible, but it was my first steps into creating music on my own. I finally didn't need someone to help me complete everything.
Then my brother started getting into the chip scene, listening to a lot of chip artists like virt, Rushjet1, Norrin Radd and a few others, and then he found out about FamiTracker. He tried for many months to get me into it, but I kept telling him I hated the interface because of the lack of Piano Roll. Luckily he kept insisting and I finally gave FamiTracker a chance. I hated it, and kept going back to FL Studios. But as my brother wrote doodles here and there, I started getting intrigued and he tought me a few things. I decided to join the forums and looked at what people wrote and how people did it. I mimmicked everything I saw, and slowly but surely, I think some of you have seen my evolution through the 2 years i've been here. I look at my early songs and then listen to the new ones and I think i've come along way. 2 Years of Fami and loving it like crazy now.
OMFG i'm so sorry for writing a book, I guess it was fun to remember all of this. for me anyways.
OMFG i'm so sorry for writing a book, I guess it was fun to remember all of this. for me anyways.
Don't worry man, I loved writing my own and reading everyone else's. I actually just realized I left a couple things out of my history, but I'll have to get to that later today. This is the greatest thread idea I've seen in a while.
1996 - 1999: Got a guitar and played it a little
2000: Began working with ReBirth, along with a friend of mine, remixing vg music for OCRemix.
2000 - 2002: Played keyboard for the group Zimmerman's Note
2002: Worked on three projects / bands; Jenova's Witness, Guh, & Apartment 7
2003 - 2012: Headed 24 hour recording projects with concept group E.S. Proctor & the Rot-Corpse 3000
2009 - 2012: Composing solo work in just intonation in various forms
I actually quite hate my piano lessons now since the vast majority of the curriculum that I'm required to learn for my grade 9 royal conservatory of canada piano exam is classical music (most of which is extremely boring IMHO and can't be played with your own distinct style for exams which just plain sucks), and I'm also gonna have to do some classical composer history study as well which also kind of sucks complete dick. My piano teacher tries to get me to play my jazz music exactly as written on the sheet as well, which kind of really grinds my gears to be honest :p
Yea I agree, a lot of classical stuff being boring to play(and listen to). My tastes turn me to more contemporary guys(I love the hell out of Bach tho), I try to play pieces I actually enjoy listening to and currently playing grade 7ish stuff. Lately been playing a lot of Bartok, Bach, Diabelli, Prokofiev, Debussy, Brahms, Schumann and recently found a impressionist period guy who makes really cool debussyian stuff, Vladimir Rebikov. Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin bore the hell out of me.
"My piano teacher tries to get me to play my jazz music exactly as written on the sheet.."
Ugh, hurts to even read that! Dude if you wanna break into what jazz piano and harmony is all about, of course the teacher makes all the difference, but I'd like a to recommend a few books if you have the interest and the money:
A book alone isn't going to teach you, but I've flipped through just about every jazz book out there and these are the ones that actually present things to you in a practical way, all the way up to the advanced quartal and quintal harmony stuff with tons of voicings and real world examples for you to practice. The "Exploring Jazz Piano" one even has a lot of 'assignments' for you to do, such as improvising over a certain section and gives you basic recommendations. The "Jazz Piano Book" has an extensive amount of real world examples of voicings and harmony. I couldn't recommend these books enough.
edit: Also, grab a fake book. a popular one is the 'Real Book'. Big ol collection of jazz tunes. Only the melody and chords are given, the rest is up to you with how to arrange it all.
haha, yea man, I dunno. I hit me the other day, the majority of Chopin's work just doesn't grab me. No worries tho, I'm quite disappointed in myself as well...
I'll do my best to try and convince you otherwise if you don't mind.
I'm sure you could. I guess I'm not particularly unimpressed with Chopin, but lately I've just been a glutton for things that expand my harmonic language. Chopin is a bit outdated as far as that's concerned. I'm sure once it finally sinks in that harmony isn't everything and I start naturally focusing more on structure and organisation, my tastes will start changing again.
Also, I'm really glad this thread has taken off! It's a real treat reading everything. When I first posted I was scared that the next post would've been "cool story bro" or something, haha... ;((
So when I said I fell in love with Final Fantasy 8, that included the soundtrack. I loved that style that Uematsu was able to find to get the right feel for each track. When I dissected lots of VGM MIDI's, they included a lot from FF8. I didn't get back into Final Fantasy until a happenstance encounter with a PS2 as a Christmas present and a copy of FF10, though. I spent a while with emulators (I skipped the Nintendo consoles, so I missed out on a lot of 'classics' when they were contemporary), and really enjoyed Chrono Trigger's soundtrack when I played that game.
After discovering chiptune, my selection was initially limited to 8bp's releases, since I hadn't found the word 'chiptune' and didn't feel like aimlessly searching. But I found a beloved niche in the NES tunes I downloaded, from RushJet1, Phlogiston (at least, I think Mode 3 was 2A03) and virt. I couldn't get behind the harsh nanoloop/intermediate-level-LSDJ tracks that permeated much of the 8bp catalog that I found. I still found some Gameboy tracks I liked, like from Random and IAYD. It wasn't until much later, after I got into FT work, that I found other netlabels (this time, Ubiktune) and really rediscovered great chiptune.
So yeah, stitch those in where those events are mentioned.
I've been taking Piano for 8-9 years, starting with basic courses, (when I was alot younger) and then growing into Ragtime and Jazz, I had a rough time starting out with classical music, mainly because it was (to me) set in stone and I HAD to play it a certain way to succeed, I kept getting discouraged all through this time until 3-4 years ago when my teacher suggested I try Ragtime, I fell in love and have been working on it ever since, I enjoy these style more because I am free to play it the way I want, I'm currently going to participate in the West Coast Ragtime Youth Competition in November. I also sing Baritone in two Church Choirs and my Churches praise team.
I started listening to Chiptune back in 2009, my first experience wasn't on console or anything (I've been a PC gamer my whole life lol)
I first heard the music of Spiny Norman being played on the Revision 3 show Bytejacker, and immediately fell in love with it, I started listening to that style exclusively and I just recently started writing almost one year ago.
I was influenced by certain soundtracks though, like the sound track to Pajama Sam 1, which has a pretty awesome jazzy feel.
Well I guess thats all lol
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I had a rough time starting out with classical music, mainly because it was (to me) set in stone and I HAD to play it a certain way to succeed
yea, it's a shame that the common school for classical piano is this super uptight "this is how it is done, no questions asked" method. no one's really given much room for interpretation, especially student level peeps. i think the most important core element is understanding the dynamics of how to create natural phrases, and what should be focused on in the classical school. a strong confidence and understand of this is what enables strong and convincing interpretations.
my teach is both classical and jazz pianist, but favors jazz, so naturally bashes the current classical school(definitely convinced me over time). he's a russian guy, studied in russia and germany, and says that the classical school is particularly stiff in throughout europe. and in the states, we essentially try to copy what europe does cos jazz is our thing and we don't know any better.
Nothing really...I did have a chance to learn how to play an instrument when I was a kid but I just didn't go to take the lessons my mom wanted me to. I just walked straight home from school, so she just said "Ok, you don't have to do this" And if only I had known how useful that could be now...
I had a fake shitty chinese NES clone when I was a kid (cause only those were available here sadly...) so I got exposed to chip music very early. Most of the games were very common "999999999 in 1" carts that had 5-6 games and a couple hacks (The only exceptions being the NES version of Jungle Book and Chip n' Dale 2).
Then came a huge gap here in video game history. There was no 16-bit era basically in Hungary, so only the NES and then the Playstation influenced my "taste". 99% of what I played being platformers.
Over time I forgot about consoles and I played PC stuff 2000-2006. I watched a couple AVGN videos that resurrected the retro gamer buried in me, and probably saved me from becoming one of those spoiled COD and Battlefieldsexual retards (aka those who judge games by their age and graphics, and have a vocabulary of two words, usually fuck and shit)
So I discovered emulation and played a lot of games that I never thought I would see again. I also discovered that there were much more advanced games out there than I had known (Megaman, Castlevania, Kirby, etc.) I played them to death and like always with anything I liked, I wanted to customize them somehow. That's how I got into ROM hacking and made a couple shitty Mario and Megaman 3 hacks. I was gradually becoming better with each one, but one thing was still missing. I had no idea how to customize the music. Then I got exposed to Famitracker and later, Danooct1's tutorials. It helped me understand how NES sound worked, and reading up on some documents about different ways games used the sound hardware, I finally achieved my goal. But I just "fell in love" with Famitracking and music in general. I tried to guess how they did certain sounds in NES music and I also learned a lot from you guys here. I used MIDI files for reference at first but I realized that it was "cheating". Nowadays I mostly read books on the matter because I don't have the time, nor the money to take music classes unfortunately, although I'd really like to.
Also...Pie...Sorry, I don't believe you... it's just not possible.
