Why do I need to make music?

I’m over 50 now,and still I have the urge to compose, play and record music.

I first begun playing the guitar at 14. We got a band together at our outer-suburban high school in Melbourne, but none of us could play. So we bought some instruments, had a few lessons, and started playing covers. Mainly Status Quo and a few of the ‘seriously’ cool 70s hard rock bands. You know the ones.

We spent a lot of money (mostly our parents money) on the gear, the rehearsal rooms,and when we played at home, we drove the neighbors crazy with our noise. Back in the 70s most ‘consumer’ music gear was expensive, badly made, and sounded crappy. Not like now. Most instruments are well built now, and most electronics are durable and have benefited from decades of refinement and automated production facilities. We never really even tuned up properly, lacking good ears or a guitar tuner.

After a few years, we got a little bit better, and even played at the high school dance. However, we had very few local venues to play, and as the 80s dawned, suddenly these venues were being colonized by DJs who played vinyl records of disco and world-class bands over their own PA systems. Cheaply.

Our little band fell apart in 1979. Suddenly my adolescent dreams of being a guitar-hero with hordes of adoring fans died. But I never lost the feeling that for me, making music was the absolute best thing I personally could do with my time here on Earth.

Irrational? Some people occasionally told me I was a good player. I had already spent a pile of of money on my hobby.
Luckily, passing exams came easily to me, so without a band, I was now completely free to start a ‘real’ career. I found my way into a computing degree. Back in 1980, they called it ‘data processing’. I remember I was payed $32 per week by the Australian Federal Government to study a 3 year degree for free! Times have changed.

My fellow students were mostly geeks with professionals for parents. I found myself overwhelmed by a new way of thinking. I cut my hair. I struggled to develop the other side of my mind, the logical side.

During the 3 years I studied, we started a prog-rock band. The songs we wrote and recorded were a quantum leap above my first band. We played a few pubs, Then bang, one of our band-mates died in a car crash. This tragedy shook me badly. I couldn’t help thinking there was some bad karma in my life, which I somehow needed to transcend.

Despite nearly dropping out of college, I eventually learned how to analyze problems and write computer programs to solve them. I managed to make quite a lot of money as a analyst-programmer for various corporations. The work was mentally stimulating, but my body was suffering from long hours stuck inside an office, in front of a computer screen. I didn’t get much of a chance to be creative. I was not happy.

So I saved as much money as possible. I managed to travel Australia and the world, and take years-long breaks away from work, when I would experiment with the suddenly available magical 80s music technology at home. I could afford to buy an real Fender strat, a Mesa Boogie amp, a 4-track tape recorder, a programmable synth and drum box. I was in a few other bands, but nothing compared with being in complete control of my own music. No politics, no smoky pubs, no low-life to deal with. No drugs. Just music.

The biggest difficulty was being both the artist and the producer myself. A challenge, but I thought, maybe I can just make demos and find a band to play them with me. I tried singing, but eventually realized I wasn’t good enough.  So I gradually stopped writing lyrics and just made instrumentals. I find that just by forcing myself to work on music for a few hours a day, new ideas just flow.

Eventually, after struggling for 2 weeks or so, I have a track of which I could be proud. It still would be nice to find a female singer who would write lyrics and sing to my music. It would also be great if a band of hot musos interpreted my own compositions. Maybe one day, or after I’m dead. That’s when most musical careers really take off!

I started an arts/music degree in 1989. They had really crappy music technology, and my tutor once described my music as ‘noise’. My fellow students didn’t seem too serious about music. They just wanted to party. Not good for creativity. The last straw was when they made us analyze Wagner. I dropped out after one term.

By this time, I had completely dropped the idea of ever again making money from music. I didn’t want to play covers live. I love to record a great cover song now, but please don’t ask me to play it again.

By the time Y2K rolled over, my computing career was played out. I was now one of the old school, and quite grumpy about the way more of my colleagues were writing code which was full of bugs, because they were never taught to test it properly. Analyze.  Design. Code. Unit test. System test. Repeat until perfect, then Release. That’s basically how I was taught.

So when my last contract was over, I strolled out the door and never looked back up at that big tall glass box where I had spent so many years of my life. Getting money and spending it on crap. Repeat until your soul is consumed.

I still needed to learn more about the future direction of computing, so I next did a Grad dip and a Masters in Internet Computing. I’m still not sure why I did this, but I swear I am totally cured now, and will never go back to University ever again!

Now, in 2014, for 2 years I have been happily recording solo music on my little net-top PC with one guitar and one cheap synth. I record and process everything with Audacity software, and use D-lusion software for drums, plus samples. All the software is free, as is the OS, windows 2000. That’s all I need to capture my ideas right now. I know that the audio quality is not ‘pro’, but it’s good enough to upload to a website like SoundCloud and Fandalism for others to play or download.

I could not have imagined this power over my own creativity back in the 80s. It’s truly magical, and I am incredibly excited about what may happen with music and technology in the future. I don’t care about money. I’m now poorer than I was in the past, but I feel happier now because finally I am able to create at home and get my sounds out to people all over the world!

So why do I need to make music? It’s fun. Life is too short to waste doing something you don’t love.