Your musical background

[Squirrel Havoc]

Hello, another one of my head scratcher questions. This time, I'm curious as to how you all learned about music, and how to make music. Did you just download a tracker and teach yourself, do you know how to play an instrument, did you learn about music in school or private lessons or books?

Me, I taught myself the basics, and learned the rest through composition books that I'm collecting. But I played the clarinet in elementry school for 3 years, so I have some musical history.

[Sam_Zen]

I played the recorder in elementry school, so I know about the classical bar-score and the notes.
Later I bought my analog synth, the EMS Synthi A. This instrument convinced me of the fact, that classical notations of the material were not sufficient anymore to describe the actual sounds and their 'notes'. It was only still relevant for maybe 8 percent of the actual material. Other, more mathematical, variables came into the focus.

At the same time, my musical preference to listen to was strongly in the jazz-field, so I needed rhythm and swing . .
This I found back on my first DOS-machines with FastTracker. Dealing with the MOD-format and introducing XM.

Teaching myself howto ? Checking the codes, and of course, DL a tracker of someone else and see how things are done.
Listening to the real innovators of electronic music. So not to the socalled pioneers like Stockhausen or Kraftwerk, but to Morton Subotnick, Jan Boerman. Or, more common, to Wendy Carlos, Tomita, Vangelis, or Tangerine Dream.
A great influence has been Miles Davis. Because he changed from acoustic to electric. Then from electric to electronic.
A broad interest in other musical cultures helped a lot too. Latin, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Aboriginal.

[Dj_Placid]

Mine started in the 5th grade when I was in choir until the end of my 9th grade year. Somewhere in the span of that last year I started to play the bass, and then I moved and I hadn't touched anything or looked aat a piece of music for a while. Then About 2 years ago, a friend of mine told me about Modplug and I became intrwested in it. From there I decided to get a guitar, learn how to play it, relearn the bass. Re taught myself how to read music. Overall, I have pretty much taught myself everything I know about music. With the exception of plugins, and that VoC taught me all about those.

[hematurge]

I always had a casio around when I was growing up but only had a passing interest in creating music for myself. Around 1995 or so it finally hit me. I using a few junkstore keyboards and a tape recorder to make crappy underground rap tapes. A couple years later I upgraded to a Yamaha Djx and a karaoke machine. I didn't learn about computers until around 1998 after I got incarcerated. During that 5 years I read anything and everything on music and computers I could get my hands on. Late 2003 I was released and quickly got a computer and started with Rebirth-338, then Cooledit, and finally settling on FL Studio. I didn't get into trackers until last year and since then I've tried out just about any and every piece of music production software I could. As far as traditional music theory and all that goes. I can play piano a bit and read/write notation to an extent (I'm pretty rusty) even tinkered around with learning bass guitar. Pretty much everything I know I learned from books or taught myself.

[rncekel]

I began studying guitar at the Conservatory, but soon start playing with rock groups (guitar, and then, bass). My main concern was always composition. After some years, I got interested on percussion, so I studied it at the Conservatory and played percussion in a medieval music group and accompanying an Iberoamerican Choir. Then, I left the bass for the piano, and played almost every kind of music (not disco). And, after some years more, I got married and left the music. Only in 2000 I returned, but this time not playing instruments, but just composing and using computers. I got involved first with midi, but then I discovered modplug... and that's why I am here.

[Louigi Verona]

i begam by studying Scream Tracker and things just started off from there

[rewbs]

I didn't learn about computers until around 1998 after I got incarcerated.

Damn...

I got married and left the music.

Damn..!

[Waxhead]

I started interesting myself in music with a old Yamaha synthesizer. Later I got my hands on a C64 and was amazed that a computer could create so many interesting sounds. I've always liked odd sounds so I was particulary interested in "filtersounds". Later I got a Amiga and I was as so many others impressed by the audio hardware. I started with SoundTracker , NoiseTracker and then I settled with ProTracker for years. Also I actually wrote my own tracker called AdeptTracker who had a system GUI simmilar to ProTracker quite a bit slower tough... (if anyone is interested feel free to contact me for a copy). Anyway after some while I got hold of a PC and i've sticked to ModPlug ever since. oh and I don't know a single note - everything I know is self-taught.

[Trustmaster]

While all of my friends were attending music school I was sitting in front of the PC playing games, learning the hardware and system in-depth. While all of my friends were playing their guitars in their band I was sitting in front of the PC administrating and learning programming in-depth. While my friends were sitting in front of the computer learning the system and other things I was still sitting in front of the PC and writing my own music.

Sure, it's a joke, but close to reality. Most of my friends have musical education. I don't. On the other hand, they agree that if I attended music school with them I wouldn't then be so good at computers.

I started learning about making music on PC to show my friends that it can be a useful tool in their band. MPT was my first and it is currently the last. I didn't read any books. At first I didn't even listen to other's mods. First year was full of just-for-fun experiments. False notes, annoying sound, etc.

Everything I can now is self-taught. Making music doesn't play key role in my life. It's my hobby for absolutely spare time. And I like the way of learning it "inside out", step by step, feeling by feeling.

And what about my friends? They find me a good teacher when I teach them to track or to use FL Studio

[LPChip]

My family introduced me to music.

My dad had this electronic organ (he actually still has). He played on it and I watched him play. I really loved it when he did that. When I was about 5 years old, I just tried to figure out how it works and managed to play a song on it.

It was about 4 to 6 years later when my brother introduced me to modules. He brough them home from school and eventually he got fast tracker 1 and digitracker and those. It was about 3 years after that when I actually got to work with Scream Tracker. I've watched him work with it, so I got to know the basics, but I kinda learned tracking myself. He told me how to load in a sample and how to start a new song, and I kinda experimented from that.

[Relabsoluness]

<>

[Sam_Zen]

This has become a very nice topic. It adds some personal properties to the members, so it can help to see the replies on some topic in a clearer perspective.
An addition on my previous post : Way in the past I followed for a year some lessons on playing the indian Tabla's.
This teached me a whole new view on the structure of rhythmical patterns.

Nostalgia ~ For anybody looking for the old DOS-tools, I have some of them still available on my site :
FastTracker II - Cubic Player (tracker too) - Inertia Player

Another way back thing : Since, as a small kid, I played some tune for the family by ticking glasses with different volumes of water, I am aware  that any object can be used as a soundsource for a compo, not only the regular ones.

[anboi]

i think the very first thing i tried to make music in was fasttracker in about 97/98 but it totally confused me and i gave up after getting the very basics and no more. i'd been making sounds in cooledit for a while before that tho' and when cooledit pro came out i tried using that to make actual multitrack songs, got frustrated then started using modplug in about 98/99 and have used it pretty much every single day since! i have no music training apart from recorder at school and about 12 piano lessons when i was 12 or so. i learnt almost everything about tracking and music theory by working it out myself and still feel like i know very little!

[BooT-SectoR-ViruZ]

well... infected by the hardcore virus in the early 90s (1993 i suppose)
i started creating some happy hardcore & gabber tunes in 1995
together with a friend in "sound club" (http://www.bluemoon.ee/history/scdos/index.html)

1997 my friend went to X-tracker, but i didn't like trackers at that time, so i stopped till 1999

then in 1999 i finally decided to learn the use of fasttracker II.
through the years my taste in music changed a little
so most of my tracks at that time were speedcore from 350 - 1200 bpm

2001 i switched to MPT and stayed till now  

didn't really learn any physical instruments...
just basic musical things like reading notes at school

i always wanted to play drums, but my parents denied it
because they though it would have been too loud...

[botb]

Started to mess with FT2 back in 2000 for fun and now I find myself five years later wondering what the fuck happened.