by Pulse Wave » 18 Jan 2014 16:48
And another one joins the herd of musical bronies.
Chances are good that I'm among the top three oldest bronies in this place — I'm 38 years old, and I've been making music for 30 years now, as a hobby all the time. I've never strived to become a professional musician or producer, nor am I now. I'm one of the few experienced keyboardists, I guess, who have never learned to play the piano although I did have instrument lessons.
How do I work, and what do I use? See, on the one hoof, there are those newbies who want to be the next Skrillex and repeat YouTube tutorials on FL Studio and Native Instruments Massive. On the other hoof, there are those professionals and semi-professionals who have pumped lots of €s into their studio complete with a Mac, two screens, monitor speakers, noise-cancelling panels on the walls and all that.
And then there's me who is neither. Instead, I've piled up a rig of hardware synths and samplers and FX and so forth (see my profile for my gear list) in my bedroom in a thin-walled flat where I can't even use speakers (despite having a soprano and a rookie piano player in the same house and having had a horn player next door), so I have to rely on headphones. Some of my synths are more than 20 years old, digital vintage, one could say, but they help me get the sound I'm looking for.
That rig is set up in a way that allows me to play music. I still have to put together sequences for backing, yes, but I'm a player rather than a producer. Nevertheless, there's a not quite young, dual-booting ThinkPad with a professional-grade but discontinued audio interface sitting nearby and connected to the mixer, theoretically allowing me to record my music, but I am able to play music the "old-fashioned" way without a computer.
However, a while after I became a brony (which happened as early as May 2011), I began to develop original song ideas, pony music ideas. These ideas keep growing in numbers, not only in the LilyPond folder on my NAS. They want out, they want to come true, they want me to record them and share them with other bronies.
Other than my chronical lack of time, two little problems keep arising. One is that I've never in my life actually produced, let alone mastered any music. Well, there's always a first time for everything, I know my way around DAWs, and I know when music sounds good and when it doesn't. The use of hardware synths doesn't really make it easier, but that's the path I chose, besides, all that stuff is here already. (Yes, I know that the idea of being able to play it is pretty moot if I don't have any audience in my bedroom, and I can't see any way of yanking all my gear to where an audience would be...)
The other one are my musical preferences which influence me. I am not interested in any music from the 21st century. I already told you that I'm an old fart, but my musical taste is old even for my age, for I have yet to fully embrace the 1990s. Most of the music I listen to ranges from the 60s to the 80s. My influences as a synth player in particular are classic electronic music (which does not necessarily mean Switched-On Bach which, by the way, is technically baroque), synthpop, New Wave, Hi-NRG, Italo disco, a lot of what has been popular throughout the 80s, also the more electronic side of R&B. Let me put it this way: I didn't need Daft Punk to find out about Giorgio Moroder (or Nile Rodgers, for that matter), I was already inspired by him before Random Access Memories. This might be a problem because my musical taste overlaps with almost nopony else's, and even if I do get to make the music I'm thinking of, there will be very, very few bronies — if any — who'd find that kind of music to their liking. Even if the songs in my head hardly sound the same.
I mean, I know that 80% of all pony music are a monoculture of dubstep/brostep, D&B, metal and even more wubz, and many bronies are looking for something different, but the music that wants out of my head is too far out, I guess, for any pony-loving audience.
That said, coming up with lyrics to almost completely composed and arranged songs isn't exactly easy either. And speaking of lyrics, not only is the next place where I can record vocals an hour away from here, but I find my singing voice mediocre at best (then again, that didn't stop Gary Numan, Jona Lewie and Stevie Nicks from pursuing their solo careers in the 80s either), and I have yet to see if my vocal microphone (which is already good for brony standards) sucks as badly as I think.
Despite all this, I'd really like to make these songs real, and at least one or two of them I have to sing myself. I guess I've joined this place as another bit of motivation to finally get them done.
So, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Old brony, older than old school.
Gear list, Jabber ID: see my profile.
No FL Studio, no VSTs. No Skype, no YouTube.
Sounds fly through the night, I follow Vın̈yl Scratch to Pony Wonderland.