Musical history

Capristarz from the chat room asked me if I couldn’t do a short post about my musical history, and I started answering her comment with “I don’t really have much of a musical history”. Then I continued writing for a good while with my reply, until I realized that I should just make a post of it. So here’s the rest:

My family had both a piano and a guitar around the house at different times when I grew up, but I don’t recall playing as a kid. I’ll have to ask my parents about it, but I got my first guitar and keyboard when I was around 14-15 years old. I know that the music teacher in school was surprised that I suddenly could play instruments in the ninth grade. Apparently I had not been able to before that, at least not what he had noted.

And well, I started playing with friends for fun, tried out different instruments at school, and performed a couple of times when I was around 16-17 years old. (I played in two bands at the same talent show once, and ended up on first and third place.) After that I lost interest in performing though, so I mostly just sat at home, composing, and trying to record things.
One of the best things I did back then was this:

The Adventures Of Alfons

I refused to sing though, because honestly, I was afraid to sound like my cousin, who sang all the time, but not very well. :D So I preferred to keep quiet.

My “music career” stood completely still until I was around 20 years old, when I decided to actually learn how to sing from scratch. I had a few private lessons with a vocal trainer, which might have helped me, but I didn’t really like it. So I just read on the internet for tips, and recorded myself singing over and over again, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, and how to adjust my mouth and muscles to sing better. I think this one is the oldest recording of me singing:

Edge of paradise

Hehe, I did my best to hide all the flaws with filters and effects, but you can hear at several spots how I tried to paste together two separate takes of the same line, because I wasn’t able to do the whole line in one take. I never showed this recording to anyone.

In June 2008 I uploaded my first video to YouTube, playing Für Elise on guitar. No one even found the video, but when I uploaded Mega Man 9 Rock Medley and Wind Waker Unplugged, gamers started spreading them on forums throughout the internet. I got sort of popular!
And finally, in 2009, I decided to post a video of me actually singing! 32 Songs in 8 Minutes. I was really scared of what people were going to think, but it turned out to be a huge success, and the rest is sort of history I guess!

Update:
I still didn’t take my music career seriously though. I kept uploading 3-4 videos per year, because I hate stress and pressure, and I just want to do things in my own pace. In 2010, I felt that I was ready to make my own album, so I started writing for it, and in 2011, on the 13th of August, I had finished “Thirteen Eight”! The name confused people, but it’s mainly because I realized that most of the songs include the odd time signature 13/8, and those kinds of things really symbolize my way of seeing music. I like odd times and other creative technical ideas!

All in all, I’m proud of being able to make my first album, all on my own too. I never thought I’d get this far just a couple of years ago! And I still listen to some of the songs on it. I do believe that the fatal flaw was the mixing though. With a warmer and more organic sound, more people would have liked it, so I made a few bad decisions there. I still think that everyone should give it a try, because it will probably grow on you! :D

And there you have it.