My first computer was a Yamaha computer that came with two keyboards. A “qwerty” and a piano keyboard with mini keys, like there are many of them now. I am talking about 35 years ago! It was about the first Apple Macintosh being introduced to the world.
From that moment on I have been playing and recording music with a computer involved. But it was never something serious. Until moving to Chile. Here I couldn’t find people to start a band and I started programming my KORG 3000i and play my music orchestrated. And so I had my first chilean gigs. When people asked me where they could find my music - at that time Spotify and all did not exist yet - I could only say “you can’t find it anywhere”. So my next step was recording my music in Garageband. (Yes, I didn’t get stuck with the MSX computer. As an architect and designer I work for many, many years now with a Mac.). The next step was of course recording per instrument and use 1 recorded part several times in the same song (weren’t loops yet).
Because of my buddy Parkinson who I carry around all the time now, I switched to total electronic music with looping, software instruments and recording with Ableton live, a DAW program, and more, recording music to sell via Spotify, a must for me since I depend on my music since January 2020, I learned that making the perfect recording is not that difficult. I mean, you can repeat and repeat in recording and cut away whatever little piece and “glue” finally the ideal together. Yes that is a lot of work, but it is possible. But here comes the title of this blog: Keep it true…
Getting to a perfect piece of music, means, to my opinion, erasing the human factor. Only a handful of musicians can play a concert flawlessly. Flawlessly according to your ears. A nice example of this you can find with Herbie Hancock playing with Miles Davis. Herbie forgot to play a part and Miles “repaired” this error so nobody heard that there was just a mistake being made. For myself, I make mistakes constantly and I continue with fear, trying to cover it up. Finally, when I play back the music I have to concentrate to find my mistakes back. I am sure that and only few people will have heard my misstep.
So, even when I record several parts more times and I rehearse these parts more times, I want to keep my music true. My recordings are done in little time and I accept errors and moments that could have (much) better if I would have taken more time.
But I like the concept that, if you listen to my music, you listen to me. You listen to my music with mistakes for not knowing better, for being incapacitated because of Parkinson - both mental and physical, like having only one hand capable of functioning normal.
I like to say that I am sculpting my music on the go, even when I am recording.
I keep it true, its my music that I create.