My Love For Music
All of us have ambitions. All of us develop a passion for something early on in our childhoods. My passion was for music. I loved music for as long as I can remember. On my fifth birthday, I wanted a guitar just as the one David Cassidy played on The Partridge Family. I had to have that guitar. Luckily, I did get it and was very happy. Somehow, I always knew that I would never be able to play the guitar, or any musical instrument and that seemed to be okay with me.
After several years of early intervention and education at a school in Providence, Rhode Island, my parents enrolled me at a residential school in New Hampshire in 1977. It was then when my musical loves found sophistication. It was then I discovered the album, The Stranger, by Billy Joel. It was like finding sunlight, not knowing that I have been in a musical darkness for so long. The Stranger seeped into my veins.
The piano suddenly became interesting to me. When my aunt transferred her job to Chicago, my family got her piano for a time. I used to sit in front of it and explore. I was never one to bang on it, but my cerebral palsy did not leave me with many options. The sheet music on the piano desk intrigued me. I could not read a lick of music but the notes were still mesmerizing. Yet again, I faced the reality of knowing I was physically unable to play the piano.
Attending the residential school, I was mainstreamed into the local high school to participate in college preparatory classes. During my senior year, I took music theory as an elective. It was truly the most rewarding and challenging course I have ever taken. The most challenging obstacle was doing my homework outside of class. Notation computer programs did not exist in 1988 to allow me to set up or play more than one note at a time. I had to rely on a few people who had some basic music theory knowledge to help me with my homework. I had to create an 8.5 by 11 musical symbol chart to use in school and when I was doing my homework. I would point to the symbols with my headpointer to indicate what I needed written on the music score paper. At the conclusion of the class, I received a 93 in music theory.
It was not until after college that I really began getting into music. Music technology had jumped leaps and bounds in five years. Once I switched over to using a Windows platform computer, the notation software called Finale by MakeMusic Incorporated has been my program of choice for 15 years. Finale is the core of everything I do musically. I have had three different sound modules since 1993. Sound modules are external hardware devices, which produce tones mimicking real instrument sounds. Finale is capable of playing, or controlling, multiple tones simultaneously through notation on multiple staves. An entire orchestral piece can be composed with Finale and played through a sound module.
In recent years, music technology has moved away from sound modules and into VST, or Virtual Studio Technology. The main difference between a sound module and VST is that all the tones for each instrument in VST are basic wave files, which are loaded onto the computer’s hard drive. Sound engineers record wave files from the actual instrument played in a recording studio. The Native Instruments VST sounds are phenomenal! Another advantage to using VST sounds is that each instrument sound is extremely malleable.
When you think that something is out of reach, just sit back and breathe because within time, anything is possible
All of us have ambitions. All of us develop a passion for something early on in our childhoods. My passion was for music. I loved music for as long as I can remember. On my fifth birthday, I wanted a guitar just as the one David Cassidy played on The Partridge Family. I had to have that guitar. Luckily, I did get it and was very happy. Somehow, I always knew that I would never be able to play the guitar, or any musical instrument and that seemed to be okay with me.
After several years of early intervention and education at a school in Providence, Rhode Island, my parents enrolled me at a residential school in New Hampshire in 1977. It was then when my musical loves found sophistication. It was then I discovered the album, The Stranger, by Billy Joel. It was like finding sunlight, not knowing that I have been in a musical darkness for so long. The Stranger seeped into my veins.
The piano suddenly became interesting to me. When my aunt transferred her job to Chicago, my family got her piano for a time. I used to sit in front of it and explore. I was never one to bang on it, but my cerebral palsy did not leave me with many options. The sheet music on the piano desk intrigued me. I could not read a lick of music but the notes were still mesmerizing. Yet again, I faced the reality of knowing I was physically unable to play the piano.
Attending the residential school, I was mainstreamed into the local high school to participate in college preparatory classes. During my senior year, I took music theory as an elective. It was truly the most rewarding and challenging course I have ever taken. The most challenging obstacle was doing my homework outside of class. Notation computer programs did not exist in 1988 to allow me to set up or play more than one note at a time. I had to rely on a few people who had some basic music theory knowledge to help me with my homework. I had to create an 8.5 by 11 musical symbol chart to use in school and when I was doing my homework. I would point to the symbols with my headpointer to indicate what I needed written on the music score paper. At the conclusion of the class, I received a 93 in music theory.
It was not until after college that I really began getting into music. Music technology had jumped leaps and bounds in five years. Once I switched over to using a Windows platform computer, the notation software called Finale by MakeMusic Incorporated has been my program of choice for 15 years. Finale is the core of everything I do musically. I have had three different sound modules since 1993. Sound modules are external hardware devices, which produce tones mimicking real instrument sounds. Finale is capable of playing, or controlling, multiple tones simultaneously through notation on multiple staves. An entire orchestral piece can be composed with Finale and played through a sound module.
In recent years, music technology has moved away from sound modules and into VST, or Virtual Studio Technology. The main difference between a sound module and VST is that all the tones for each instrument in VST are basic wave files, which are loaded onto the computer’s hard drive. Sound engineers record wave files from the actual instrument played in a recording studio. The Native Instruments VST sounds are phenomenal! Another advantage to using VST sounds is that each instrument sound is extremely malleable.
When you think that something is out of reach, just sit back and breathe because within time, anything is possible