Bandcamp artist page, rerelease of Mood of the Leopard
======================================================
2022-11-13
Today I've made a Bandcamp artist page [1] and rereleased my
2010 EP Mood of the leopard. It took some time for me to
make the jump from sharing my music on free sites to making
a proper bandcamp page and asking actual money. I'm not too
sure about whether people are interested, but I'm trying not
to be held back by too much humility.
I have made music for quite a while now and when I was a
teenager I even considered making a career out of it. In the
mid 90s I got into making tunes in Fast Tracker II in MS-DOS
and liked it a lot. I also started playing on a Casio
keyboard when I was about 12 years old. When going to my
high school in 1996 I noticed that most of my class mates
already knew how to play a musical instrument. I quickly ran
into problems during the school's music lessons having no
prior experience at all. My dad bought a cheap Casio
keyboard for me so I could practice and my love for music
grew from there. One of my class mates was really into Fast
Tracker II and I learned how to use that program to make my
own stuff. I was completely oblivious of any music theory
and just did whatever I could to get some sound out of that
program.
I continued playing the Casio and started borrowing sheet
music from the local library. I also began making my own
tunes on the Casio and playing some classical music. I
however quickly found out the limitations of my keyboard.
When trying to play a Chopin prelude I noticed I didn't have
enough keys. However, I got an organ from a deceased
relative and continued playing on that. But the organ also
quickly began to show its limitations and what I really
wanted was a piano. However, pianos are bloody expensive and
I didn't grow up in a rich household, so I had to work as a
paperboy to afford one. Thanks to my best friends dad I got
piano lessons at the music school. This wasn't easy, since I
was already 15 at the time, and there were long waiting
lists. However, he wrote the people in charge of the music
school, strings were pulled and there I went. I was really
nervous for my first lesson and played Beethoven's Moonlight
Sonata and some of my own music to my new piano teacher. She
was pretty firm about how my technique sucked, but also
extremely supportive. I really loved her. She reminded me of
the sorceress Polgara from the Belgariad books by David and
Leigh Eddings.
Anyway, I studied a lot and found out I also enjoyed making
my own piano music. I actually liked that more than doing
the scales, and often when having to practice pieces or
scales I switched to improvising instead. I started to get
better and people noticed that I had some musical talent.
However as a late starter it was really out of the question
I could become a professional with the piano. Aside from
that all my piano playing friends were waaaay better than
me. I didn't believe I could ever reach their kind of level
playing that instrument.
The composing side however was a different matter. I kept
composing songs for the piano and also enjoyed making music
with Fast Tracker II and later on started using Fruity
Loops. I still have hours and hours of material I made in
those days, but most of that isn't worthy to be shared to a
larger audience :-). A couple of years ago I made two mixes
of Fast Tracker II tunes from the 90s and shared
them on Soundcloud. I have however removed my Soundcloud
account, so I might share them again in the somewhere else
in the future.
In my penultimate year of high school I went to the music
conservatory in Enschede to see if it would be a viable road
for me to get admitted after high school with a focus on
composition. The piano teacher there told I had a nice
sound, but my technique was lacking, but the composition
teacher was very kind and offered that I could take a
preliminary composition course for a year there. I however
decided not to do that. I found it difficult to talk about
my compositions in an analytical way. I still believed
everything flowed through me, given by the muse or something
:-). I wasn't ready to have a intellectual debate about the
choices of consonants versus dissonants I made in a piece
for example. I still think it was the right decision at the
time, although I can't help but wonder what would have
happened if I did take that route with eventually going to
the conservatory. I would have probably ended up a high
school music teacher. If you would have asked the 18 year
old me that would have sounded like a nightmare, but right
now I think that would actually be great. I even went and
studied to become a math teacher for a year in 2009-2010 and
I still have plans to go into teaching some day.
I chose to go study computer science instead, but still kept
making music. I kept playing the piano and I made electronic
music in Propellerhead Reason. Mood of the Leopard was also
made in Reason, a now ancient version of Reason 5 which I
still have, but rarely use.
The thing I noticed about music software is that while they
have become much more powerful in the 25 years that I've
used them, I haven't exactly become more productive. I can
spend hours and hours tweaking sounds instead of finishing
music. Regarding finishing songs I think Fruity Loops was
the best thing ever. These days Fruity Loops is called FL
Studio, but they still try to make actually finishing stuff
their priority. Their motto is even "The fastest way from
your brain to your speakers".
Now, you might know me as a avid free software enthusiast
and I do prefer free software. However regarding that "brain
to ears" part free software does get in the way. Most of the
time when using Ardour or LMMS I find the need to go through
this typical Linux-like tweaking cycles of my tools and that
seriously gets in the way of being productive. I have even
become so unproductive with my music tools that I haven't
finished any new electronic songs the last years.
However, that has changed a bit and I'm hopeful I will also
be able to release new electronic music. A couple of years I
bought an electrical Kawaii CA-48 piano and seriously it was
the best thing ever. I owned a Kawaii analogue piano before
that and although it was super great and sounded really nice
I also always felt a bit hampered by the fact that playing
it meant that my whole house block would hear it, so I
didn't play it too much. Getting the Kawaii CA-48 with a
nice headset really changed that and now I play regularly
and even started recording my playing. I'm working on an EP
with piano music and have already finished recording two
songs. The Kawaii has a record button so recording is super
easy and I can also use Midi via bluetooth to record
directly on my phone or laptop.
Regarding my electronic music I also have hopes that I'll be
able to finish more music. I've made some music in
Milkytracker, reliving my fondness of Fast Tracker II and
I'm also starting to play around with the newest FL Studio.
I know, FL Studio isn't free software, but as proprietary
software goes it's pretty benign. They have life long free
updates and don't try to pull you into the typical
capitalist schemes that you usually find with modern
proprietary software.
So yeah, here's me getting out there with my music again.
Not ambitious, not trying to make it a career, but just in
to search of good old gay and happy fun :-D
Hyperlinks:
[1]:
https://jellehermsen.bandcamp.com/album/mood-of-the-leopard-2022-rerelease
-----------------------------------------------------------
Tags: english
