Musical Interest

1980s - early days

At the age of 12, my parents were gifted a piano from an aunt. I started taking lessons and progressed as far as Grade 1 theory (wow!). Sadly that piano had a crack in the sound board, something that for long went undetected by our blind piano tuner. I remember being so amazed at how well he was able to play, he really knew how to make the piano "sing". However, the crack in the soundboard slowly worsened in time and was getting to the stage that as soon as the piano was put in tune, it would be out of tune often within weeks, perhaps a few months. So the piano did not last long and neither did my piano lessons. The piano was duly replaced with a Yamaha keyboard - you know the PSR types with the small fiddly keys. For a while I continued with that, and also developed an interest in MIDI around the time of Clive Sinclair's ZX spectrum.

I still remember to this day retro-fitting an electronic pushbutton to an empty Mentadent-P dental floss box, wired up to the pre-programmed ZX Spectrum in turn connected by MIDI to a church piano (Roland - I forget the make). Just like a weather presenter's "magic wand", the choir leader stood up to announce the next song, armed complete with pushbutton/box - the piano started playing "as if by magic" and the choir sang. These early days witnessed the spark of my initial interest in music and electronic wizardy, something which has developed through the years.

1990s- musical progression

In 1991 after graduating with a degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering, I gained employment with the University of Dundee as a Research Technician working for the Amorphous Materials Research Group, part of the the department of APEME. I soon learned that many of my work colleagues were musically talented. Around 1992-1993, two certain members of academic staff who shall remain nameless, were renowned for playing practical jokes on each other. I was asked to compose something of a "spoof" musical item based on Tangerine Dream, this was passed on for the other party to listen to in all innocence. The response eventually came back doubting that the track was anything by Tangerine Dream but possibly reminiscent of another German group Ash Ra Tempel. Of course at that point in time he was let in on the spoof/joke.

During the mid 1990s my personal interests turned to "experimental phases" both in terms of playing music, and recording. At the same time I found myself becoming more involved with with technical aspects of sound and vision.

• • 1993 - sound engineer for "Random Jam" (a charity evening of music at the University of Dundee's chaplaincy.)

  • 1994 - sound engineer supporting Alison McAusland - Derby Civic Centre

  • 1997 - participant in the international interactive musical project called "Dare to Fail", a collaborative project involving at least 95 different members from 20 countries. The concept being that musicians would compose and submit works based on an original track.

  • - created "Plasma Dance" - an audible representation of the molecular species present during the growth of Amorphous silicon

  • - participant in "Juteshed Jazz" - musical evenings organised with work colleagues

  • - composed and played the music for the wedding processional on event of my marriage

  • 1998 - Around this time a work colleague suggested I upload material uploaded to MP3.com (see history of Michael Robertson and MP3 ). I took the decision to upload material out of fun rather than any real seriousness. Subsequent years saw many legal changes relating to MP3 , the result being that artists could no longer upload their material to the MP3.com website. CNET bought over "MP3.com" and enabled artists to upload to their "music.download.com" website.

  • 1999 - concept of "Music For You" born

  • 2004 - Music uploaded to CNet's "music.download.com/musicforyou", first heard about the University of Dundee's Disparc

  • 2005 - preparation for submission to Disparc DP003

musical hardware

Over the years equipment, like the ebb and flow of the tide has grown to (not) include:

• • Casio CT670

  • Roland JX-1 -sadly, this item was stolen from me :-(

  • Yamaha QY20 -sadly now broken

  • Roland D110

  • Fatar Studio 90+

  • Roland Sound Canvas

  • Roland Sound Brush

  • Korg X3