Musical education

Time to get an education

It seems I got an early interrest for music, as I expressed my envy to learn playing guitar at seven. This is my aunt who introduced me to this instrument by giving me some rudiments during some months.

Understanding this was more than a temporary willing, my parents registered me to what they thought would be the best: a conservatory music school.

My last classic guitar

I was then aged of eight, and started learning classic guitar. This kept on for four years, and every year’s exams got passed successfully.

In parallele, I read solfège courses, but not as succesfully as practical courses as I doubled my third year! Certainly I was too young to invest myself in what I considered at this time useless boring stuffs.

However around twelve years old, I will to practice more modern music, fed up of classic music pieces. Thus, I moved to a less pretentious music school for folk & rythmic courses. It lasted for three years. By the end my teacher considered he had no more to teach me, and so that either I could now work by myself... or go back to my conservatory studies.

Time to self-teach

I set aside guitar for some time, but not music! As a matter of fact, I learnt myself keyboards.

Keyboard, Yamaha PSR-200

To be honest, I began keyboards a bit earlier, during my last guitar courses years. I progressed well and was quickly able to play songs, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s french hits in the majority.

Electric piano, Yamaha Clavinova

Later I move to an electric piano. I still play modern music, but simply had to do the arrangement work which was previously done by synthesizer I used!

Guitar wasn’t totally forgotten as after my last guitar lessons, I trained myself electric guitar technics. And this introduced what follows.

Time to share

Whereas music no longer absorbed as many time as it used to, it went it back. At the time I changed of comprehensive school, I met the right guys who put me back in music.

I was soon proposed to take part of the musical fanfare an an accompaniment guitarist. I accepted it and enjoyed playing with them. We had two repeats by months, and even had a couple of public performances. Real good time there!

Some months later, I had the opportunity to be part of my own band. That was the first time I had friends involved in music: a drummer, a solist guitarist (actually I gave him his first lessons, and they should be very well done when I see his level now!) and a keyboard player. Although there was a lack of a bass player, we did some nice things together.

We had repeats every week, at least when possible. This is also the beginning of long hours of compositions, sometimes alone with keyboards, a guitar but also assisted by a computer; but also some other time with a friend or two.

My Cort electric guitar

These years were certainly the most exiting ones in my musical life. To share passion with friends through music, getting applaused in public performances is definitely great. This ended in 2000 with the release of our first -and last- CD album. Then university studies came, meaning we were all spread around the country.

Finally I didn’t practiced that much during my university studies. Certainly that once I’ll get a stable professional situation, I’ll go back to serious things...