Then one day when I was in a video game store in my local town centre, I bought by chance a game for the ol' PS2 called Final Fantasy X. This game changed quite a lot of things about my life! The moment the opening piano theme played for the first time I was instantly moved. I knew I had to learn how to play this incredible piece of music myself. In fact, the whole soundtrack fascinated me and gave me a whole new incentive to start playing keyboard again - it became my escape from reality. I'd sit for hours at my keyboard with the game running and the music playing in the background just so I could decipher the opening piano theme note by painstaking note. As I've never had a single keyboard lesson in my life and can't read sheet music, I learnt a huge lot from doing this. For about two or three years onwards, I was content on becoming a video game composer myself like my hero at the time, Nobuo Uematsu (the legend behind the Final Fantasy music). You can listen to the incredible piano theme 'To Zanarkand' and hear my rendition of it here.
A year after getting my first keyboard, my parents - and my grandad chipped in - to get me a new keyboard for my 13th birthday: a Yamaha PSR-295. I actually asked for a 290 beforehand because it was what I liked to play at school, but I couldn't complain when I discovered the 295 had built-in sustain whereas the 290 didn't (and thank God it did, I hadn't realised just how useful sustaining notes would be)! This keyboard is the one which I played from age 13 to 17 and I played and wrote so much on it. It became a part of my daily life and I have very fond memories of it. It was also the one I made my demo album Believe on.
About a year after getting my second keyboard, when I was around 14, I bought this racing game called Burnout Takedown. I never used to have a favourite band or really even care for them much either before playing this game... but its rocking soundtrack soon got me into liking the catchy genre "punk rock" - or strictly, music with guitars & drums... & attitude! It was also thanks to this game that I discovered the very talented band Yellowcard. I checked out some of their songs from album 'Ocean Avenue' after being intrigued by the song featured on this game, of that album, called 'Breathing'. I remember that, coming from my dance/trance music background, it was all very new to me indeed and took some real getting used to before it became more accessible. Several days of listening to this unfamiliar music and my techno days were surely wearing thin. This band, and style of music, were certainly worth adjusting to! For that, I'll never forget this game.
There were other bands I got into as well thanks to Burnout (albeit briefly & minisculely), such as Auto-Pilot Off, Donots and Sugarcult. All this stuff was completely fresh to me, and had what I came to discover later was a thing called "soul", and made all the other stuff I listened to sound rather artificial in comparison. Thank God I ever discovered Yellowcard though, they've been a big part of my life ever since playing Takedown and have helped me get through difficult times and misunderstandings growing up as an unsure 15yr old. It was actually because of Burnout Takedown that I started playing guitar sounding music on my keyboard in the first place! Yep, that's where that all started from...So yeah, that's as much as I can think to type of my musical beginnings, and it ain't been easy to put into words exactly! Coming from a completely non-musical family, at 19 years old, I now realise just how lucky I was to own a musical instrument at such a young age. Since having it I could never have imagined my life without playing the keyboard... so I must thank you again, mother and father.
posted (and finally finished!) 11/07/10
