Writing music

How it all began ...

My first taps on the keyboard

My interest at music started at young age. When I was about 8 a nephew of mine gave me his Bontempi keyboard. Actually, "keyboard" is a big name for it. It had a keyboard of 2 octaves on the right side and on the left side there were some black buttons you could push to play some pre-defined chords. To be honest, it was more a toy then an real instrument ... However, I liked it very much and I started to learn playing keyboard on it.

After a while, my parents saw that I was having a great time with my Bontempi. So they bought me a Casio MT-100 as a gift. I think I was about 10 when I got it. It was a little instrument (with tiny keys, not a full-size keyboard) but it had quite a lot of possibilities, and was quite expensive in those days. Besides playing all famous evergreens (e.g. My way, Green green grass of home, Strangers in the night, ...). I also started to "invent" some melodies of my own. Maybe you could not yet call it "writing music" at that time, but it sure was the beginning ;o)

My first real composition

My next keyboard was a Viscount. My godfather bought it for me when I was about 12 I think. For me this was really a "big" instrument (compared to my little Casio). It had real size keys and quite a lot of rather realistic instrument sounds (at least for those times). I created my first real composition on this keyboard. I called it "Eternity" and I wrote it for keyboard and clarinet (I had a friend who played the clarinet and we even made a record on tape of it). It was also the first composition I wrote down on paper, even if it was rather simplified by using only a staff for the clarinet and another staff for keyboard (including chord symbols).

My first Roland

When I was 16, I started to study music at the Kunsthumaniora. I bought my first Roland keyboard then (with some financial support of my parents ofcourse). It was an E-70, in those days the "flagship" of the arranger keyboards of Roland. I spent a lot of time on it and with this instrument I developed a great passion for playing keyboard and for writing own music. I still have my Roland E-70 and I even still use it. Okay, the instrument is quite "out-of-date" now but I still like some arranger parts of it. It's the simplicity of it that attracts me ... And as I said, I made a lot of music on it, so maybe I can't say goodbye to it for nostalgic reasons ...

My first steps in HaFaBra music

The next step was to write music for concert band, fanfare and brass band.

As a matter of fact this started out as a little joke in 1996. I was rehearsing with a local band and some people were complaining about a piece, how difficult it was for them to play and that it didn't sound very pleasingly. So I was joking about how I could do better than that and about starting writing a piece myself for these musicians. I said I could write something nice to play because for me that's the most important thing: that musicians like what they play.

And so the conductor of that band suggested to stop just talking about writing music and dared me to write something myself so I could prove what I kept saying all the time. In the beginning I thought "I can't do this, I just said all this as a joke, this is not for me ...". But the idea of writing a piece of my own kept lingering in my head and I was trying to convince myself all the time. Eventually I thought "OK, why not try to do it ?". After all, I had nothing to lose.

It happens to be, I also had a short melody that I had "invented" some time ago and it seemed so good that I was thinking about this melody all the time (so a sticky tune, maybe you know the word "earworm" ?). So finally I decided to give it a try and I started to write my first piece for concert band based on that particular melody. Amazingly enough, people were very fond of it. Beriato Music was even willing to distribute the song. And yes, it was even an unpretentious succes ...

So this was the beginning and I really enjoyed writing music so I decided to continue writing music for HaFaBra ...

My Rule of Three Funs

And up until now I use my "rule of three funs" when writing music : it has to be fun for me to write it, it has to be fun for the musicians to play it and it has to be fun for the audience to listen to it ...
I will tell you more about my music on the "My Music" page.

You can find more information about my present-day equipment I use to write music on this page ...