Work ?

This ain't really work. Because this is the life I always wanted and feel as my own. A life as musician. At the age of 3 I remembered that I was watching someone performing keyboards on tv and we had such a thing at home too!. It was a bit bigger and it sounded a bit "off" compared to the sounds I heard comming from that band on tv. But that's what you get of having a berliner buffet piano that wasn't tuned in 100 years, and it stood in our very living room.

Anyway, I noticed I could reproduce the tones played (both rythmic and height of tone) to some extend and have correct self-feedback while doing it. People also call that absolute hearing. The next weeks (or days, how can you remember it exactly if it's eons ago) I started to form my own chords and rythms.

My grandfather will turn in his grave if I tell you that I started using the bottom soundboard plate of that piano as drums while I was playing my first itteration of something I called "my own new popsong" :) I did that several years but luckily got rid of the piano demolishing attitude very quickly.

I had an education in notation, tuning piano's, playing all sorts of percussion instruments that had a general easy accessability and learning curve like drums, xylophone, marimba, melodica. But nothing like guitar or violin. I'm not having the "fingerspitsengefuhl" for these instruments so I don't touch them.

Sculpting rather than performing:

Let's say I have too limited motorcontrol over my hands to attend the Queen Elizabeth contest for piano, i couldn't keep up with pieces that are too technical. So my life as a musician couldn't evolve to me being a "performer" but rather a sculpter of music. I weave together music using synthesisers, software and computers. And I don't feel very limited in the way I want to express myself musically at all. Over the years I developed interest making music this way, and the world of "fake" opens in front of you.

The way I work today enables me to reproduce intense classical work with my mind and with my sequencer in de studio :) But because that is completely useless other than to demonstrate what you can do with these things, I just make instrumental, gentle pop music, new age music and movie scores in my little homestudio. That is greatly satisfying. I can "fake" that I play any instrument I desire because I know how it sounds and how it should sound and I have access trough it via my midi controller keyboard that lets me play a duduk or a violin, I just have to load the correct instrument in my computer.

The convenience to compose, track and record each individual instrument inside my pc into a virtual coherence of instruments playing together as I press my "play" button is very satisfying as well. After all it makes me be my own band and producer and mixer all in one person. So even if I can't play any instrument in a decant way. The way I arrange it entirely within a software environment makes me the master of my own musical universe.

Music as a service:

I love making a new song for myself now and then, whether it's a pop song, classical work or whatever style I have inspiration for, I will do it. But rather than having this as the main "core business" of my musical activities, I'd mostly think I'm at my best trying to convert inspiration of clients into musical reality. So I see my activities more like a "service". For your theatre play, company logo, youtube bumper, trailer music, game, as well as sound effects or music for your website.