When I was growing up, music was everything. Well, that is music and Ipswich Town FC. Girlfriends took over at some point but music was always there. Music school on Saturday mornings from maybe 8-18. Brass band, dance band on Tuesdays and Thurdays, County Youth Jazz orchestra. And by my mid-teens I’d started writing music.
I played in bands and wrote songs from the age of 17 until the present day. Some really bad bands. The worst of which, Black Axe Maniax came last in a university talent contest. So proud!
I went to Warwick University to study Spanish and European Studies, and then, disaster of disasters, the government of the day recommended cutting down the number of University Spanish departments and our lecturers, like rats from a sinking ship, got themselves new jobs and we were given a PhD student for our main lecturer in our last year.
I took the opportunity to persuade her that a year-long course in Electro-acoustic music was essential to my Spanish degree. I studied ‘A way with sound’ with Phil Ellis and wrote several pieces, two of which involved Spanish in some way, shape or waveform.
I was awarded the highest mark in the year group for the course, a 1st with 80% (back when degrees were tough!!!)
I discussed going on to do a masters in electro-acoustic music. I discussed going on to do a masters in politics. But I ended up getting a job and life happened.
It’s now too many years later and I have the time and head space to get back to it. This blog will chart my meanderings back into the world of music that I love.
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