For anyone that has known me for a while, music is a HUGE part of my life, and I can thank my mom and family for that. I can still remember my mom putting on the Amy Grant Record and dancing around and singing along with it. (Yes, a Record… and shut it, it wasn’t THAT long ago) I also remember my grandmother singing in church, and the emotion that was obvious when she sang.
Fast forward to my first experiences with music, I found very quickly I had the singing talents of a dying cow, so I turned to playing an instrument. Which ended up being the trombone. (I’ll wait for the inevitable jokes… K done now?) Over the course of 7 years in the school band, I had learned to play concert pieces, classical, religious, Jazz, swing, Latin and I learned how to improvise with a group and to play things by ear. I also learned how to march in proper heel-to-toe fashion and how to “press box” after a horn move, with out getting spit to run down my face. (For those that are trying to think when this might have happened, think about the Batman Show my Sophomore year.) (Support Music in Schools)
After high school, I didn’t continue to play as my college didn’t have a band, though I still enjoyed listening to music. I helped out with the high school marching band but due to some conflicts in schedules, I stopped doing that too. I kind of wondered around aimlessly when it came to music or didn’t listen to music at all for a long while, and I don’t think it is a coincidence that I don’t have too many fond memories of that time.
Realistically that lasted until I moved to California and got comfortable with the people here. Once I got to know some of my friends out here, I was introduced to new types of music and new artists. Some I liked and some…. well not so much. Life once again felt good to some extent. It wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows obviously, but after such a run of what felt like life being drained out of me, I felt like things were improving.
A couple years after moving to California, I got invited to a “Throw Back”. Really it was just a party that a bunch of people would go to and hang out, and they had a radio playing and everyone was fighting over what to listen to. Just prior to this I had met a DJ from SD that introduced me to Virtual DJ and I offered to play music for them. It was a lot of fun but sometimes the party would get out of hand, but most the time it was fine. I continued to play for them until my laptop burn out, and about that time I had started working a new job and my room mate had an issue with some people at the parties so we stopped going to them all together.
The new job actually introduced me to some new (to me) music. I was working at a senior RV resort, as the HOA office manager, and I had helped implement a new version of their in-house news channel, complete with streaming music. Now granted, a lot of the music was the type of stuff my grandmother listened to, but some of the people listened to music for the 60’s and 70’s and even early 80’s I had never heard. After that job I had a new respect for some of the music from those eras.
The next (and current job) introduced me to nerdcore and the musical talents of MC Frontalot And I confess I have all his cds via iTunes. He also has some songs on his site that you can download, (PSA WARNING!!!) but if you enjoy his (or any artist’s) music I encourage you to purchase it, via iTunes, because most artist make more money that way. I also was introduced to the first video of the website is down and the awesome theme song.Theme from Thewebsiteisdown.com
Now, I started to play SecondLife Originally when it it was in beta back in 2004/2005. I started playing again in 2008, then again in 2009. The 2009/2010 stint found me in a position to start DJing for people in this virtual world, and when I saw the biggest boost to my music library.
When you DJ, you can’t just play the same old songs over and over. You want to try and be the first one to play the greatest song ever. So you are constantly looking at blogs and listening to or reading top lists trying to find the songs that your audience will really like. I was known for “Rouge Trader’s Voodoo Child” as I was the first DJ on the sim to play it. That bit also introduced me to to things I had never thought about prior to DJing myself. 1. A new song doesn’t have to be a new song, it just has to sound new. 2. Some of my favorite versions of a song are the remixes. Going down this path I started looking at remixes, and this led me to something called mashups. An awesome mashup site is Mashup Town They Feature several mashup artists. A couple of my favorites are DJ’s from Mars, DJ Earworm and The White Panda. Through these artist I have learned to do a little bit of mixing (sorry I don’t record mine) and also introduced me to some new artists like Katy Perry (I knew her before she kissed a girl) Kylie Minogue and a few others. They also gave me new appreciation for older songs/groups like AC/DC, the Jackson 5, Michael Jackson, Nancy Sinatra, Frank Sinatra (the entire rat pack for that matter) Nirvana and Beastie Boys. Below is an example of a grouping of older songs that sound really awesome together.
Ain’t no stairway high enough to hip-hop heaven (Gramatik remashed) from Fissunix on Vimeo.
I could really go on for another 1000+ words about music, but I am going to cut it short and just ask for comments below like I always do. Maybe include some of your favorite/meaningful songs.
